Just two weeks after NIU’s “Unity Through Diversity Week,” on Sunday, Oct. 11, 14 men and women from NIU and the DeKalb area joined 200,000-500,000 gay and bisexual men and women, their families and their straight friends and supporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

This was the largest such gathering in Washington, D.C. since the November 1969 anti-war demonstration. Every major newspaper across the United States ran the story with front-page headlines Oct. 12.

With numbers too great to be ignored, we marched for our basic human rights. We marched for the right to love. To stand among half a million others united by love and a great hunger for justice was a tremendously moving experience and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The 24 million gay and bisexual Americans who could not be there can find a great deal of support from numerous other sources.

Before turning to friends, family or church, I’d suggest they begin preparing by writing to the “International Organization of Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays.” Their address is: P.O. Box 24565, Los Angeles, CA., 90024. Many of the books they reference provide very moving cases of immediate or gradual acceptance by friends, family and church.

Among those addressing the hundreds of thousands were democratic presidential frontrunner Jesse Jackson, Congressmen Barney Frank and Gary Studds, former NOW president Eleanor Smeal, United Farm Workers of America president Cesar Chavez, and entertainers Robert Blake (Baretta) and Whoopi Goldberg.

Twenty-four years ago, Rev. Jackson stood beside Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. just 3,000 feet to the west at the step of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1987, along with these others, he urged all oppressed peoples and all just-minded people to work together for social and economic morality and justice.

I urge the thousands of gay and bisexual people at NIU to stand up and take pride in your unique ability to love where others hate. Even if you do live openly beyond family and close friends, you will find life will be only slightly more difficult at times and within certain circles. But at the same time, life will be infinitely more precious.

Insecurity and fear translate into hatred. And it is this hatred which breeds oppression that is in and of itself, evil. Struggle for peace and understanding. Peace.

Jim McDermott

acting director

lambda christian fellowship