"We believe our community has an opportunity to welcome the new century in a fresh way with a Millennium March for Equality in the year 2000. Inside and outside of our organizations, we have felt much enthusiasm around the country for the proposed march.

"In the year 2000, the entire nation will be looking for new trends and fresh messages. We have an opportunity, if not an obligation, to use this wave to effectively shift the paradigm of perceptions about gay people. Given that, we concluded early involvement could provide an opportunity to shape the messages such a gathering will impart to the nation and to avoid some of the pitfalls of prior marches.

"We believe that in the early 1990s, gay America entered an entirely new period that has gone largely unlabeled and unanalyzed. Shaped partly by the AIDS crisis and partly by the groundswell of people coming out and living honestly, the priorities of our community have changed dramatically. We are looking for ways to find stability in our relationships, health, homes and communities. We are in the middle of a gay baby boom. The desire to legally marry has emerged as an extremely important goal for many gay Americans. Many of us are returning to the churches of our youth or finding new ways to express our spirituality.

"We are also living in a time when, despite the best efforts and significant financing of the extreme right, the country is moving forward. We have seen important shifts in public attitudes and institutions, particularly in the workplace. The journey is not without struggle and setbacks, but we are moving at a speed inconceivable even a generation ago.

"The shift we have described has NEVER been effectively communicated on a mass scale to the American people. A Millennium March provides a remarkable opportunity to dramatically demonstrate what it means to be gay in this nation at the turn of the century. This march is an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate our diversity as a community of family, spirituality and equality. This march should be absolutely inclusive -- gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight.

THE PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF SUCH A MARCH ARE MYRIAD.

* This is a tremendous opportunity for every LBGT organization to build membership. People will come in huge numbers for this march, and they will be looking for a variety of activities. Groups could plan anything from street fairs to forums, workshops to cultural events.

* Most people who took up gay civil rights work in recent years were inspired at a march on Washington. Everything from ACT-UP to the "Free Sharon Kowalski" movement were born out of marches on Washington. No matter where the passion goes, it is important to provide a medium where new leadership and ideas can spawn.

* The year 2000 is a presidential election year and the LBGT segment of the electorate will be courted as never before. This is also an incredible opportunity to organize people to work in campaigns and to lobby their members of Congress when they are here.

* Even those people who cannot travel to Washington will be able to share the march on television, perhaps holding house parties for friends and families.

* Although no decisions have been made regarding excess revenue, a national march is probably one of the few ways to raise the kind of funds needed at the statewide level.

"Over the past five years, we have invested heavily at the state level, responding to crisis after crisis. We have channeled thousands of dollars in these battles and for the most part, we have won. All of the statewide anti-gay ballot initiatives have been defeated and, thanks to the work of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Colorado Legal Initiative Project and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled favorably in the Colorado case.

"But our statewide organizations remain in dire need of investment. The leadership in many states is excellent, but with a few notable exceptions, most of our statewide organizations are in severely lacking in capacity-building and general investment. Moreover, they need pooled funding for polling, research, message development and a network of crack lobbyists.

"Some critics of the march have used the recent loss in Maine as a basis to argue that a national march shouldn't take place because some other plan would produce the investment needed at the state level. We believe this is a faulty analysis. First, there are millions of dollars available in the community not accessed by any organization. The last march should be instructive. Gay Americans spent more than $170 million to attend that march. With proper planning, some of this revenue can be captured by the march entity.

"Others have argued a Millennium March would detract from a 50-State Action being planned for 1999 by the Federation of Statewide Organizations. We see the two events as complementary. And we believe that state actions alone will not capture the imagination of most LBGT Americans, nor will they slake the desire for a national millennial event. We believe the national march is the natural follow-on to bring energy and excitement to these proposed statewide actions.

"Critics of the march concept have argued that the statehouses are where all the action is, but the fact is we need to be strong, bold and strategic as a movement at every level. The statehouses are where the state action is. Congress, the executive branch and the U.S. Supreme Court are alive and well and able to do harm and/or good on any given day. And gay citizens of many states will never win their civil rights without a national effort. One of the best examples is AIDS. Congress appropriated $1 billion HIV/AIDS last year. Imagine where we would be today if the states had to fight this battle alone.

"We think a national march in the year 2000 is an incredible opportunity for all of the above reasons. Rather than become mired in the mud fight that has emerged among those who would criticize this idea, we would like to invite them -- and you -- to participate in what we believe will be the most exciting demonstration of our unity and power at a seminal moment in time.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Birch, Executive Director
Human Rights Campaign

The Rev. Troy Perry, Founder
Metropolitan Community Churches "