Prop. 8 protest in LA attracts thousands

Thousands of people gathered in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday morning as one part of a statewide protest against the ban on same-sex marriage in California.

Protesters carried homemade signs and waved rainbow flags as they listened to speeches by local officials and activists, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The rally drew between 10,000 and 12,000 protesters and culminated with a 3-mile march through the city center, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The scale of the event caused many people to draw parallels between the movement for marriage equality and the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

“This is the civil rights movement of our time. The youth are starting to see that they can make change,” said Ashley Feuchs, a first-year undeclared student who attended the rally on Saturday.

Villaraigosa, who took the stage amid shouts and whistles, said, “We will continue our fight until every one of us has our full civil rights that we expect in this great nation.”

He added that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and that fundamental rights cannot be denied simply because a majority votes against them.

Members of the UCLA Student Coalition for Marriage Equality also attended the rally to show their opposition to Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

Though many students expressed outrage that a majority of Californians approved the proposition, many also anticipated that widespread change is on the horizon.

Raffi Sarkissian, the president of the coalition and a fourth-year communications and sociology student, said, “Rallies like the one today will put our struggles out into the media nationwide, and people will begin to see that this is a movement for our rights.”

He added that it was important for students to get involved and be at the forefront of this movement in order to truly effect change.

The coalition was founded in 2005 with a mission to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, Sarkissian said.

Marcus McRae, a member of Queer Alliance at UCLA and a first-year linguistics and anthropology student, said he hopes that this march, and others like it, will inspire people to join the struggle for equal rights.

He said the marches will “tell people that we are not going away.”

First-year undeclared student Toby Brooks also expressed hope that the tide of this movement will result in change.

“The Prop. 8 debate has awoken a whole generation of people. It has catalyzed a movement and brought people together,” he said.

The large scale of this movement was evident in the masses of people who filled the blocks of downtown L.A. to show their solidarity against Proposition 8.

But supporters of the proposition were also present at the rally and holding signs with sayings such as “Gay sex is sin.”

The supporters of Proposition 8 were booed when they arrived at the event, though the crowd on both sides of the divide remained peaceful.

The L.A. rally was organized by JoinTheImpact.com, a blog created by Amy Balliett and Willow Witte.

According to a statement issued on JoinTheImpact.com, the Web Site was launched following the Nov. 4 election in order to achieve full equality for all.

Simultaneous rallies took place in more than 300 cities nationwide, according to the statement.

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