Opinions
March on Washington inspired gay activists
Witnessing King’s speech a seminal moment in my life


On Aug. 28, 1963, Malcolm Lazin joined an estimated 250,000 black and some white Americans at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (Photo public domain)
By MALCOLM LAZIN
In 1961, my senior year in a rural Central Pennsylvania high school, I competed in the oratorical contest with a speech titled, “The Plight of the American Negro.” My teacher informed me if I wanted to win, I had chosen a wrong and contentious topic. While I was raised in the North, attitudes about Negroes were similar to those in the South.
From a relatively inactive movement in early 1960, dramatic events for racial equality captured national attention between 1961 and 1963: Freedom Rides, Interstate Commerce Commission’s desegregation order, Voting Education Project, integration of the University of Mississippi, Gov. George Wallace’s intervention against desegregating the University of Alabama, Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, national awareness of White Citizens Council and Ku Klux Klan brutality.
When I arrived in the capital as a collegian to take summer classes in 1963, I heard about a national demonstration planned at the Lincoln Memorial for late August. Washington was not only below the Mason-Dixon line, but it was then in many ways a southern city. Few “blacks” attended Washington’s white colleges and universities. Black collegians attended Howard University. At my college, there were two black undergraduates, one of whom was from Africa. Job opportunities for non-college educated blacks were servile. College-educated blacks were principally offered positions as teachers in colored public schools and ministers in colored churches.
The Kennedy administration, expecting riots and looting incited by the rally at the Lincoln Memorial, discouraged the demonstration. Lead organizers A. Philip Randolph and openly gay Bayard Rustin were not deterred.
On Wednesday, Aug. 28, 1963, I joined an estimated 250,000 black and some white Americans at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. For me, it was important that I attend. Being a Jewish American, the Holocaust was a recent and painful reminder of unfettered prejudice. Negro lynchings without arrests reminded me of the horror of the pogroms that Jews experienced in Europe while authorities looked the other way.
The March was a magical moment. Ordinary folks, mostly dressed as if they were going to church arrived from rural towns and large cities. Despite the repression, they were not intimidated. The magnitude of the largest crowd ever assembled on the National Mall inspired everyone. The statue of the Great Emancipator symbolized the long sought aspirations for a better life, equality and equal justice.
It was a hot day with lots of speeches. While Dr. King is recognized today as America’s preeminent civil rights leader, his numerous co-organizers also spoke that day. I remember two. One was by Rabbi Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress. Jews were among the early white supporters. Rabbi Prinz was a German Jew who emigrated to the U.S. to escape Nazi persecution. His speech lived up to his honored placement between Mahalia Jackson’s spirituals and Dr. King’s speech.
When Dr. King began “I Have a Dream,” I was struck as if by lightning. It was akin to hearing Moses speak to the heavens. Inherently, I knew that the speech was a defining moment for those assembled and for Americans watching televisions in living rooms across the nation. The march led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the late 1980s, I came out as a gay man and became increasingly involved in LGBT civil rights. I met Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny, the mother and father of the LGBT civil rights movement. They helped organize the Annual Reminders at Independence Hall and Liberty Bell each July Fourth from 1965 to 1969. The Annual Reminders, the first organized demonstrations for gay equality, laid the groundwork for the Stonewall Riots in 1969.
While working on “Gay Pioneers,” a documentary to chronicle this history, I learned that the March on Washington empowered early gay activists. They followed Dr. King’s protocol of non-violence, decorum and picketing. It informed me of the march’s pivotal impact on seminal gay activism.
Gay pioneer Jack Nichols stated, “We had marched with Martin Luther King, seven of us from the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1963, and from that time on, we’d always had our dream about a [gay] march of similar proportions.”
The first Annual Reminder on July 4, 1965, in Philadelphia had 40 participants. It was the largest demonstration for gay equality in the history of the world. By the 1969 Annual Reminder, the numbers swelled to 160 picketers.
The first gay national demonstration occurred in October 1979. The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights drew 75,000 people. The Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in October 1987 generated 500,000 activists. The April 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation attracted an estimated 1,000,000 demonstrators.
In the years between the 1963 March on Washington and 1993, the AIDS epidemic and societal changes propelled by the African-American and Women’s civil rights movements helped launch LGBT rights from nascent to engaged activism. For me, the March was a transcendent moment in a lifelong engagement for everyone’s civil rights.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom paved the way. On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. King ascended a Mt. Sinai. His biblical Dream forever changed institutional oppression, our nation and the world.
Malcolm Lazin is executive director of the Philadelphia-based Equality Forum.
Opinions
Supreme Court decision on opt outs for LGBTQ books in classrooms will likely accelerate censorship
Mahmoud v. Taylor ruling sets dangerous precedent

With its ruling Friday requiring public schools to allow parents to opt their children out of lessons with content they object to — in this case, picture books featuring LGBTQ+ characters or themes — the Supreme Court has opened up a new frontier for accelerating book-banning and censorship.
The legal case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, was brought by a group of elementary school parents in Montgomery County, Md., who objected to nine books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes. The books included stories about a girl whose uncle marries his partner, a child bullied because of his pink shoes, and a puppy that gets lost at a Pride parade. The parents, citing religious objections, sued the school district, arguing that they must be given the right to opt their children out of classroom lessons including such books. Though the district had originally offered this option, it reversed course when the policy proved unworkable.
In its opinion the court overruled the decisions of the lower courts and sided with the parents, ruling that books depicting a same-sex wedding as a happy occasion or treating a gay or transgender child as any other child were “designed to present … certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.” The court held that exposing children to lessons including these books was coercive, and undermined the parents’ religious beliefs in violation of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
This decision is the latest case in recent years to use religious freedom arguments to justify decisions that infringe on other fundamental rights. The court has used the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to permit companies to deny their employees insurance coverage for birth control, allow state-contracted Catholic adoption agencies to refuse to work with same-sex couples, and permit other businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of their sexual orientation.
Here, the court used the Free Exercise Clause to erode bedrock principles of the Free Speech Clause at a moment when free expression is in peril. Since 2021, PEN America has documented 16,000 instances of book bans nationwide. In addition, its tracking shows 62 state laws restricting teaching and learning on subjects from race and racism to LGBTQ+ rights and gender — censorship not seen since the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Forcing school districts to provide “opt outs” will likely accelerate book challenges and provide book banners with another tool to chill speech. School districts looking to avoid logistical burdens and controversy will simply remove these books, enacting de facto book bans that deny children the right to read. The court’s ruling, carefully couched in the language of religious freedom, did not even consider countervailing and fundamental free speech rights. And it will make even more vulnerable one of the main targets of those who have campaigned for book bans: LGBTQ+ stories.
When understood in this wider context, it is clear that this case is about more than religious liberty — it is also about ideological orthodoxy. Many of the opt-out requests in Montgomery County were not religious in nature. When the reversal of the opt-out policy was first announced, many parents voiced concerns that any references to sexual orientation and gender identity were age-inappropriate.
The decision could allow parents to suppress all kinds of ideas they might find objectionable. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor cites examples of objections parents could have to books depicting patriotism, interfaith marriage, immodest dress, or women’s rights generally, including the achievements of women working outside the home. If parents can demand a right to opt their children out of any topic to which they hold religious objections, what is to stop them from challenging books featuring gender equality, single mothers, or even a cheeseburger, which someone could theoretically oppose for not being kosher? This case throws the door open to such possibilities.
But the decision will have an immediate and negative impact on the millions of LGBTQ+ students and teachers, and students being raised in families with same-sex parents. This decision stigmatizes LGBTQ+ stories, children, and families, undermines free expression and the right to read, and impairs the mission of our schools to prepare children to live in a diverse and pluralistic society.
Literature is a powerful tool for building empathy and understanding for everyone, and for ensuring that the rising generation is adequately prepared to thrive in a pluralistic society. When children don’t see themselves in books they are left to feel ostracized. When other children see only people like them they lose out on the opportunity to understand the world we live in and the people around them.
Advocates should not give up but instead take a page from the authors who have written books they wished they could have read when they were young — by uplifting their stories. Despite this devastating decision, we cannot allow their voices to be silenced. Rather, we should commit to upholding the right to read diverse literature.
Elly Brinkley is a staff attorney with PEN America.
Opinions
Pragmatic presidents invest in America
We need targeted, accountable investment in workforce stability

America may soon elect a president who identifies as LGBTQ. This possibility is no longer far-fetched, nor should it be alarming. What matters far more than who the president is, is whom the president serves.
In America, we care who the president loves because we want to know whether they love the people they represent. Not just the powerful or the visible, but those struggling to contribute more fully. The farmer in Iowa. The single mother in Ohio. The veteran in Houston who sleeps in his truck.
The moral test of any president is whether they recognize that a nation cannot call itself strong when millions of its people are locked out of participating in the economy. This is not sentiment. It is strategy.
We are heading toward a century of global competition where population, productivity, and workforce strength will decide which nations lead. The United States cannot afford to ignore the foundational truth that economic health begins with human stability. Without a well-fed, well-housed, well-prepared workforce, the American economy simply cannot compete.
Today, millions of Americans remain outside the labor force. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly six million working-age Americans are not working or actively looking for work. Another 36.5 million live below the poverty line. Many of them lack the basic conditions required to contribute to our modern economy: shelter, nutrition, healthcare, or safety.
The result is predictable. A smaller workforce. Greater dependencies. Stagnant productivity. In 2024, the Congressional Budget Office projected a long-term decline in labor force participation unless structural barriers are addressed. This is not only an economic issue. It is a national security issue.
China and India are investing heavily in their own labor capacity. Meanwhile, we risk squandering ours. This is the backdrop against which the next president, whoever they are, must lead.
The role of government is not to provide individual comfort or cradle-to-grave care; that responsibility rightly belongs to families, communities, and civil society. Its role is to maintain the conditions necessary for every willing individual to contribute productively and invest with confidence. This means access to a safe home. It means access to basic nutrition. It means access to the building blocks of a productive life. Securing for our work forces what the Apostle Paul called diatrophas and skepasmata; or food and a place to sleep. These are not luxuries or favors. They are investments that yield growth in national capacity.
Too often these issues are framed in moral or ideological terms rather than pragmatic business interests. This rhetoric can mask poor planning, inefficiencies, and broken promises that leave communities worse off. Meanwhile these concerns go beyond common sense. They make business sense.
Consider housing. The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports a shortage of more than seven million affordable rental homes for extremely low-income households. This gap affects workforce mobility, job retention, and family stability. In cities with severe housing stress, employers cannot fill jobs because workers cannot live nearby.
Or take hunger. The USDA estimates that more than 47 million Americans live in food-insecure households. Children who are malnourished underperform in school. Adults who skip meals cannot stay focused on work. These are not abstract concerns. They are immediate threats to productivity and growth.
A president who understands this will not be swayed by ideology. They will ask: What strengthens our democracy? What builds a workforce that can out-innovate, out-produce, and out-lead our rivals?
The answer is not more bureaucracy. It is a targeted, accountable investment in workforce stability. Presidents should promote responsible public-private partnerships and remove barriers to full engagement. Communities need to strengthen local support and work with businesses on food, housing, and job training. Businesses recognize the returns on investments in workforce development and inclusive workplaces. Individuals should engage locally, build skills, and participate in practical solutions for community prosperity.
There is precedent. Conservative leaders have long understood that a stable society is a prerequisite for economic freedom. Abraham Lincoln supported land grants and public education. Dwight Eisenhower built the interstate system to connect markets and communities. Ronald Reagan expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit.
The next president should recognize these approaches. It is time to revive a governing vision that puts dignity at the heart of national strategy. That includes all Americans, from skilled professionals to warehouse workers, nurse’s aides, and long-haul truck drivers. Everyone has a responsibility to do their part to keep the economy moving.
This is where leadership matters. Not in posing as a cultural warrior, but in protecting our investments in the people who keep the nation running. A president who cares about this country will not ask what’s needed to make things easier. They will ask what’s needed to help us thrive together. They will help us choose the right way, the hard way, and maybe even the long way because building a competitive economy and a secure nation requires investing in the realities that make that happen.
If the next president can rise to that standard, then identity will matter far less than results. And maybe that is the clearest sign of progress yet.
Will Fries is a Maryland communications strategist with experience in multiple major presidential campaigns.
Opinions
We can’t afford Medicaid cuts in fight against HIV
A dangerous message about whose lives are deemed worth protecting

Right now, members of Congress are considering a budget proposal that would rip away life-saving health care coverage, particularly Medicaid from millions of people in the United States. This isn’t just unjust—it’s dangerous.
Since the late 1970s, there has been a strong push to advance the rights and well-being of LGBTQ+ elders, including the growing number of people aging with HIV. This community faces unique and often complex quality of life issues that require consistent, comprehensive care. Medicaid provides essential coverage for these services, including access to HIV medications, primary and specialist care, long-term care, and behavioral health support. Proposed cuts to Medicaid would destabilize this vital lifeline, threatening the health and dignity of one of the most medically vulnerable and historically marginalized communities in our country.
Congress is deciding just how deeply Medicaid could be cut. What’s at stake amounts to one of the most significant threats to public health in recent memory—one that would have a devastating impact on people aging with HIV.
The facts are clear: Medicaid is the single largest source of health care coverage for people living with HIV in the United States, covering roughly 4 in 10 people living with the disease. Many of those individuals are older people who rely on Medicaid not just for access to HIV treatments, but for managing other conditions that often accompany aging with HIV—such as cardiovascular disease, cognitive issues, and diabetes.
We have made remarkable progress in responding to HIV. Today, with effective treatment, people living with HIV can lead long, healthy lives. When HIV is suppressed to undetectable levels, it cannot be transmitted sexually. But this progress depends on consistent access to care. Without Medicaid, many people risk losing access to the medications that keep them healthy and alive—and that help prevent the transmission of HIV.
Moreover, Medicaid expansion has been directly associated with increased access to PrEP, a medication that is up to 99% effective at preventing HIV acquisition. Scaling back Medicaid would not only affect people already living and aging with HIV, but it would also limit preventive care that is essential to reducing new cases of HIV. In a world that too often dismisses older people as non-sexual and overlooks their need for HIV prevention services, the last thing we need is to further restrict access to sexual health services.
Older people with HIV often experience higher levels of isolation, stigma, and economic insecurity. They are more likely to be housing insecure and to have little to no family support. Medicaid helps older people maintain independence and age with dignity. Cutting Medicaid isn’t just a policy decision—it would create real hardship and suffering in the community.
Across the country, advocates and service providers see this reality every day. Countless LGBTQ+ elders and people aging with HIV rely on Medicaid for basic care and services. But that security can disappear quickly. That’s why taking action—right now—to help protect Medicaid is critical.
Here’s what you can do:
Call your members of Congress at 866-426-2631 and tell them “No cuts to Medicaid.”
Write your members of Congress and tell them that Medicaid must be protected for people aging with HIV. Our colleagues at AIDS United have created a simple and effective tool to help you reach your representatives directly.
Join the SAGE Action Squad. When you sign up, you’ll receive alerts and updates on urgent advocacy issues affecting LGBTQ+ elders and people aging with HIV. It’s a powerful way to stay informed and engaged—and to ensure your voice is part of this movement.
We understand that budget decisions are complex. But we also believe that protecting health care for the most vulnerable members in our community should never be negotiable. Cutting Medicaid doesn’t just reduce spending—it puts lives at risk. It creates new barriers for people aging with HIV to access care, manage their health, and live with dignity. It also limits critical prevention services for those vulnerable to acquiring HIV, undermining efforts to end the HIV epidemic.
If enough of us act, we can help stop these Medicaid cuts from happening. We can ensure that Medicaid continues to serve the people who need it most.
SAGE has been at the forefront of this fight for decades. We’ve helped secure victories in access, equity, and representation. But we can’t do it alone. We must come together to defend the programs that safeguard the health, dignity, and future of our community. Cutting Medicaid would not only roll back progress—it would deepen disparities, put lives at risk, and send a dangerous message about whose lives are deemed worth protecting. We must speak out and demand that our elected leaders prioritize care over cuts. Let’s protect Medicaid. Let’s protect people aging with, and vulnerable to, HIV. Let’s protect our community—and build a future where every older person with HIV can age with health, respect, and pride.
Terri L Wilder, MSW is the HIV/Aging Policy Advocate at SAGE where she implements the organization’s federal and state HIV/aging policy priorities.
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