Illustration by Leigh Douglas.

When President Obama announced his support for gay marriage, America’s LGBT community was surprised, but not shocked. While the announcement may be political, it is still a major step forward for queer communities.

At the very least, the president’s support may pave the way for more states to adopt legislation to support same-sex marriage and queer rights. Currently, 30 states, including North Carolina and Texas, deny any sort of same-sex unions. Only seven states have legislation that confirms the rights of same-sex couples to marry, while four states create unions equivalent to marriage. There is no pending legislation in either the House or Senate for all states to recognize each other’s marriage laws.

For a political move, Obama’s announcement is historic, but not without complications. While the president has been a lifelong supporter of marriage equality, according to early interviews, and has ended the Clinton-era relic Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the move may be more in the interest of making likely Republican party nominee Mitt Romney move to the right. For his part, Romney has responded in kind, telling the evangelical Liberty University in a speech that he believes “marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman” — to loud applause.

Romney’s position is not the position of the majority of Americans. Approximately 49 percent of independent voters support same-sex marriage or other equivalents, according to a Gallup Poll from May 2011. This was a 10 percent change from the previous year.

The real question is whether or not this will help Obama win swing states like Florida or Iowa. And if independent moderates in those states are like independents found in other states, the answer will be yes.

Obama’s position is in the interest of swaying voters in New Mexico, Arizona and Virginia — young states with politically vocal and rapidly changing demographics. Supporting gay marriage cuts to the heart of these states. While Obama may lose the South, that’s probably something he can afford, as the last Democrat presidential candidate to win the South was Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Obama is clearing up a long-standing issue with this announcement. While Obama’s more religious base may wane in supporting him in the coming election, clearing up his opinion allows him to present himself as a decisive leader. Romney should consider stealing a page from Obama’s playbook.

Unfortunately, Obama did not support any national legislation overriding the 30 states that do not perform or recognize same-sex marriage. Nor did he make any mention for the Supreme Court to override state constitutional laws like Proposition 8.

Now that Obama has announced support for same-sex marriage, it would be wise to consider supporting marriage equality at the national level to speed up its implementation. There are too many legally married couples located in states that deny rights, waiting for the legal recognition their union deserves.

We may consider Obama’s support for gay marriage to be akin to presidents Kennedy’s and Johnson’s support for civil rights. But without definite action on behalf of the president or Congress, the most shocking part of the announcement may not be in its substance, but in the president’s lack of action.

Let’s not call Obama America’s “gay president” like Newsweek did — not before any national legislation has been announced. The president should set his sights on protecting marriage nationally. Doing nothing only works for so long.

Photo/Illustration by Morgan Grana.

A sea of students will move through the UCSC campus, flowing from college to college, to support the LGBT community this Saturday.

The seventh annual PRIDE event, this year titled Kresge Presents: The Colors of Pride, is a celebration of the queer and allied community at UC Santa Cruz.

Organized by the Kresge Multicultural Education Committee and the PRIDE Committee, the event will feature a campus-wide parade, culminating in a festival held in Kresge Lower Street.

“When you see everyone wearing the same colored shirts, you get this feeling of, ‘Yeah, I’m not alone in this,’” event co-chair and third-year Mark Corre said.

The two-hour march, beginning at noon at Quarry Plaza, will be led by volunteer and first-year student Ryan King. The throng will travel through each of the 10 colleges, picking up more and more students along the way.

PRIDE is the biggest queer-affiliated event on campus, with an estimated attendance of 500 at the festival, which takes place after the parade.

Each college features a unique activity, including a dance at Merrill College and an ice cream social at College Eight. For the first year, Family Student Housing will participate by handing out homemade refreshments to marchers and joining the parade, King said.

Volunteers will distribute free items like shirts and water bottles at each stop.

The march ends at Kresge Plaza at 2 p.m., where the festival begins. There, UCSC student groups like ImPower and community organizations like the Santa Cruz AIDS Project will host activity booths with free face painting and other fun activities.

Aloha Grill and Saturn Café will provide free food, including vegetarian and vegan options.

Committee co-chair and fourth-year literature major and education minor Emily Navas said, “various activities accumulate to the excitement and fun that each person can hope to experience and remember in years to come.”

Performances by UCSC Cheer, Acquire, the Hightones, Slugs in Fishnets, and bands Beaver Fever and Feed Me Jack, among others, will perform throughout the afternoon, Navas said.

The festival will feature a guest speaker, Aurora Guerrero, director of “Mosquita y Mari,” a film about the coming of age of two Chicanas and their intimate friendship. PRIDE collaborated with El Centro to have Guerrero speak at the festival.

“Guerrero’s speech is sure to make a lasting impression at the festival,” Corre said.

Members of the queer and allied community will unite and form a single body of support. Corre said with Family Student Housing’s participation and a new keynote speaker, the growth of PRIDE shows the growth of the queer community at UCSC.

“[PRIDE] connects everyone, no matter who you are,” Corre said. “If you’re queer, if you’re allied, if you’re from a different college — it doesn’t matter. You’re there for one cause.”

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

Four months ago, a few friends thought it would be a great idea to create an outreach program for LGBTQ youth in Santa Cruz County. What began as a casual conversation has become an up-and-coming organization set out to do just that. They call themselves ImPower.

ImPower is the first program at UC Santa Cruz to reach out to LGBTQ-identified high school students. The group was created in January 2012 and is currently comprised of 15 members, with new members joining weekly.

Simone Vincent, a film and digital media transfer student and one of the founders of ImPower, talked about the group’s mission.

“ImPower holds an inclusive safe space for LGBTQ youth to be celebrated and recognized — they are not alone,” Vincent said in an email interview. “We want to be able to provide an outlet that showcases higher education as an option for everyone. Our own members have each taken unique paths to be able to attend UCSC and we feel passionate about making it an obtainable option for all.”

ImPower is currently planning an unnamed event for May 19 that will bring high school students from all over the county to the UCSC campus. It is one of many LGBTQ events in May, including the seventh annual campus-wide Kresge Pride march and festival also on May 19.

On March 10, in order to gather student input for their May 19 event, ImPower tabled and held a Q&A workshop with high school youth at the Safe Empowered X-traordinary Youth (SEXY) Conference at Soquel High. A voluntary survey asked high school students questions to help ImPower structure the event.

Vincent said feedback from surveys would be seriously considered in determining the course of the event.

“We want to bring the students up and give them a college and social justice tour of the campus to learn about each department and what it has to offer them as potential UCSC students, as well as the LGBTQ resource centers on campus such as the Cantú Queer Center,” Vincent said. “We will have a couple of LGBTQ-identifying students and/or faculty guest speakers attending and will finish the event off in participation with Kresge Pride.”

In addition to attending the SEXY conference, ImPower joined and was asked to speak at other local events. On April 20, they rallied together with other Santa Cruzans downtown at the end of the national Day of Silence, an LGBTQ event to protest against harassment and abuse in school.

Vincent and fellow ImPower member Joel Vann were asked to speak at the rally. Vincent sang “Crazy For You” by Adele. Vann shared a personal story of a time when she was bullied in high school.

Ginger Haggerty is a fourth-year transfer student and a founder of ImPower. She said ImPower has progressed since its beginning.

“The group itself has grown in size steadily and has become a place where UCSC students come together around a common cause that we all believe in,” Haggerty said. “Many people in the group had never really been involved in a campus organization, but we have all steadily grown together and we all take responsibility for the work that ImPower is doing.”

Though ImPower is still in its infancy, members regularly attend every two-hour Thursday night meeting.

“Our Thursday meetings are sometimes the highlight of my week,” Haggerty said.

The May 19 event will set the stage for the group’s success and establish a foundation for the members continuing on next school year.

Chris Blessing, a fourth-year legal studies and politics double major and a founder of ImPower thinks that reaching out to high school students is especially important.

“So much of high school depends on the sense of community that one has,” Blessing said. “Kids who are ostracized, especially for reasons of perceived difference, often have terrible high school experiences. By reaching out to queer youth, we broaden their sense of community and help validate the individuality that might otherwise be met with derision. We want students to be excited about pursuing higher education. The more they know what that experience will be like, the more likely they will be to pursue it.”

As director of Santa Cruz Pride for 15 years beginning in 1990, Merrie Schaller remembers when the annual Pride Parade was a lot different than it is now. She remembers when a special security detail was required just for the march to make it through downtown. She remembers when religious groups would kneel on the sidewalks as it passed, praying for its members. Although many now use the two terms “march” and “parade,” interchangeably, Schaller said she wasn’t being trite, but trying to make a point: The LGBT community in Santa Cruz, and everywhere else, has fought for and earned the levels of acceptance common today.

To honor contributions community members have made to that struggle, Santa Cruz Pride is now accepting nominations for the two Grand Marshals of the parade and for proclamations, titles and honors given to individuals who have had outstanding involvement in the Santa Cruz LGBT community.

“What you do to become Grand Marshal versus what you do to get a proclamation isn’t really different,” says Crissann McCann, current coordinator of the march. “They’re both members of our community who have done something to really step up and stand out and contribute. They’re both once-in-a-lifetime things.”

Grand Marshals are a relatively recent addition to the Santa Cruz Pride Parade, which started in 1975 and ties with San Diego for as third longest running in California, behind San Francisco and Los Angeles. Schaller remembers how the tradition started.

“There was a UCSC student and community activist named Gary Reynolds, who was very out on campus and eventually very out as a person with AIDS,” Schaller said. “And about the time we were putting on Pride in ‘91, we were kind of saying, ‘You know, Gary doesn’t look very well. I don’t know if he’s going to be well enough to march.’ But the idea of doing Pride without Gary was just ridiculous.”

Someone then proposed Gary ride in a car for the march, to make it less physically demanding.

“We said, ‘Since we’re going to get him a car, well, let’s make him Grand Marshal,’” Schaller said. “And so he was our first Grand Marshal, because he was, frankly, not well enough to be in it otherwise.”

Schaller recalls Reynolds struggled greatly to make it through the march, even with the help of the car, and drifted in and out of consciousness as the day went on. It was only with extreme effort that Reynolds was able to finish up and look back upon a successful march. That effort had taken a toll, however.

“The morning after Pride, he died. And basically, he stayed alive to be Grand Marshal,” Schaller said.

The Grand Marshals have been an integral part of the parade ever since, and Reynolds’ unwavering commitment to the Santa Cruz LGBT community serves as an inspiration for the many others who continue to work towards change. And change has happened.

“It was very normal to have people throw things at us, particularly at the back of the line, and there were people who would step in and hassle people and sometimes throw a punch or two,” Schaller said. “So we had very, very well-trained security people.”

In a separate interview, Laura McCann, Crissann’s wife and director of the TAPS program at UCSC, as well as current coordinator of the march, said, “Every now and then we get one knucklehead, but for the most part, everybody’s very accepting.”

Schaller and the McCanns agree in many cases the advances made by the march and the community that puts it on have been quite astounding.

“Some of the religious organizations and individuals over the years have gone from standing on the sidelines and protesting to actually being in the parade and supporting us,” said Crissann McCann.

For Schaller, seeing that change and honoring the people who’ve made it possible is what the whole parade is about.

“It’s a great place for younger people to look around and say, ‘These are the people who made my community happen,’” Schaller said. “And it’s a great way for older people to look around and say ‘These are the people who are continuing my community.’ We have a lot more to do, but we’ve come an incredibly long way.”

To submit nominees for Santa Cruz Pride 2012 Grand Marshal, visit http://diversitycenter.org/programs/santa-cruz-glbtiq-pride/grand-martials/