Nov 21, 2008  |  By: JOEY DiGUGLIELMO  | COMMENTS     

Willow Witte is bummed.

It’s Nov. 5 — the day after Election Day — and the 32-year-old bisexual Cleveland resident has a sense that the slim majority of California voters (52.2 percent) who voted to approve Proposition 8, the controversial state ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage there (it had only been legal since a state Supreme Court ruling in May), have voted against gay rights one too many times.

“It was definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Witte says of Prop. 8. “It was just too much. It’s one thing to have [the Defense of Marriage Act], but to watch 18,000 people get married and then tell them that’s it — it’s just devastating.”

Witte commiserates to her friend Amy Balliett, a 26-year-old lesbian Seattle resident she knew from her days in the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Alliance (GLASA) at Cleveland State University. California same-sex marriage was an issue close to home for Balliett — she married Jessica Trejo in Los Angeles on Oct. 18; they’d had a previous ceremony in Seattle in August.

Witte suggests in an e-mail to everyone in her address book that they contact their local gay rights group to find out if any post-8 action — whatever form that might take — is planned.

Balliett appreciates the suggestion — her knee-jerk reaction, though, is that it’s not enough.

“I said, ‘Why are we waiting for these organizations to do something,’” Balliett says, recalling the conversation. “I just thought, ‘We need to mobilize now.’”

Within 15 minutes she was working on a web site. JointheImpact.com went live on Nov. 7. In less than three hours, the site was crushed by heavy traffic with 10,000 visits. Increased capacity was donated by HostDango.com.

It became clear early on that Balliett and Witte — co-founders of Join the Impact — had struck a nerve. Last weekend’s protests found roughly 1 million people protesting Prop. 8 in about 320 protests in all 50 states and 10 countries. About 5,000 protesters participated in Washington, walking from the National Mall to the White House.

If Prop. 8 was a sucker punch to U.S. gays — whether they live in California or not — the protests it inspired are creating what many are calling a watershed moment in gay rights that’s seeing unprecedented mobilization in record time, riptides of younger gays getting involved and, though it’s still early, signs of what could be a tipping point for gay rights.

The Prop. 8 battle — which the Blade and other media outlets have covered extensively — set its own records. With advocates on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate having raised roughly $70 million, it’s been the most expensive state referendum in U.S. history. (One of the few points people on both sides of the ideological divide agree on is that Prop. 8 has ramifications for the entire country, not just California gay couples.)

But last weekend’s protests were equally historic, longtime activists say.

“I’m simply quite astonished,” says Washington resident Frank Kameny, 83, widely seen as one of the fathers of the gay rights movement. “I mean that in no negative sense. I’m just surprised and startled.”
Kameny says last weekend’s protests are unprecedented with only the 1969 New York Stonewall riots — the beginning of the modern gay rights movement — coming close to them in terms of spontenaity and vitriol. Kameny says the various marches on Washington — the last was in 2000 — don’t compare because they were planned far in advance and spaced years apart.

High numbers of participation of gays in their 20s and 30s are also being noted.

“I think it’s so heartening to see so many young people,” says activist Jim Key, chief public affairs officer for the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center. “For many of them, this is the first time of their lives where they’ve felt the sting of discrimination because of their sexual orientation. They’re out at work, they see gays on TV. They didn’t really believe their rights could be taken away. It’s been a punch in the stomach.”

Gay Los Angeles resident Nick Velasquez, 28, is one of them. He’s one of about 20 young gays in L.A. who’s formed a new group, Freedom, Action, Inclusion, Rights (FAIR). Velasquez says, like Join the Impact, FAIR was formed two weeks ago “to harness this new energy, this new youth movement.”

Velasquez says FAIR members are “upset, but also energized.”

“Many of us are more engaged than ever before,” he says.

It’s a passion that hit 26-year-old Kellan Baker, who organized the D.C. Join the ...