No Gays for a Day

In addition to the protests being staged around the country, another form of protest is being called for - a "no gays for a day" day on which all gays stay home from work and cease to spend any money, the idea being to make a point of how large a roll LGBT citizens play in the economy and every day life. The date of the planned boycott is now December 10th (previously there was talk of it being on December 5th). Here are more details from a column in the Los Angeles Times:

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No Gays For A Day has been officially changed to Dec 10. It turns out another guy was working on the same idea, and he's gay, and produced the Lifetime movie "Wedding Wars," and there's no way I'm going to get in a fight with a guy who's both gay and willing to work for Lifetime. He's willing to do anything. For further details see JoinTheImpact.com.

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You wouldn't think gay people would need tips on staging a splashy event from Mexican immigrants. Yet since they lost the right to marry in California, gays appear to have no game plan. . . . That's why I'm declaring Dec. 10 No Gays for a Day day. Patterned after the 2006 Great American Boycott organized by Latino immigrants, on that day, gays should stay home from work, school and do no shopping, to prove how crucial they are to American society.

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No Gays for a Day will demonstrate what it would be like if -- as so much of the non-coastal U.S. seems to desire -- gays just disappeared. You may not even know who all your daily gays are, so there's no predicting the impact.

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I called Amy Balliett for help. Balliett is a lesbian in Seattle who, just last Friday, created JoinTheImpact.com, which has organized an expected 250,000 people nationwide to march Saturday in protest of Proposition 8. Balliett immediately embraced No Gays for a Day as JoinTheImpact's second event. We worked out some kinks, like "pretending you are sick" for people who aren't out of the closet at work.

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We also decided that because this is a general strike, not a directed boycott, even gay-owned, gay-patronized businesses should shut down. "I hate to say this, but we should even say, 'Don't even go out to the bars,' " she said.