By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

Members and supporters of the Gay Liberation Network took their message of marriage equality downtown Feb. 2, marching through the Loop to bring attention to the current presidential candidates’ failure to support equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

As part of Marriage Equality Day, the 25 GLN protesters gathered outside the doors of the Cook County Marriage Bureau, then marched to the headquarters of the Cook County Republicans, 205 W. Randolph, and the Barack Obama campaign headquarters at 300 W. Adams.

GLN’s Andy Thayer said that it should be no surprise that GOP candidates such as John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have not been in favor of GLBT equality in this election cycle. But he said GLBT voters need to remember that Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have only voiced support for civil unions, not full marriage.

“As long as they’re not using the ‘m-word’ they’re not in favor of our equality,” Thayer said.

Bob Schwartz, of GLN, said, “We support the struggle for civil unions because it’s a step in the right direction, because some rights could be embraced and codified, but it’s not adequate. Civil unions just don’t convey all those rights—it’s a second class status.”

Obama, according to Thayer, “should know that civil unions and ‘separate but equal’ institutions for (GLBT) people is not equality.”

He added, “We dealt with the issue of ‘separate but equal’ decades ago, we thought, and instead we’ve got this man who is a constitutional law scholar trying to tell our community, and some gullible people in our community believing, that civil unions is the same thing as marriage equality.”

The community should not expect much more from Hillary Clinton either, according to Thayer. The last Clinton White House victory saw the gay liberation movement “de-mobilized, he said, and the GLBT community became complacent, ultimately leading to the diminishing of grassroots organizations such as ACT-UP and the implementation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Thayer also said not to expect national GLBT lobbying organizations to put up much of a battle.

“They’ll be busy getting jobs in the next administration and saying to hell with the rest of us,” Thayer said. “So it’s important for the rest of us to keep up the fight.”