San Francisco Gay Pride Parade 2004 (Activism is boring, part 3)

I've said that activism is boring, but that wasn't quite accurate. The process of activism is boring. The results can sometimes blow me away.

I sent out 3,748 postcards to couples who got married during the great San Francisco Marriages of 2004. I really didn't know how many couples would show up. I thought probably around one hundred, though I wouldn't have been surprised at forty couples, either.

I apparently threw a match into gasoline: one THOUSAND people came. One-zero-zero-zero. People told me that when our contingent went by, it kept going by -- and going by and going by. I heard that it was the first time that there had been a contingent larger that the Women's Motorcycle Contingent -- which probably means it was the largest contingent ever. At any Gay Pride event anywhere.

In the staging area, looking out over the crowd, I was overwhelmed. My mind boggled, tilted, and froze in the way it did when I was a kid trying to grasp the number of stars in the universe.

"I did this!" I thought to myself with astonishment, amazed that something I did could have had such an effect.

Now, I fully understand that I didn't make one thousand people appear out of nowhere. Many people did many things to set up the circumstances that let my little action turn into such a huge event, from APA removing homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders through couples standing in the cold and wet to get licenses.

I also had help on the postcards from the crew of Parents, Families, and Friends, a bunch of people from my husband's church, my husband, and my mother.

However, realizing that I'm only one link in a chain didn't stop me from enjoying the heck out it!

Ducky Sherwood