Equality March starts with prayer

A powerful invocation prayer launched the speeches at National Equality March today in Washington DC. Rev. Troy Perry, the proudly gay founder of Metropolitan Community Churches, set the spiritual tone for the GLBT-rights march with a rousing invocation of history’s great gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender leaders. He also read a letter of support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, black anti-apartheid activist from South Africa. The video of the invocation is well worth watching -- and is very hard to find online now. It was inspiring to hear speaker after speaker stand up for equality. I felt especially happy to see so many young people involved and energized to take the GLBT movement to the next level. Aside from the invocation, there wasn’t much spiritual or religious content in the speeches. I did find out that the Mormon Church is represented in the Utah state senate by the first openly gay state senator in Utah (Scott McCoy)! And I loved it when March organizer Cleve Jones told the crowd, “We are equal in the eyes of God and we demand equality in the eyes of the law.”