It was a blustery Blacksburg afternoon. As the wind whipped and the sun fought through clouds to occasionally peek through to the Virginia Tech campus.

At 1:30 p.m. on Tech’s Drill Field, a group of about 75 people gathered as a response to California’s passage of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. Finally by about 2 p.m. the group began its meandering 40-minute march from the Drill Field throughout campus and back to the starting spot.

Demonstrators, many carrying signs or flags, alternated chants such as “Gay, straight, black or white, marriage is a civil right,” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, homophobia has got to go” or “One, two, three, four, love is what we’re fighting for; five, six, seven, eight, stop the lying stop the hate.”

Tami Grossman, a sophomore at Virginia Tech, organized the event. After pondering the impact of California’s passage of Proposition 8, as well as bans on same-sex marriage in other states, Grossman said that she announced this event on Facebook on Monday. “It was just on a whim,” she said about posting the page “Blacksburg Protest Against Proposition 8.”

The event coincided with a national push for protest events on Nov. 15 led by a group called Join the Impact. The Blacksburg event, along with four others in the state, were announced by the group Equality Virginia.

Grossman said that Join the Impact plans bimonthly protests in the future and that she felt sure that she and others would continue to join the cause in Blacksburg. Grossman said that she was happy to see a good turnout of young and old, as the crowd featured participants who were children as well as people in their 70s.

“I just found out that there are people here from Roanoke College,” Grossman said, “so it’s great to have such a turnout of people from all over the area.”

Blacksburg resident K.C. Arceneaux said that she received word about the protest from her church, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Blacksburg. “We’re very concerned with social justice issues,” Arceneaux said. She added that she felt good about the day’s happenings but was disappointed to see a lack of coverage by the mainstream media, “especially the television stations,” she said.

Rev. Kelly Sisson of Blacksburg’s Glade Church said that as someone who works for justice, she needs to take a moral stand on this issue. “My Baptist heritage expresses freedom for all. There’s a wedding going on right now at the chapel up there, yet many of the people here don’t have that right. That’s discrimination.”

Tim W. Jackson is Editor of the New River Voice.