LGBT Informational Picket at Holy Name Cathedral on Valentine's Day

Members of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network were joined by PFlag members from the northern Illinois region and other LGBT folk and allies at Holy Name Cathedral on the cold Sunday/Valentine's Day morning to picket Cardinal George's hateful anti-gay activities.  Cardinal George is the most powerful enemy of LGBT people in the Chicago area.
Here's a video snippet featuring Brent Holman-Gomez and Andy Thayer of GLN as the first and third speakers respectively.



While juggling a huge gay flag with a sign I made nailed to the pole that read "BORN GAY I'm supposed to be this way," I managed to take some photos of the picketing with my Treo.  Still more here.

Some of our chants were:

Homophobia is a sin
Homophobes go to hell
Stop funding the bigots
Stop the harm, stop the hate, separate church and state
Love your gay children

I noticed that young mothers with small children were the most agitated by our demonstration.  When we shouted:  "What if your child is gay?," they got visibly upset.  Here's what I think.  For the first time, these women were confronted in their minds with a divide between their religion's edict and their mothering instinct.  The thought that bringing their kids to church could turn out to be a bad thing for the kids (if in fact the kids are gay), startled them.  Well, as someone who was a gay Catholic girl, I know the damage that the Church did to me - and that is why I was there picketing at Holy Name Cathedral.  That's the only way to get me to go to church!