Dustin Lance Black Knows How to Talk to Young People. And Make Old People Listen

Aside from The Gaga and Cynthia Nixon, Oscar winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black was arguably the highest profile name to adorn the National Equality March. So did he deliver on those laurels?

We’d say yes. Black represents the Cleve Jones and David Mixner-style call for federal recognition of gays, not this state-by-state squabbling over piecemeal rights delivered (and taken away) every legislative cycle. Like Lady Gaga and Dan Choi, Black excels at public speaking.

Moreover, Black — whose name can no longer be mentioned without mentioning this — excels at speaking to young people, which is particularly important because, while Americans of every age came to D.C. over the weekend, the motivation for the march came when Mixner kept hearing from twenty- and thirty-somethings who wanted to rally. (It was Gay Inc. groups like the Human Rights Campaign who initially poo-poo’d the idea of a march, we keep hearing from activist insiders, because they didn’t believe in the grassroots activism of young people.)

Black, then, is their representative.