It needs to be said.
I should stop dwelling on the Proposition 8 vote, because honestly it has taken what should have been a day of triumph over the election of Barack Obama and utterly ruined it. I don’t feel any better about this country today than I did forty-eight hours ago. But I can’t not fully speak my mind about this.
What hurts the most to me is the thought that it was black and Hispanic voters who killed equal rights in California. It’s mind-boggling to me. When Barack Obama was born, there were laws on the books in some states that would have prevented the marriage of his parents. Our next President, according to those laws, shouldn’t have ever been born. And you’re telling me you can walk into the voting booth to repudiate that idea, but you’ll look me in the eyes and tell me that the child I hope to raise someday shouldn’t be President, because his parents’ union is wrong and sinful and shouldn’t exist?
California, it must be said, has a sweeping and strong civil-union law, and that stays in place. But this notion that the word “marriage” is something that must be protected… it’s ludicrous. A few centuries ago, marriage was basically a property contract where the woman became a slave to the man. Were the laws that protected that arrangement just or fair? And how does it protect the notion of the family to pass anti-gay-adoption laws? If I’m a gay man in Arkansas and I want to raise a child, I would have to father that child out of wedlock with a woman who might or might not ever be a part of that child’s life. And I would have to raise the child alone, since my partner wouldn’t be able to legally adopt. Care to tell me how THAT contributes to a stable family environment?
The cowards who support this kind of law straight-up believe that I am a sinful deviant who doesn’t deserve the rights that they themselves insist upon. They believe they are better than me, and better than the millions of other gay Americans, because some amino acid connected to some other one long ago in the womb and made them straight. It’s as simple as that. But I feel like the gay people of this country could beat our fists bloody and scream ourselves hoarse and those people would never, ever, ever accept our bond of common humanity with them, or treat them with the dignity that their fellow men and women deserve. I despair, I honestly do. Obama tried to give me hope, but last night, I lost it. I don’t know how I’ll ever get it back.
