Kansas City News Blog

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI


Click on photo for a slide show of the protest.

The temperature was low, but the energy was high as hundreds of Kansas City residents joined a nationwide protest against California's new gay-marriage ban Saturday afternoon. With colorful signs calling for equal rights for gay and lesbian couples, the crowd was so large that those on the margins could hardly hear local politicians, including Missouri Sen. Jolie Justus, call Proposition 8 an act of discrimination and vow to fight for the LGBT community here in the Show-Me State.

Among the protesters crowded around the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, causing a volley of supportive honking for the better part of an hour, was one Kansas City woman whose own marriage may be at stake.

Name: Julia Thomas and Abott Durocher

Claims to activist fame: Both Thomas and Durocher were part of Queer Nation actions in the 1990s, picketing local businesses that fired employees with AIDS.

Why Thomas H8s Prop 8: Thomas and her partner of six years, Melissa Eichman, traveled to California to marry on September 27. So when voters 1,500 miles away cast their ballots to ban gay unions, it hit close to home for Eichman and Thomas. "It was very painful to watch," Thomas says.

What's Mormonism got to do with it? According to news reports, the Church of Latter-day Saints contributed millions in favor of Prop 8 and asked parishioners to do all they could to push for the passage of the gay-marriage ban. Thomas' sign took a tongue-in-cheek swipe at the church's polygamist past.
"Mormons want 5 wives -- I only want one!"

So what's happens to Thomas' marriage now? She's not sure. California's attorney general has said in recent months that Prop 8's passage wouldn't retroactively void weddings performed before the ban. "It's up to the courts," Thomas says. "The Mormons and Republicans are trying to nullify 18,000 marriages."

Why she came out in the cold: A longtime civil-rights advocate, Thomas says she has stood with African Americans and Latinos in their struggles for equality. "Now I'm here for me."

The upside: Years ago, police officers wore gloves to avoid direct contact when arresting gay and lesbian activists, Thomas and Durocher says. So to be fighting for marriage rights? That's progress.