Urvashi Vaid Speaks at the March on Washington

April 25, 1993

Hello lesbian and gay Americans. I am proud to stand before you as a lesbian today. With hearts full of love and the abiding faith in justice, we have come to Washington to speak to America. We have come to speak the truth of our lives and silence the liars. We have come to challenge the cowardly Congress to end its paralysis and exercise moral leadership. We have come to defend our honor and win our equality. But most of all we have come in peace and with courage to say, “America, this day marks th n from exile of the gay and lesbian people. We are banished no more. We wander the wilderness of despair no more. We are afraid no more. For on this day, with love in our hearts, we have come out, and we have come out across America to build a bridge of understanding, a bridge of progress, a bridge as solid as steel, a bridge to a land where no one suffers prejudice because of their sexual orientation, their race, their gender, their religion, or their human difference.”

I have been asked by the March organizers to speak in five minutes about the far right, the far right which threatens the construction of that bridge. The extreme right which has targeted everyone of you and me for extinction. The supremicist right which seeks to redefine the very meaning of democracy. Language itself fails in this task, my friends, for to call our opponents “The Right,” states a profound untruth. They are wrong - they are wrong morally, they are wrong spiritually, and they are wron ically.

The Christian supremicists are wrong spiritually when they demonize us. They are wrong when they reduce the complexity and beauty of our spirit into a freak show. They are wrong spiritually, because, if we are the untouchables of America — if we are the untouchables — then we are, as Mahatma Ghandi said, children of God. And as God’s children we know that the gods of our understanding, the gods of goodness and love and righteousness, march right here with us today.

The supremicists who lead the anti-gay crusade are wrong morally. They are wrong because justice is moral, and prejudice is evil; because truth is moral and the lie of the closet is the real sin; because the claim of morality is a subtle sort of subterfuge, a strategem which hides the real aim which is much more secular. Christian supremicist leaders like Bill Bennett and Pat Robertson, Lou Sheldon and Pat Buchanan, supremicists like Phyllis Schlafley, Ralph Reid, Bill Bristol, R.J., Rushoodie — th remicists don’t care about morality, they care about power. They care about social control. And their goal, my friends, is the reconstruction of American Democracy into American Theocracy.

We who are gathered here today must prove the religious right wrong politically and we can do it. That is our challenge. You know they have made us into the communists of the nineties. And they say they have declared cultural war against us. It’s war all right. It’s a war about values. On one side are the values that everyone here stands for. Do you know what those values are? Traditional American values of democracy and pluralism. On the other side are those who want to turn the Christian church in government, those whose value is monotheism.

We believe in democracy, in many voices co-existing in peace, and people of all faiths living together in harmony under a common civil framework known as the United States Constitution. Our opponents believe in monotheism. One way, theirs. One god, theirs. One law, the Old Testament. One nation supreme, the Christian Right one. Let’s name it. Democracy battles theism in Oregon, in Colorado, in Florida, in Maine, in Arizona, in Michigan, in Ohio, in Idaho, in Washington, in Montana, in every state wh , my brothers and sisters, are leading the fight to oppose the Right and to defend the United States Constitution. We won the anti-gay measure in Oregon, but today 33 counties — 33 counties and municipalities face local versions of that ordinance today. The fight has just begun. We lost the big fight in Colorado, but, thanks to the hard work of all the people of Colorado, the Boycott Colorado movement is working and we are strong. And we are going to win our freedom there eventually.

To defeat the Right politically, my friends, is our challenge when we leave this March. How can we do it? We’ve got to march from Washington into action at home. I challenge everyone of you, straight or gay, who can hear my voice, to join the national gay and lesbian movement. I challenge you to join NGLTF to fight the Right. We have got to match the power of the Christian supremicists, member for member, vote for vote, dollar for dollar. I challenge each of you, not just buy a T-shirt, but get invo your movement. Get involved! Volunteer! Volunteer! Every local organization in this country needs you. Every clinic, every hotline, every youth program needs you, needs your time and your love.

And I also challenge our straight liberal allies, liberals and libertarians, independent and conservative, republican or radical. I challenge and invite you to open your eyes and embrace us without fear. The gay rights movement is not a party. It is not lifestyle. It is not a hair style. It is not a fad or a fringe or a sickness. It is not about sin or salvation. The gay rights movement is an integral part of the American promise of freedom.

We, you and I, each of us, we are the descendents of a proud tradition of people asserting our dignity. It is fitting that the Holocaust Museum was dedicated the same weekend as this March, for not only were gay people persecuted by the Nazi state, but gay people are indebted to the struggle of the Jewish people against bigotry and intolerance. It is fitting that the NAACP marches with us, that feminist leaders march with us, because we are indebted to those movements.

When all of us who believe in freedom and diversity see this gathering, we see beauty and power. When our enemies see this gathering, they see the millennium. Perhaps the Right is right about something. We call for the end of the world as we know it. We call for the end of racism and sexism and bigotry as we know it. For the end of violence and discrimination and homophobia as we know it. For the end of sexism as we know it. We stand for freedom as we have yet to know it, and we will not be denied.

I love this cover of “Call Me Maybe” Tanner Patrick does a great job.  If you like this one check out his original song “Merry Go Round”

I just shot you a text cause I haven’t been able to stop myself from crying for the past half hour.  I just needed to know you were on the other side of the phone.  I haven’t received a response from you and I’m hoping it because you’re asleep.  Part of me hates myself for letting me get so close to you.  The part of me that got close to you is ripping itself apart for being so stupid, but all of me is crying.  All of me wishes for something different.

When we fell asleep holding each other my body vibrated.  Steady, constant, vibrations that seemed to parallel my mind and soul.  It felt so natural and so right.  The touch of your skin against mine and the settle smell of your body gently led me into my dreams.  Then the sun silently woke me. I moved and even in sleep you pulled me closer.  My eyes gently shut as your arms tightened around me.  In that moment, for the shortest of breaths, the world was perfect.

I remember the first time I saw you.  I couldn’t believe how cute you were and how easy our conversation flowed.  It was a complete let down when I found out that you had a boyfriend.  As I walked to the car the thought that rang through my head was, “He is perfect, I need to find someone exactly like him.”

Then nearly a year later in a haze I had you grab my hand and lead me away from our friends. Someone I had been trying to keep at a safe distance.  Letting go and having you lead me felt good.  Then you convinced me to stop thinking about the future and how much you scared me.  You were fun and flirtatious telling me that we could work it out and that we should live in the moment.  Giving in to you that night woke a part of me that had been silent for a long time.

It was the part of me that is the most vulnerable but the part that lives more intensely than the rest.   The part of me that loves.  I kept trying to silence it, but it wouldn’t allow me to stop dreaming.  It wanted me to fall in love with you.  I could feel myself slipping and I kept telling myself to stop, to run, to keep myself safe.  But every time I looked into those eyes I fell a little further.  Every time you stole a kiss that made me giggle the dream replaced my reality a little more. Every time we would go without seeing one another I would scramble to build a wall against you.  Fighting parting me the entire way. 

Then when I finally had put that part of me away again you gave me a night that changed everything.  We went to a movie and then made our way back to your place.  We talked, not just romantically, and the rest of me became comfortable.  Then you walked me up to my apartment and kissed me.  The walls I had fought so hard to build dissolved and all of me started to dream. I kept my arms around you and kissed you back keeping us in the doorway.  Afraid that if we moved from the doorway the moment would end.  Finally I inched backward pulling you forward and slowly closing the door.

I could see you hurting over things out of my control and I couldn’t fix them.  As much as I wanted to make you better I couldn’t.  I wanted to heal you and not entirely for myself.  It is just hard to watch you suffer.  More than I wanted to dream I wanted you to be happy.  When I’d whisper what I was feeling in your ear and you’d smile uncontrollably I’d feel so accomplished.  Even now I want you to be happy, I want you to heal, and I know the one thing you fear wont happen.  I know you’ll love again and its going to be amazing.

The most frustrating thing about this for me is something that is out of our control.  If we had met one another at a different part of our lives we wouldn’t even had to work at anything.  But love isn’t supposed to be easy.

Its funny that angels seem to be so cruel at times. I have to have faith that I’ll come out of this more complete than I was before. That this is to prepare me for the relationship that will alter my reality, again, and make me blissfully happy.  One of my defining characteristics has been to keep moving after I fall.  I may be weak and barley able to move right now but, right now, I’m a step closer to the man that will love me for eternity.  Whoever that is and who knows I may know him already and I’m just a step closer to realizing it. You are beautiful and keep stepping, crawling, and running forward because I’ll be cheering you on.

One day a friend told me that he has tried to force things to work with someone, “Like that puzzle piece that just doesn’t quite fit into the slot.” I thought about that and the puzzle pieces I had tried to smash into place with all the will my body, mind, and soul could muster.  I tried to justify things that were blatantly wrong with thoughts like, “The shape is right; it’s ok if the color is off.”  My mind would twist things and try to make things fit where they shouldn’t, let things settle into place even though they looked wrong.  While I justified these things, someone was sitting next to me trying to force pieces of me into their puzzle. Through it we learned how each other’s brain worked; how to be vulnerable to the other, how each other’s soul felt.

It’s frustrating and heartbreaking to touch another soul with your own just to have it ripped away, getting left with a lost and lonely feeling—-trapped in your own mind with none of the answers. Thinking you could have made things work out if you had just smashed all those wrong pieces into the right place. You had the boarder, that’s where you start right? So why didn’t the rest fall into place? It feels like some jerk tipped over the table and now all you’re left with is this.

Time to start over and try to piece together what you thought you had.  Doing this myself a time or two, I’m learning that love is like prayer.  When we are taught to pray we are taught to be fully open to the answer and not have our own preconceptions about how the prayer should be answered. We need to treat love with the same respect. We need to be open to how it will enter our lives.  Love is not bound by gender, age, race, social stigma, religious dogma, or time.  Why then would we expect our narrow views on love to be true and right?  It’s hard to let go of the ‘perfect love’ check list. However, I think not only should it be let go, it should be burned, then forgotten about.

That being said, I am a romantic at heart and I constantly think about him.  More often than not it’s about our future together and what will shape it.  All the different ways that we will grow together excite me.  Every choice we’ll make will only make us more beautiful together.  The different ways life could pull us.  The unknowns have become part of the thrill.  Do I know this man already?  Will I know it as soon as I meet him?  What trials will we face?

I know this at least, we will truly be a generation of pioneers.  I know it will be hard.  Our leaders and our peers will continue to persecute us.  Hate and fear have been twisted to look like love and protection.  It’s corrupting our families and destroying our faith.  As gay Mormons we have been thrown into the battle.  We are forced to confront our own hate and fear.  We are forced to challenge ourselves into becoming stronger and more loving.  Many, if not all, will fight to try to become different than they are.  Unfortunately, some will not realize that they have been only fighting themselves.  Fighting, killing, and suffocating the light inside. 

If you are at this point of struggle and self discovery, I beg you not to fight it.  Accept the fact that you are different.  Re-learn to love yourself as a LGBT Mormon.  This may be the most complex puzzle piece you have.  It may have a hundred different slots, with a thousand different shapes, and a million different colors upon it.  How can this ugly misshapen piece have a place?  I don’t know the answer for each of you individually.  However, I do know that you’ll find unique strength in its complexity.  Remember the challenge isn’t overcoming/changing your feelings, its learning to love yourself for what they make you.

I started to right this post by just typing and letting my mind take me wherever it wanted to go.  I wanted it to be something honest that shared a part of me. My main hope was that is was just something that was coherent.  The first few sentences that came out were trying to identify myself.  The quality that just kept cropping up was defensive. Then my brain started going back to when I first started being hyper defensive. I can pretty much pin point the exact moment it happened.  This is probably the heaviest I’ll ever get with a post. I tried to keep the emotions described while not fully sharing the rough details to a minimum. It still does get a little graphic though.

When I was a young child my parents got divorced.  Then one day my biological father showed up to my home and I yelled, “YAY! Dad!” I loved visits from my dad as I’m sure most children do. He shushed me and ushered me through the front door. I didn’t think much of him leaving all my clothes and toys at home.  Trips with dad only lasted a day anyway. We went to the gas station to fill up for what I had not a clue and didn’t care.  The Flintstones Push Pop I was promised was the center of my universe. Why I remember Barny Ruble on the wrapping paper and not what the weather was like is funny to me.

After being walked back to the car and sat in the back seat.  I ate my push pop then fell asleep in the back of the car as I watched the road pass by.  I woke up to the car slowing and my dad telling me to get down and he covered me with a blanket.  I remember feeling excited like it was a new game, so I tried to be extra still in my hiding place.  Even as a child I felt the thrill of competition. This game of hide and seek was going to be dominated by me and the officer approaching the car would never know I was there.  I could hear the adults talking and had to put my had over my mouth to stop from laughing.  I was so proud and positively beamed thinking I won when my father told me good job as we pulled away.  

I drifted back into sleep once the excitement died down.  I awoke in a new world.  A world were peoples hair was long, English was rarely spoken, and rituals were prayers.  I remember being so frustrated that I could barely understand the people around me. I started to long for home once I understood that I was stuck in my grandmas house. I hated that I couldn’t go outside.  I loathed those family members around me.  I ignored the ceremonies they took me too. I longed for my mother. 

My family here were strange.  They burnt things over my bed while they spoke. Telling me that it would keep dark spirits away.  They made me cut my hair and throw it into the river.  Promising that it would somehow protect a dead family member.  They yelled at me if I touched the wrong thing or I didn’t do this or that the right way.  I couldn’t understand why they acted so strangely.  People were supposed to be one way and they weren’t that way.

There was a time that my grandma there spoke to me in the language that I resented and hated.  I pretended I had no clue what she was saying. Then she yelled at my father telling him that I would never be able to learn how to be like them I was too old.  It scared me to see her yell at him and even though I hated him for taking to this place. I loved him and wanted him to be protected.  So, I spoke a random phrase to my grandmother and she then asked me what it ment.  I told her I didn’t know but she seemed satisfied that I could just speak the words.

When I first saw her waiting outside the house I couldn’t contain my joy.  My mom was just on the other side of the street. I giggled half crazy about it.  I yelled for her and raced toward the stairs that led to the front door.  After only a couple paces an arm wrapped around me and lifted me from the ground.  As we moved toward the stairs I relaxed onto the shoulder of the uncle that carried me until we passed the stairs.  I pushed away from him trying to get down, then his arm tightened.  Panic filled me and I started to cry as I pushed away from him.  I struggled and cried against him until they finally took me back to the window.  They took me to the window so I could see that my mom had left me there.  She had left me there with them.  I was so broken I couldn’t even wrap my tiny mind around it.  If only I hadn’t sang my excitement for all to hear.  My mom would have been able to take me home.  She would have kept me safe.

Every day after that I would sneak out of the basement, were I was allowed to play, up to the window.  I would barely make a sound as I crawled around the curtain to peak out the corner of the window.  I would stay there silent as a church mouse staring at her.  I missed her and wanted to run to her.  When I couldn’t keep from crying I would sneak back down to the basement, curl up on the couch, and let it out.  

That damn basement.  The basement were my cousin would come play with me.  Where he taught me the kiss game.  It was a game I wasn’t terribly interested in playing but I played because he was my cousin and I didn’t want him to be angry with me.  He told me we had to keep the game a secret and I wasn’t terribly interested in sharing things with the family that forced so much upon me.  Until one day he wanted to play the kissing game again.  But this time he said we needed to take off our clothes.  I told him I didn’t want to.  He told me if I didn’t then he would tell everyone that we kissed.  He would tell my mom and then she wouldn’t love me anymore.  No one would love me if they found out and if I didn’t play this game he would tell everyone and no one would love me after that.  The idea that my mom could stop loving me made sense in my little head.  Why else would she not simply come into the house and take me home.  I begged him not to tell.  He only promised not to tell if we played the game.  I knew this game but it felt different and I was scared.  Then he told me to lay on my belly. I layed face down on the couch.  As I did this I felt that something was terribly wrong. 

The pain was so overwhelming my soul fled my body to the far side of the room.  I was watching from across the room, hearing someone tell him to stop and that it hurt.  Then my vision moved towards the couch.  Somehow I was back in my body and the true weight of the pain hit my conscious and I let out a scream.  Primal, full of fear, and with a pitch only a child could create.  It made him hesitate enough that I was able to run out of the room and up the stairs.  My brother ran into me half way down the stairs knocking both of us over.  His concern was apparent even though I never looked and him and ran up the rest of the stairs to my sister.  She grabbed me and demanded I tell her what happened.  Even through the pain and panic I knew I couldn’t tell her the truth.  I pushed her away with all my might and yelled that I wanted my mom. As my sister wrestled with me she told me my mom wasn’t there but I knew I saw her there a day before she WAS there.

My brother is the one that caught me around the waist as my hand closed around the door nob.  It took both him and my sister pulling me away from the door to keep me from getting out.  My memory goes black at that point and honestly have no clue how I ended up in front of my dad.  He was asking me what happened. If I was sure it was a bee sting.  They couldn’t find a place that I was stung but I was very red and in obvious pain.  In that moment I remember silently begging to myself that they wouldn’t find out knowing that if I just kept lying they’d believe me.  I don’t remember much of the reservation after that day. 

Until my dad’s cousin snuck into my grandmas house.  Found me in a room and whispered, “Do you wanna go see your mom?”  I remember running over to her and leaping into her arms and telling her to take me right then.  She took me outside and placed me in the car.  Held my hand while she walked me inside and let me play mario cart.  The moment she came in and told me that my mom was here I was so excited.  I ran to my mom and she hugged me close.  I don’t know how long we hugged but I do remember the moment when I realized that out of all the people in the world I couldn’t lie to her.  She would know even if I didn’t tell her.  I needed her to love me more than anything else in the world yet if she found out she would stop.  When those thoughts entered my mind I recoiled away from her physically and emotionally.  I knew if she touched me to much she would know my body changed. 

That is the moment I became hyper defensive.  The moment I knew that I had to keep everything guarded. I never had counseling for what had happened to me nor did I ever want it growing up.  I knew I had to be strong and be above that feeling of weakness.  I found strength in my faith, I found comfort in the spirit, I found guidance in revelation, and I found unwavering love in my family.

As I grew I found it hard to break down with those barriers I built as a child.  I haven’t shared the part about my cousin with my mom or my mom’s side of the family.  Mainly because it would be hard for me to tell them face to face.  I don’t think I could muster the strength even as an adult to make it through it.  Its easy enough to type out on the net but saying the words out loud would be be too much.  It was a horrible part of my life.

However, this part of my life does not define me as a person.  It has contributed to who I am and I’m grateful that my faith and my family (even if they didn’t realize it) gave me the strength to become more than a victim.  I’m gay but being raped did not make me so.  I’m proud of being gay but that does not dictate my social standing.  I’m middle class but that doesn’t make me above or below anyone else.  I am Mormon but that doesn’t mean I’m judgmental.  I’m a young man finding himself but I’m not lost.  

I AM more than a Victim, I’m more than Mormon, I’m more than Gay,  I’m more than Native, I’m more than 23, I’m more than a romantic, I’m more than a sports fan, I’m more than a singer, I’m more than a Utahn, I’m just am simply more than any group or stereo type.  

Being more than the circumstances that you started life with, people define you as, the obstacles you’ve overcome, and what society expects of you is what the LGBT community is now.  We are such a beautiful and diverse community that come from so many different places in life and the world.  I shared with you part of who I am and where I’ve been in life.  It may be an intensely personal thing to share on my first post but it feels right to share it now. In the future I’m going to focus on a variety of topics and they will not be as gloomy as this one.  Being “Gay and Mormon” helped me come up with the name of my blog and I will pay both of those subjects their due respect. I’m not, however, going to limit myself to them.  I would be more than happy to answer any questions you have for me.  I haven’t shared this story with many people but it makes me happy to post it here.  I don’t have any anxiety or fear of people finding out about it and that’s an amazing feeling.

Thank you for Reading!

Braidan