On October 10th, 2009, a whole bunch of gays, lesbians, transpeople, queers, bisexuals, and allies marched on Washington DC to demand marriage equality, an end to employment discrimination and the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.
Autostraddle marched and witnessed the splendor on the grass. Here’s some photos we took (thanks for the digital camera, Gay Mom!) from the ground.
Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Riese has written 3179 articles for us.
emily says “aw i love autostraddle.” i agree and i also say “i love this photo gallery for being technorific.”
I love these pictures. I love everyone in these pictures. I love everyone around these pictures. I love everyone in the room I am in right now. I love autostraddle!!!!!!
(But mainly, I love Lady Gaga)
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also, also! Cynthia Nixon went to Barnard so I should/will/definitely get an interview with her. DUH.
yay pics! I’m glad you guys all had a fab time!
…uh, gaga in suspenders…laura is there any hidden meaning behind this??
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Dan Choi is still so cute!
Great photos! they make me wish I could have been there marching beside you. ps you all look totally adorable. #yaygay
yeahhh!!! I wish I could’ve been there too.
We should march in Canberra…
great pics :)
There are rallies happening on November 28th in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. http://www.equallove.info/nov28
I missed the others that happened this year because I’ve been going to Uni in pretty much a country town, but I’ll be home for this one. So excited!
Hmm, I was replying to another comment but it seems to have disappeared?
Oh man, never mind. The page was just doing silly display things. Sorry for using up so much room :\
I will be at the Sydney rally, for sure. Which one are you going to?
Gaaaaaaaaaak thanks for taking a picture with me today Riese! I was kind of freaking out.
BIG fan.
Aw thank you! It’s gonna be a FRAMER, Camila, you are gonna wanna put that baby right up front and center on your fridge. Just saying.
Seeing these pictures made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Good job, girls. =)
P.S. Laura has the cutest smile. Gee! (sorry if this creeps you out. I mean coming from a total stranger on the interwebs)
It’s okay, her bosses call her “Intern Hot Laura” so she’s used to it.
thanks, ma! your outfit today is adorable!
so.much.pride. my head explodes.
so.much.love i have to give all of you!
holla. what a great-lookin’ group of gays.
ps- president gaga
pps- i keep trying to facebook-like these pictures. the internet is serious business.
omg y’allz. I have a trillion feelings about this. my mom skyped me today and told me that she went to the march, with a rainbow flag and all. 3 months ago, that would have been inconceivable. it totally makes my day!
That’s adorable and wonderful and makes our day too!
you guys look so great! makes me feel even worse that I couldn’t be there :( … but caught nearly all the coverage on CSPAN.. holler!
it was so good to meet so many of you yesterday!
The march was amazing! Unfortunately what started out with a bang ended with a hungry stomach and a fraction of the number we started with.
Also, Riese and army thanks for not looking at me too much like I’m a weirdo.
secretly, we are also weirdos!
we were starving too. i honestly think that the whole thing would’ve gone a lot better if someone had been selling food on the lawn! seriously i would’ve eaten just about anything in the world by about 2:30 pm, and DC is not exactly hopping with food joints on the weekend. they needed more food vendors, i think people kept leaving in search of food!
True dat. I only saw one food vendor along the way. Bluhg. Atleast they kept our bladders in mind with the ginormous row of (bette) porter-potties, eh? Thank goodness, I even started making my own rendition of the chants “Hey hey, ho ho, Alex’s bladder has to go!” #dork
Ah, nice pics. Everyone is so cute! Unfortunately this coincides with me being mildly intimidated as I walked by you guys yesterday. I involuntarily shouted out “autostraddle!” followed by a fist pump. I guess it was just shocking to see people as opposed to the writing I’ve been reading forevs. Then I received some cocked heads, maybe another “autostraddle!” back. And I ran away because everyone is so frikkin cute and I’m a bit of a weirdo. It was very much so an, oh shit, moment. Not in a bad way.
I recall that KC Danger screamed back first, and then all of us screamed and fist pumped at the same time, although it’s possible that Lily and Tinkerbell cocked their heads. Actually people yelling Autostraddle at us is one of my favorite things in the world, like we’re a girl gang.
i want gang signs!
Tinkerbell and I may have, as Riese mentioned, cocked our heads because we are quiet modest beings who do not scream/pump our fists in the air (we are also both too weak for such extreme movement). HOWEVER we were not doing this to say “that girl yelling ‘autostraddle!’ is weird” but rather in a “omg yay someone is yelling the name of the website that is the core of our happiness!”
Or in other words (just in case you can’t follow my mind–I certainly cannot)…yelling “autostraddle!” is awesome and not weird and you should do it all the time!!!!
What fantastic pictures. I really, really wish I could’ve been there. And I second what Katrina said: President GaGa, yes please!
you guys should have had a giant autostraddle sign, I was looking out for you guys and based on the pictures we were around the same area for some of it, but I never saw you! I would have wanted a picture for real for real.
ladies there were fine though!! some of you women need to move down to dc, finding such sexy women is nearly impossible here normally.
Great pics! I was sad that I didn’t make it (and that I couldn’t meet Haviland and Lily!)… Apparently the story of our broken bus is also in the Red Eye today (the free ‘young & trendy’ version of the Chicago Tribune) but I haven’t seen it yet. We had some great local speakers at the solidarity rally, but it was nothing like this.
Oh man we wished we could’ve had you there Elizabeth! We missed you!
making me tear up at work!
fantastic. You guys are super cute.
the photos are amazing, you all are amazing…this is really inspiring and igniting! i wish i could have been there. much love.
aww so good these picture make my heart explode with joy!