Rainbow Wave Reaches Washington

Dupont Circle, the United States capital’s gay village and most cosmopolitan district, is preparing for an influx of even more visitors than usual to its streets, bars and sidewalk cafés this weekend. Washington is celebrating Capital Pride or — what amounts to the same thing — Gay Pride. And it’s doing it with a broad agenda of events that range from festive (parades, concerts, art exhibitions) to social (guidance on adoption) to political (meeting between the mayor and leaders of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual Alliance, the LGBTA).

The 37th Capital Pride has plenty to celebrate, at least in terms of the manner in which gay rights are perceived. From the repealing last September of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule forbidding gays in active service from revealing their homosexuality, to President Obama’s publicly stated support for same-sex marriage last month, there has been a steady stream of reports of modest gains in gay equality.

Both these advances and the most recent opinion polls show that Americans have undergone a definite change of heart on the subject. According to the latest polls, just over 50 percent of Americans are in favor of same-sex marriage, while 40 percent are opposed to it. But it is the trend that is most significant: looking back over the years, the number of those in favor has not stopped rising, while the number of those against has continued to fall.

The rainbow wave is being joined by more sympathizers this week as the DC Comics character Green Lantern comes out of the closet (a commercial strategy that has generated a lot of publicity and will surely help to stem falling sales in the comic sector), followed only days later by the Boy Scouts’ announcement of their willingness to consider admitting gays, after receiving a petition signed by 275,000 people.

Anecdotes aside, Obama himself took part on Wednesday [June 6] in a campaign fundraiser organized by the LGBTA, affirming that “the fight for equality and justice on behalf of the LGBT community is just part of a broader fight on behalf of all Americans. It’s part of our history of trying to make this Union a little bit more perfect.”

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the pink lobby is a mainstay of the Democratic campaign, to which one study attributes one in six gay donors.

Nonetheless, and despite Newsweek having dubbed Obama “the first gay president,” it is evident that this perception has not been transposed into concrete legislation. For instance, the Democrats have made no explicit promise to bring to Congress a proposal for a federal law on same-sex marriage (with all its attendant benefits), which is currently allowed in eight states following the passing of a state law or as the result of a judicial sentence.

Moreover, some LGBTA members warn that this apparent normalization reflected in the media could even be dangerous, leading people to think that a public confession of homosexuality is going to be much more straightforward and socially acceptable. The truth is that not all of the U.S. is like Washington, New York, Boston or Los Angeles: In many parts of this country, the ocean is a long way off and the rainbow wave is going to have to turn into a tsunami in order to reach them.