The Marriage Rally.

Yesterday, there was a magnificent rally and press conference here in San Francisco celebrating the California Supreme Court ruling against discrimination aimed at gay couples.

I met with Dr. Kathleen McGuire of the SF Gay Men's Chorus before and we had a brief chat about the cantata. Then, a number of the chorus members gathered to sing at the rally -- and Kathleen invited me to join them.

So, we were gathered outside the meeting room there in the GLBT Center and began rehearsing songs like the Star Spangled Banner -- it was thrilling -- when there was a little lull as we waited. So she asked me if I wanted to hear "My Rising Up." Hell, yes!

Then, she raised her hand to start, looked over at me and said, "Okay, sing the solo."

WOW!

Stumbling around trying to remember the words, I began singing the solo. And when the choir kicked in, we rocked the house. What an exciting experience! The people standing around gave us a huge hand of applause.

Mayor Newsom, who really started all this by marrying same sex couples four years ago in San Francisco gave a fantastic speech and that was followed by many others. Lined up on the podium behind him were all the couples involved in the lawsuit. I managed to catch some footage, also, of the lead attorneys who encouraged everyone to get involved in the upcoming election because the hatemongers out there are already trying to change the Constitution to steal these marriage right back from us using a Constitutional amendment.

Meanwhile, it's been HOT here. San Francisco doesn't have heat waves that often, but this is really oppressive. Few of the homes have air conditioning since it's just not needed. As we walked down the street, we saw at least one person with heat stroke being attended to by paramedics.

I'll have video and pictures soon.