Bigger protest than I expected; two houses don't work out

annathepiper and I went with kathrynt and spazzkat downtown to protest the big Focus on the Family anti-gay rally down in Safeco Field. The protest - which was only organised a couple of days before - went surprisingly well; there was a big marching band, and apparently around 1500 people. You can see Anna's hat in the AP photo CNN has up on their web site, and both of our signs, which makes me giggle. ^_^

We had a lot of chanting and a lot of one-to-one brief discussions on the way in; I had one long discussion with one of the anti-queer "hate the sin, love the sinner" people, talking a lot about how that's theologically sound but in practice bullshit, particularly with their leadership spouting blood libel endlessly on radio and TV. Eventually he said he had to go on inside, but that turned out to be just how to get away from me, because a few minutes later I saw him again just a few feet further away, going on again. So that was kind of funny; in fundy debate terms, that means I won.

I spent a lot of time pointedly taking pictures of anti-gay people who were pointedly taking pictures of us. I'm not sure what the point of that is; we're in public, do you think you're going to blackmail us somehow? Or is this for later, when you're doing the roundups? Or what?

Regardless, we decided mostly to go the smile-and-wave route, and make as much eye contact as possible; Hi, we're the cute harmless people you like to hate! works pretty well. On the way out in particular, we were right on the front and smiling and waving and holding up signs against them and saying "Bai! Drive safely!" - only about 1 in 20 would even look us in the eye, which I think says a lot. The best thing I had to say when people did talk - they'd inevitably say something like "God bless you" or "Have a nice day" - and I'd say, "You too! And don't destroy my family, please! Thanks!" which was apparently pretty unnerving. One guy came over and took my hand and said, "Not all of us preachers are crazy. My name is Reverend Doctor Boyd" before moving on. That was kind of surprising because it wasn't at all aggressive - I think he might have been disturbed by some of the high-threat preaching going on inside.

The speeches that I could hear at all were the usual blood-libel queers-destroying-civilisation thing that you're used to hearing if you've ever listened to fundamentalist radio. Dobson talked about how we had to be stopped or our entire culture would collapse; apparently a later speaker said that if gays got marriage, there'd be no clear way for them to discriminate anymore, which is pretty blatant, but not very surprising. One older guy on a bicycle said, "Name ONE gay animal!" and took off when I said, "What? You've never lived on a farm, have you?" I chased after him and kept up that line of talk when he kept moving - he was on a bike and on the clear side of the fence, so could move faster. He came by again later (still slowly on bike) saying over and over again "You should be ASHAMED of what you're doing!" - still in earplug mode, of course.

We made a lot of eye contact with a lot of people, even given the 95% look-aside-with-contempt rate, and got on well with the police who seemed to be pretty much on our side - whenever we said something funny, which was pretty often, you'd see a bunch of them start laughing. That was in stark contrast to the more-often-than-not grim stoicism of the anti-marriage crowd and the Hitleresque-sounding loudspeaker speeches inside the stadium. (Dobson doesn't have the Hitler sound, but the speaker two after him sure did.)

I had fun with a GOP signature collector; during a lull, I told her that I was a Forbes delegate in '96 and she came over and said, "Oh my god, what happened to you?!" And I said, "Nothing, the party moved to the religious and I can't be a part of it." And we talked briefly about small government and she left; I'm sure she has to know that she has no chance in that debate.

It was kind of sadly amusing, listening to Dobson and a bunch of Republicans talking about how something this important cannot be left to the states; that there must be a Federal standard for marriage, and that's why there must be an amendment - and listening to all these so-called conservatives cheer. "Party of principle" my shiny metal ass.

We bailed, though, before everyone had left; we'd gotten downtown at 10:40, and by 3pm it was time to call it quits. People were still straggling out - in fact, most of the people were probably still inside* - but Anna and I needed to go look at houses and Kathryn's feet were screaming and so all that was, really, about all that.

Our side had all the cute people. There was one chicka wearing a haltertop and shorts with "DYKE SEX ROCKS" written on her belly by her girlfriend and she was un.fucking.believably hot. (Her gf wasn't bad either.) It'd have been a great place to meet someone - for our side, anyway. ^_^ We were also really well behaved, which the police liked a lot; FOX News reported that there was one arrest, but they didn't point out that it was one of the other side. (He flipped us off and then mooned us, and the cops grabbed him. At least, I presume that was the arrest. I could be wrong.)

Anyway. Then, after a quick but pleasant stop by Uwajimiya's for hombow and drinks and a busride home, Anna and I went to look at two houses. One's a not-likely; we're going to think about it more. The selling agent tried to force an offer out of us immediately by saying that they had another offer and were about to review it; under those circumstances, we said no outright. But we already know the selling agent is a COMPLETE jerk, and we've had people try that before on us and been lying about it (it didn't work that time, either) so we're going to think about it as if they'd not said anything about an offer. It's kind of a mess, though; some good ideas executed badly, some very, very poor paint designs, some noise issues that might not be showstoppers but aren't preferred. The second house was just as noisy around back and on the sides as I'd feared it would be and is right out. It's also an illegal triplex, but that would be easy to fix if it weren't the kind of place where I'd open a window and immediately get annoyed.

And now, pizza!

*EDIT: Apparently the south-side exit had more people going through it, so it was probably mostly empty by that time after all. Also, I forgot this one incident: We had one woman radiate smugness and superiourity at us while saying, "Sorry, it's not me - it's God! It's GOD doing this. Not me!" To which I yelled, "God isn't the one amending the Constitution - take some responsibility for your actions!" She, of course, ignored that.

Meanwhile, in local fuckhead news

Meanwhile, the fuckheads next door are having a party and doing skateboard stunts off parked cars in the street.