Hundreds of same-sex couples and their supporters marched through dusty California farm towns on Saturday, pushing for gay marriage in the state’s conservative center.
Just days after the state’s highest court upheld a ban on gay marriage, advocates said they wouldn’t be dissuaded, and vowed to win the hearts and minds of those who reject their unions.
They pledged to put a new initiative before voters to overturn the ban — perhaps as soon as next year — and to take their message to Washington in October.
The weekend-long event has attracted the movement’s veteran activists and celebrities including Charlize Theron and Eric McCormack. It was organized by a lesbian mother in Fresno who was removed from the parent-teacher association at her son’s Roman Catholic school after she spoke out against banning same-sex weddings.
“Fresno represents middle America values, and we can start changing our neighbors’ feelings about gay marriage beginning right here in the Central Valley,” said lead organizer Robin McGehee, a 36-year-old professor who married her longtime partner last year.
“We’re doing exactly what the freedom riders would do in the South in the 1960s, which is reaching into communities that are different from us so we can all live in equality, she said.
The “Meet in the Middle 4 Equality” protest began on Saturday morning in Selma, California, the self-proclaimed raisin capital of the world.
Hundreds of spirited marchers were escorted by the California Highway Patrol along an aging highway to Fresno, a city of more than 450,000 and the largest in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
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