The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

Every year since 2005, the anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ group Walk for Life has marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by bussing people from around the West Coast into Devil's territory (a.k.a. San Francisco) for a big march down the waterfront Embarcadero. Last Saturday, as Roe turned 38-years-young, the marchers numbered about 20,000. And the queer, costumed radicals of Gay Shame, numbering quite a few less, were there to greet them.

Billing their counter-protest as "a pro-choice convergence of everyone's personal Jesuses, Magdalenes, Judases, 9-headed dogs, lambs, lions and pillars of salts," Gay Shamers, known collectively as "Mary," were there in full regalia. One Christ opted for a fashionable leopard-print shawl, and many wore haloes that read "Thank God 4 Abortion."

It was also the first performance for Public Drama, a music-meets-activism project formed by one-time Deep Dickollective member Ralowe Trinitrotoluene Ampu and other Gay Shame associates, who rapped through a bike-pulled speaker system. The music caused at least one anti-choice teen to break ranks with his own to dance down to the floor, until another kid pulled him back into the march.

But for the most part the reaction to the counter-protesters from the overwhelmingly polite Walk for Lifers, many of whom had probably never seen street theater, was wondering stares.

The march came the same week as two Obama-supported bills banning federal funds for abortion were introduced into the House. Meanwhile, tax-exempt churches in Mission, Kansas, recently filed a suit that argues they shouldn't have to pay to keep up the city roads that service them (similar suits in other states have been successful).

For San Franciscans who don't live near the bayside waterfront, the march went pretty much unnoticed, but the anti-choice group chose the city specifically for its liberal reputation. As locals (I'm one of them) pointed out, the side of the fight whose supporters make seemingly hypocritical moves like trying to thwart LGBTQ adoption and universal health care while supporting the death penalty might've pleased their god a bit more by spending the day doing something more productive, such as filing adoption papers.

The Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights and the Raging Grannies helped plan the counter-protest, which also brought out members of another San Francisco LGBTQ group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

(photo credit: Macy Annestotter)