GLAA Speech for Equality Begins at Home Rally
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GLAA SPEECH FOR EQUALITY BEGINS AT HOME RALLY
SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1999

[Note: The following speech was drafted by GLAA President Craig Howell for the Equality Begins at Home rally in Washington DC's Freedom Plaza on March 21, 1999. The speech was to be delivered by GLAA Vice President for Political Affairs Bob Summersgill due to Howell's unavailability on that date. Summersgill served on the DC EBaH Executive Committee, along with GLAA Vice President for Administrative Affairs Kevin Davis. Due to the inclement weather on March 21, Summersgill chose to skip the speech and simply welcomed the approximately 200 people who had braved the rain to attend. He encouraged those interested to read the speech online.]

Good afternoon. On behalf of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington -- the nation's oldest continuously active gay and lesbian rights organization -- I want to welcome all of you to this rally for equal rights and home rule.

GLAA is proud to co-sponsor the Equality Begins at Home events all this week in conjunction with the D.C. Coalition. We want to thank the people and groups that have joined in to help make this rally, and all the other events planned for this week, a great success.

Special thanks go to our friends at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force for having the vision to focus our movement's attention to state level politics around the country.

Here in the District of Columbia, of course, we have a unique situation -- the federal government serves as our "state" level. And unfortunately, our local politics is too often dominated by negative federal political interference, both by the Congress and by the Administration.

Most federal intervention with DC politics and gay and lesbian rights has been demagogic and destructive. But let me point out one positive example of useful Congressional action -- the decision last fall to grant DC $1.2 million in federal funds to get our newly-minted Civilian Complaint Review Board into operation this year. GLAA played a key role in getting this important new agency established by the Council last year. We want to thank Councilmember David Catania and Police Chief Charles Ramsey for their initiative in going to Capitol Hill and working to get that $1.2 million federal appropriation.

But this was an exception to the overall negative role that Congress and the Administration have so often played with home rule and gay and lesbian rights. We are appalled, for example, that Congress passed the Barr Amendment so cavalierly last year to bar the results of the medical marijuana initiative, Initiative 59, from even being counted, much less certified. We are no less appalled by the Administration's vigorous defense of the Barr Amendment in court.

Similarly, we are disgusted by the restrictions imposed on funding our needle exchange program with our own local funds. And we are fed up with General McCaffrey's willfully blind opposition to needle exchange programs across the board, despite the overwhelming evidence that such programs are effective in reducing the spread of AIDS without encouraging drug abuse.

We resent the attempt of the federal Centers for Disease Control to impose a names reporting system for people testing positive for HIV here, and in every state of the country. We want to thank Mayor Williams for living up to his campaign promise by ordering our local Agency for HIV/AIDS to drop any plans it may have been making for imposing such a counterproductive system here in the District of Columbia.

We want to thank those national leaders, both in Congress and the Administration, both Republicans and Democrats, who have worked with our community in the past and will work with us in the future. For example, we appreciate their stand that led to defeat of efforts last year to ban adoptions by unmarried couples in the District of Columbia. And we applaud the efforts of those who realize that the continuing refusal to allow the District government to spend our own funds to finance the domestic partners program for D.C. government employees constitutes a gratuitous abuse of power. Along with other local and national groups, we in GLAA hope to meet soon with District government officials to coordinate strategies for preventing Congress from adding homophobic amendments to next year's DC budget.

We have often said that no other group in the District of Columbia has a greater stake in home rule than our gay and lesbian community. The difference in outlook between our own elected officials and the nationally elected officials on the critical issues that affect our constituency is vast and spreading. It is time to tell our federal overlords: Stop lecturing other nations about freedom and democracy until you are prepared to grant them to the citizens of your own nation's capital.

Thank you.