By ken knox

Celebrities band together to create awareness around marriage equality and civil rights.

If you are one of the many gays and lesbians angered by Gov. Schwarzenegger's recent veto of the proposed gay marriage bill, then perhaps a party is just what you need to help channel your frustration.

For one night only, actor/singer/filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) will present Wedrock, a Nov. 7 concert to benefit Freedom to Mary, a gay and non-pay partnership working to win nationwide marriage equality. Along with several friends and colleagues, Mitchell hopes to "raise the roof" in an evening of consciousness-raising intended to get people riled up over Schwarzenegger's veto. "However you feel about the institution [of marriage], screw Schwarzenegger for telling us that we can't get married," Mitchell said in a recent statement. "Are we really going to sit back and let him enshrine fear and loathing in the Constitution?"

Mitchell is hoping not, and he's enlisted the aid of several notable personalities and performers to help him get his message across. Scheduled to perform and/or appear at the Wedrock event are actress/comedienne Margaret Cho, Erasure frontman Andy Bell, actor Alan Cumming, punk rock icon Nina Hagen, popmeisters Yo La Tengo, reality star and pop princess Kelly Osbourne, and the legendary Yoko Ono. Mitchell is also slated to perform a few numbers from Hedwig.

"I wanted to try and do something to get people to think, and get people who normally aren't politically active to do something political," says Mitchell's co-producer, Josh Wood, who organized the very first Wedrock event that took place in New York in early 2004 after seeing a depressing debate over gay marriage on an installment of Larry King Live. That event included not only Cho, Cumming, and Mitchell, but also Sandra Bernhard, Lou Reed, Moby, and Le Tigre, while a second, D.C.-staged event featured host Henry Rollins. Wood says that he and Mitchell were asked to do a third one following Schwarzenegger's decision to veto the gay marriage bill. "For me, it's exciting to put on a good show and get people riled up and think, and to get them out of their houses," he offers. "While the governor has vetoed the bill, it doesn't mean we have to stop fighting."

Wood says that, apart from the money raised to support Freedom to Marry, the event is important because it encourages people to ponder issues like civil rights. "I think the bigger issue is just to get people to think," he posits. "People come to events like these and they get more politically active. They get more involved, either by donating money or appealing to their representatives or trying to make change themselves. It's a matter of heightening their awareness, getting people who normally aren't involved to think politically."

Cumming has long been associated with politics, having been very vocal during the 2004 presidential election, and says that by lending his talents to events like Wedrock, he is able to participate in furthering important causes. "The more bigger celebrities take part in these things, the more attention is drawn to them," he explains. "And that means they're discussed. And I think when you discuss it and you hear the arguments -- and you don't have religious bigotry and extreme, right-wing opinions joined into it -- it seems a very sensible and un-scary notion. People just want to be treated the same as straight people."

Ironically, Cumming (who is about to direct a new film and is gearing up to play the lead in the upcoming Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera) says he is scheduled to perform a humorous number about a marriage that is not working. "Marriage is not a perfect institution, but we want the right to make those mistakes," he quips.

Both Wood and Cumming stress that events like Wedrock keep civil rights in the public eye. "It's about civil rights," Cumming states. "It's about a group of society that is being prejudiced against. I think it's that simple. Gay people are the last section of society where prejudice is condoned, and I'm bored. I'm bored and I'm angry, so I'm going to be noisy and throw my weight about." Though he acknowledges that celebrity-attended functions are usually "sort of a P.R. thing," he says that this is one that he feels particularly close to. "Especially as a queer man living in a country that does not give me the respect I feel I deserve, this is a cause I feel particularly strong about."

"It's one of the last civil rights issues we still have to face in the U.S.," Wood says. "It's like, basically everyone is covered but us. It's not so much that you're pro or against marriage; it's that you're pro or against equal rights, and we should have the same rights as anybody else."

Wedrock: A Benefit Concert for Freedom to Marry will take place Nov. 7 at Avalon, 1735 Vine St. in Hollywood. All proceeds will support Freedom to Marry's activities in California. For tickets and information, call 800-494-TIXS, or visit www.BoxOfficeTickets.com.