I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends
By Michael Boyajian
Ron Zacchi of Marriage Equality New York recently asked me to join up with Hudson Valley Out and About and distribute MENY cards to their members at a Bethel Woods concert featuring the Boston Pops and Idina Menzel Broadway star of Wicked and Rent. Needless to say I jumped at the chance to see the famed Pops while helping the marriage equality movement on a splendid summer evening.
Hudson Valley Out and About asked members of the LGBT community to come meet at Bethel Woods, the scene of the 1969 Woodstock concert, and all sit together on the lawn under the stars while enjoying some great classical music.
Well my wife Jeri and I arrived fairly early and looked all around the entrance to the concert area, the outdoor café and visitors center to no avail. No sign of Hudson Valley Out and About. I was stuck with 500 MENY cards promoting their September Wedding March over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Lack of turn out you might say, apathy. No, quite to the contrary. Once inside the venue we noticed LGBT couples throughout the grounds. They had turned out in good numbers though they may not have been sitting together as a group they were there as individual couples mixed in with the concert attendees much as were heterosexual couples.
Stephen Hengst of Big Gay Hudson Valley recently postulated, “Do we even need gay bars anymore?” With gays entering mainstream life in greater numbers the answer could very well be no. We are all a beautiful rainbow mosaic and there is no need for this group or that group to be segregated away from the rest of society. After all, there is no Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy outside the military so the LGBT community should tell and the rest of us should all listen as we all hold hands sort of like what happened at the Pops concert when 15,000 of us all sang joyfully along with a medley of Beatles Songs which included Yellow Submarine and With A Little Help From My Friends, you know the words, “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
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