I was in fact there and I was very proud to march in solidarity with those gay and lesbian members of my community.

The campaign against gays is really a campaign against modern American society and against the freer women and men who populate and struggle in it. Gay rights attempts to structure that freedom with fairness so that we can get on with the business of building real and stable lives for all the different kinds of people and families inhabiting this country. Fairness is what this is about - not the sanctity of marriage or the "promotion" of homosexuality, but fairness.

We’ll advance human dignity by standing up for the rights of minorities, because no one’s equality should ever be denied. We will stand up for freedom of religion -- the right of every person to practice their faith as they choose -- because we are all children of God, and we are all fallible. And the notion that we, as a majority, or the state should tell somebody else what to believe with respect to their faith, is against our basic values. We will stand up for our gay and lesbian fellow citizens, because they need to be treated equally under the law. We will stand up for the rights and futures of our wives and daughters and partners, because I believe that the best measure of whether a nation is going to be successful is whether they are tapping the talents of their women and treating them as full participants in politics and society and the econ.

When I went to Mexico, they always talked about gays. These were people that had to be protected, not abused. And in the early farm worker movement we had a young group of gay men who worked in the packing shed. They were really, really strong activists. So growing up it never occurred to me that you should discriminate against people who are gay and lesbian. I personally always felt that any kind of discrimination is wrong. I've always supported gay rights and went to all the gay rights marches that they had.

Trying to fault gays and lesbians for standing up for their rights is backwards and unconscionable. We have no idea how powerful we actually are. We were never considered part of the general, respectable population.

Let me say that there is no one in our government, at any level, who has the right to tell any American who they should be allowed to love or who they should be allowed to marry. My record in Congress for over six years shows my commitment to fighting for LGBTQ equality. I serve on the equality caucus and recently voted for passage of the Equality Act... Maybe many people in this county can relate to the fact that I grew up in a socially conservative home, held views when I was very young that I no longer hold today. I served with LGBT service members both in training and deployed downrange. I know that they would give their life me, and I would give my life for them.

So, where have we come since the March? Not nearly far enough. We are still fighting the same battles, because we have not studied our history enough to avoid making the same mistakes. We are still not demanding political integrity from our brothers and sisters and especially our lovers, and so we are still victims to those people who believe that "gay rights" means that they have the freedom to open businesses to exploit us just as much as their straight counterparts. We still have gay people who refuse to vote because "all politics is the same," while the neo-fascists continue to put amendments on the ballot in every election to reduce even further any rights gay people may have. Yet, there is still hope. We have young gay people, like singer-songwriter Faith Nolan, who came and spent a day with me because she wanted to know what it was like before. We have young people who know that their ability to go to women's music festivals and bars was won by the struggles and deaths of people who came before, and who realize that if they do not pick up the mantle, all that has been won can be lost again.

We must also again emphasize that gays and lesbians do not seek the right to be homosexual. This "right" is not one within the authority of government to give. They are fighting for the right to secure the conditions under which they may lead ordinary, civilized lives.

Stand up for what is right against the wrong.

I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

Emma Goldman has campaigned boldly and steadfastly for individual rights, and especially for those deprived of their rights. Thus it came about that she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public.

Stand up for what is fair against the unfair.

The most striking change during the past 20 years can be seen in attitudes toward homophobia. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an almost total silence hung over gay and lesbian advocacy. No openly gay person could be a movement leader. Today homophobia persists; most progressive, straight Chicanos as well as Chicanas still fail to see gay and lesbian rights as another struggle of other oppressed people. Too many still fail to see homophobia as a sometimes murderous force of discrimination. But the situation has improved, especially in some major cities, in academia and among youth.

In 1970, I and a few other women had made forays into the male-dominated gay liberation movement. The goal was unity and coalition. The result was frustration, anger, and rage. There were certain factors that we as lesbians had not considered. One, that men-not unlike women-come to the gay life for different reasons: some because they love their same sex; others because they hate the opposite sex. Two, that a white gay man in the closet enjoyed all the privileges of this patriarchal society, and he was not about to give them up easily. So we found ourselves exhausting valuable time and energy in arguments over the rights of drag queens, the word "girl," and numerous other issues that brought us no closer together-and in fact sent the lesbians out the door angry and disgusted, swearing that the male gay movement was "not ready."