Bond likens the National Equality March to the Civil Rights March of 1963.   “We had a dream and marched on Washington to demand our rights; I am proud to stand with the LGBT community as they march for theirs,” he said.
 
St. Olaf college student Richard Aviles will be speaking on behalf of student activists from across the country, who have organized for the march and are descending on Washington.
 
Also speaking will be Judy Shepard, who lost her son Matthew to a murder motivated by anti-gay hate and who founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation in his memory. The Foundation is dedicated to working toward the causes championed by Matthew during his life: social justice, diversity awareness and education, and equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
 
Following is a complete listing of speakers to date.
 
Stuart Applebaum
Richard Aviles
Jarret Barrios
Dustin Lance Black
Julian Bond
Marsha Botzer
Staceyann Chin
Lt. Dan Choi
Tanner Efinger
Hawaii Board of Education Member Kim Coco Iwamoto
Cleve Jones
Michelle Lopez
Robin McGehee
David Mixner
Nicole-Murray Ramirez
Chloe Noble
Tobias Packer
Reverend Troy Perry
New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn
Los Angeles Council Member Bill Rosendahl
Babs Siperstein
Judy Shepard
Maxim Thorn
Urvashi Vaid
Derek Washington
Falls Church City Council Member Lawrence Webb
Kit Yan
Kip Williams
Sherry Wolf

The march will be the first step toward a larger goal of creating a national movement – the 50 State Legislative Outreach Campaign — in all 435 congressional districts to demand of elected representatives full equality under the law.

“The march is just the beginning,” said McGehee. “We are not expecting to wake up on Monday morning with a federal bill on the presidents desk to sign.”
 
“We will no longer be told to wait. This march is our chance to demand full equal protection under the law, and it will help us realize the dream of Equality Across America: a committed group of grassroots activists in all 435 Congressional Districts,” added Williams.

The National Equality Rally was billed as the first national demonstration since 2000 for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights and the first held outside Washington. The marchers displayed signs from dozens of organizations and photos of people said to have been killed because of their sexual orientation.

The march ended with a rally in front of Independence Hall, where rainbow-colored umbrellas came in handy in a steady drizzle. The crowd listened to music from a band and a chorale singing the national anthem. A cheer rose at the sound of the bell from the spire of the building where the Constitution was drafted.

Speakers called for support for gay marriage, more money for AIDS research and an end to workplace discrimination and the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which prohibits gays in the military from being open about their sexual orientation. One participant wearing a fatigue jacket and pink slacks held a sign saying “Do ask, do tell.”

“We don’t wilt, and we don’t melt. We are here for equality now,” Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum local gay rights group, which sponsored the event, told the crowd.

Bryan Berchok, of Upper Bucks County, Pa., listened to the speeches as he held his 4-year-old adoptive son, Shawn, whose face was painted to resemble the black mask of Spider-Man’s evil alter ego. He and his partner of 15 years, John Ferraro, said it was difficult and expensive to try to get the same rights afforded to married couples.

“We worry how things would work out if one of us was not able to care for Shawn,” Berchok said. “It’s just a little scary.”

Allison Woolbert, who chairs the Interweave gay rights group of southern New Jersey, said she wanted more attention given to health care for transgender people, who she said often are refused care by medical personnel and whose medications are not covered in health plans.

A few counter-demonstrators held religious signs at the margins of the gathering, and one preached with a bullhorn as the marchers filed past.

At the time of the last national rally, nine years ago, Vermont had just passed the first civil union law in the country. Now, gay marriage is legal in Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa and Massachusetts, with bills pending in other states. California briefly allowed it last year, but a voter initiative repealed it.

Speakers on Sunday noted that Independence Hall was the site of the first Reminder Day picket for gay rights on July 4, 1965. That gathering attracted about 40 people, but about 150 attended the fifth one in 1969, just after the landmark Stonewall riots in New York, considered the birth of the U.S. gay rights movement.

Nurit Shein, executive director of the Mazzoni Center, a local health services office serving the gay community, told Sunday’s crowd that gays will be “seen” and “counted.”

“Equal means equal,” Shein said, “not separate, not less.”

The march, held a day ahead of World AIDS Day in the western city of St. Marc, called for better prevention and treatment in a country long plagued by the virus.

Organizers said they hoped the march will break barriers to reach more HIV-positive people and gay men with programs that have helped decrease the country’s infection rate by two-thirds in the last decade.

“They suffer double the stigma and double the discrimination,” said Esther Boucicault Stanislas, a leading activist known as the first person in Haiti to publicly declare that she was HIV-positive after her husband died of AIDS in the early 1990s.

About 500 participants that included health ministry officials and workers with United Nations programs followed a speaker-truck through the dusty city, chanting and carrying banners en route to the mayor’s office. No officials received them.

AIDS awareness marches have taken place before in Haiti, but Boucicault and organizers with New York-based AIDS service organization Housing Works called this one the first march to include an openly gay group in Haiti.

The nation of 9 million remains the most affected by HIV in the Caribbean, itself the region with the highest infection rate outside Sub-Saharan Africa.

Haiti has long fought stigmatization and discrimination after its migrants were some of the first AIDS cases identified in the United States. Unfounded beliefs that Haitians caused the epidemic helped decimate the country’s tourism industry.

The country has since been a success story, with its HIV infection rate falling from 5.9 percent in 1996 to 2.2 percent today – due in part to programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has given Haiti more than $320 million since 2004. The deaths of people with HIV also contributed to the decline.

But gay men remain at risk because they hide from social programs due to prejudice and harassment, despite making up one-tenth of reported HIV cases in the Caribbean, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS reported.

In socially conservative Haiti, discrimination runs especially deep.

Debate over Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis’ nomination earlier this year centered almost entirely on rumors that she was a lesbian, with lawmakers standing up one after another to denounce her as immoral. She was approved for the post only after agreeing to read a statement on Haitian radio that the rumors were defamatory and untrue.

On Sunday, opposition was muted to the small contingent wearing white T-shirts bearing the word “masisi” – a Haitian Creole slur for gay men that the marchers celebrated and chanted as their own.