Changing Hearts and Minds on Gay Marriage

This story comes from Alternet.
Young activists are trying to reach out to conservative voters.

A famous Chinese proverb teaches that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

For Meg Sneed, a 25-year-old Arizona lesbian, journeys to change a thousand hearts begin with a single thought: There’s power in sharing personal stories.

In 2006, she and other young activists in Soulforce, a gay-rights group devoted to the kind of peaceful confrontation practiced by Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, traveled eight weeks by bus to evangelical colleges to share what it’s like to be gay.

The next year, Sneed, who was fighting cancer, was weak from chemotherapy but walked 60 miles to help raise money for breast cancer research.

Now, with her home state set to vote on banning same-sex couples from marrying, Sneed is back on the move: Starting Aug. 8, she and other young Soulforce activists will walk 96 miles to the state capitol to share touching accounts of how the amendment would hurt real people.

She picked 96 miles for the six-day trek through egg-frying heat because that’s the number of years gay Arizonans haven’t had equal rights. (Arizona became a state in 1912.)

“Walking 96 miles,” Sneed says of her bold adventure, “is nothing compared to a gay or lesbian person being told they can’t see their partner in their dying moments at a hospital because they don’t have full marriage rights.”