Beauty Queen

standing on the steps. The march was a legal one, and Washingtonians had learned with sour surprise, from smallish items in the city press, that a major convention of gay Christians was being held in the nation's capital, and that these gay Christians planned a candlelight march on that bastion of straight liberty.
    Shortly the long column was winding toward the
    Memorial, singing "We Shall Overcome," and soft slow hymns. People walked four or six abreast, sheltering their candles from the soft summer breeze. All the ebullience of the church service was spent. Everyone was serious, faces lit by the candles.
    Mary Ellen and Liv walked with Armando, their arms around him. Sam and Jewel were right behind.
    A few tourists stood watching the column pass with non-hostile looks. "They probably think this is some leftover antiwar group," Mary Ellen told herself. But when the marchers reached the verse, "Gay and straight together," the tourists hardened their faces and turned away.
    Suddenly Armando spoke softly.
    "What?" said Mary Ellen.
    "Think of the marches into the catacombs ... thousands of people winding with torches—" His voice broke off.
    Now the fiery column was flowing up the steep steps of the Memorial, up, up, past the D.C. cops who stood watching with bemused or poker faces.
    The great statue of Lincoln towered over them, floodlit from above, pensive, brooding. Mary Ellen wondered if Lincoln would have really understood the gay problem. They massed around it, candles half-burned now, everybody's hands and clothes wearing cooled drippings of wax.
    The Reverend Pearry came forward and spoke. Tall, powerfully built, with jet-black hair and beard, and glowing dark eyes, Pearry had all the charisma of a true religious leader. The crowd hushed the moment they saw him. His voice rang out in the soft night, so strong that he didn't need a mike.
    He spoke of how it was better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. He said that enough candles had been lit tonight to shine into the darkest corners of America.
    "We gather here tonight in a loving memorial for those brothers and sisters who have gone from us, and who suffered and died because of the crushing burden of guilt imposed on gay people by our society . . . ."
    A quiver of feeling rippled through that rapt crowd. A few people said soft amens.
    . . We want to remember Jim Forsythe who took his own life in Louisiana ... we want to remember Janet Margolies . . . remember Rudy Frink . . . ."
    Then Mary Ellen felt deeply moved to hear Pearry saying, ". . . We remember Danny Blackburn, the New York City police officer who was a member of MCC in New York, and who was beaten to death last week by a gang of thugs claiming to be inspired by the anti-gay statements of former New York State Senator Jean Laird Colter . . .."
    Armando put his face in his hands, and his shoulders started to shake. Liv put her head on Mary Ellen's shoulder and started to sob. Blinded by her own tears, Mary Ellen saw Lincoln swimming in that sea of flame, as if the President were being burned alive in it.
    "... And we wish to remember in our prayers the lovers who were left behind, alone and desolate at these deaths, the helpmeets whom our society considers that it does not have to comfort .... We wish to remember Armando Ostos, Blackburn's lover, who is here with us tonight. . ."
    Then broken voices began to shoot up, like sad skyrockets, from the dark mass of people, as others began calling out names of dead gays whose sorrow they had personally witnessed. "Marcy Coleman," "My brother Bill" . . . ."
    A wrath of the ages was filling Mary Ellen. Moses had not let the Pharaoh off easy. Neither, for that matter, had God. The Pharaoh had been punished for his crimes against the Israelites. All the firstborn in the country slain by the angel. Plagues. Rains of blood. Clouds of locusts that ate up all the crops. But Jeannie Colter was getting off very easy.
    Instead of death and tears, she was getting fan mail and publicity for her campaign for governor, and invitations to be on TV talk shows.
    "That woman ought to be made to pay for what she's done," she thought. "God ought to come up with some special avenging angel, just for her."
    And then two people, a man and a woman, were carrying the great green wreath with its black bow. They were laying it at the feet of the departed, sad-faced, stoop-shouldered President who had signed the Emancipation Proclamation for the slaves.
    The next day Bill