Pardon the Interruption

As House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller opened a recent hearing, an activist interrupted him: "I am here with Get Equal to demand that you no longer delay markup of ENDA."

The activist, Robin McGehee, walked toward Miller carrying felt-tipped markers that symbolized her point: Until the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, gets marked up — that is, shaped into final form — and becomes law, firing workers for being gay or transgender will remain legal in much of the nation. Several equality sidekicks followed McGehee, carrying signs: "GET EQUAL. PASS ENDA."

Miller, neither thrown off nor amused, refused the markers and said, "We're working on that as expeditiously as we can," adding that the bill is "complicated," that he wants "to get it right," that "we expect to have it before this committee in the very near future."

But McGehee's group is fed up with "not now, sometime later" promises from the Obama White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress. As Get Equal's chant goes: "I am somebody. And I deserve full equality, right here, right now."

In addition to interrupting Miller's hearing, Get Equal in recent weeks has helped gay soldiers chain themselves to the White House fence, heckled President Obama at a California fundraiser and staged sit-ins at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district and Capitol Hill offices. And, McGehee says, they're just getting warmed up.

With November's high-stakes elections fast approaching, she points out that precious time is running out for Democrats to make good on such pledges as ending the ban on openly gay soldiers, enacting a federal ban on anti-gay and anti-transgender job discrimination, and recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples.

That's where Get Equal (getequal.org) comes in.

Mixing old-style nonviolent civil disobedience with the organizing and communicating power of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the group has quickly pulled off a difficult feat: getting the news media to focus on the chasm between Democratic leaders' promises and the baby steps they've taken toward dismantling anti-gay discrimination.

In the process, Get Equal has shown the power of interrupting, of pointing out the under-acknowledged pink elephant in the Democratic room.

"We've shown Barack we'll go wherever he is," McGehee said. "In the midterm elections, we're going to be disruptive. What we know is to go to who has the power."

McGehee, a 36-year-old lesbian mom and college professor, co-founded Get Equal in January with Kip Williams. The duo co-directed last October's National Equality March.

McGehee traces her activism to her post-college flight from Mississippi: Rather than discovering utopia in California, she found a state conflicted over how to treat its gay residents, with the ultimate slap coming in 2008 when voters took away marriage rights for gay couples.

The disappointment energized her.

"If you don't stand up and fight, you are saying, 'You can do more of this to me,'" she says.

McGehee was arrested for the first time in March after she helped cuff two soldiers — Dan Choi and Jim Pietrangelo — to the White House fence. "It was like going into battle," she recalls. "I needed to be right there to deliver a message to Barack. We'd been told hope and change were coming, but he's not showing the leadership."

Obama disagrees.

When he was repeatedly disrupted by Get Equal protesters at a Democratic fundraiser speech last month in Los Angeles, Obama responded to demands for lifting the gay ban by saying he and other Democrats "already hear you. It would make more sense to holler that at the people who oppose it. ... I don't know why you are hollering."

For McGehee, the answer is simple. And it's a message Get Equal intends to repeat: Agreeing that anti-gay discrimination is unjust isn't enough. You have power, so use it to right the wrongs — right now.

Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated column on gay issues. To find out more about Deb Price and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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