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This in and of itself is raw evidence of how far this country has moved on gay issues: Ting has such a strong sense of entitlement that a routine historical occurrence in democracies - the snatching back of rights that have been reluctantly given to despised minorities - came as a surprise to him. It is that sense of entitlement that led to today's march, which Ting and so many of his cohort put together...
...later, the conceiver of the most powerful work of American folk art, the AIDS quilt. Last year, Jones found himself in the spotlight again after the film Milk reminded the nation of what his close friend Harvey had died for. With relentless encouragement from David Mixner - a longtime gay activist and occasional friend of Bill Clinton's - Jones decided to pay attention to all the e-mails he was receiving from 20-something gays who were both angry about Prop 8 and inspired by Milk...
...Jones felt dejected. His friend Dustin Lance Black, a screenwriter who worked on Milk and had traveled with him to Nevada, told him they could make things right by getting gay people to demand - Harvey Milk-style - precisely what they wanted, without compromise: equal rights in all matters covered by every public law, state or federal. That sentiment, born of regret and anger, eventually became the motto of Sunday's march, one featured on almost every mailing sent by its organizers: "Equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in all matters governed by civil...
Meanwhile, mid-career gay activists who run the day-to-day gay movement from the East Coast - men and women in their late 30s to early 50s who slogged away at gay causes during the Bush interregnum - were rather dumbstruck at the idea that young gays wanted to march on Washington. "Pointless," one seasoned gay activist told me. "If Cleve and David Mixner have really inspired so many kids to work on our behalf - finally, by the way, because I think these kids spent the early part of this decade playing Nintendo or something - why don't they tell them...
Jones, not surprisingly, considers this a highly cynical view. He was present when Milk brought together thousands of young gays in pre-AIDS San Francisco to change that city's politics. Milk was famous for convening human billboards - long stretches of young gay guys holding signs along busy streets. Coming together in Washington, Jones thought, might spark the same kind of fellowship. Young friends convinced him that Facebook could shorten the organizing time for a national march dramatically. The site played another role: young gays who had connected on Facebook even as uncertain high school students now wanted to meet...