It Is Not Enough To Light A Candle Against The Darkness. You Must Become The Candle.
First…from Sullivan…
I voted here in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood about two hours ago. It took about an hour to get through the line, and while standing there I was chatting with the 75-year-old retired cop in front of me, and the young 30-something gay couple in front of him, who had their two little girls in tow.
Everyone was in good spirits as the conversation moved from the Obama-McCain contest to the farce that is Sarah Palin, and then on to non-political matters, like the road work being done on the next block. The conversation between the cop and the couple started to get animated toward the end of our hour in line as the three men began to discuss the current football season, wagering bets for this weekend’s games and making predictions for the Super Bowl.
And then, as we entered the firehouse that doubled as our polling place, as the couple and their daughters stepped out of line and up to the table to receive their ballots, I observed the cop in front of me. He opened his sample ballot, took out his pen, scribbled out his "yes" vote on Proposition 8, and filled in the ballot line for "no."
I don’t think he knew that I observed him. And since it was such a private moment I held back my tears of joy and my overwhelming desire to pat him on the back and say "thank you, sir." Instead, I left the polling place muttering to myself those two words you have repeated over and over during this election cycle, Andrew:
KNOW.
HOPE.
…and now…Savage …
Four years ago my husband and I adopted a nine-year-old boy. He’d been taken from his biological family when he was three and shuttled through six different foster homes in six years. The three of us have worked very hard to create our family. Our son has added to our lives in ways we could never have imagined. We love him very much.
This year our son, who is now thirteen, came out to us. Our son is gay. We are fine with this.
The amazing thing about our boy is that he goes to school every day and lives his life true to himself. He’s a happy child. He writes poetry. He skips. He’s a track star. He excels at algebra. He loves the Stylistics. He has a blinding smile. Most of the kids at his school love him. But some of the boys call him “faggot.” Yesterday our usually sunny boy, all five-feet-four inches of him, came home staring at the ground, visibly upset. Some of the boys at school were taunting him with cries of Yes on 8, the California proposition aimed at eliminating the right to marry for those who want to marry another of the same gender. The boys were punished by the school, but the damage was done.
Who are these followers of Jesus Christ who would tell my son, taken from his family at three, and homeless until he was nine, that he cannot marry and have a family of his own?
Today my thirteen-year-old son joined me in the voting booth. As I voted for Obama my son put his hand on top of mine. He did the same thing when I voted no on Proposition 8. He was late for school, but I can’t think of a better reason.
Miss Poppy
Adult Christianity
Can we all please wake up to a better America tomorrow? Please?
November 5th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Well!
What a mixed bitter-sweet out-come.
California is such a WIERD state: You have San Fran; a Gay mecca, L.A.; just an outright freak-show, then military bases, and up north in humbolt county crazed right-wing well-armed militia….growing some of the best pot in the country.
They went for Obama solidly. The state that elected Schwartzenegererger (Reagan body-snatch victim) (Then again, raw-red-meat Kansas has a habit of electing democratic women governors….and with joy, I saw that Douglas Co (Lawrence) is no longer the lone blue holdout…2 more counties joined that!)
So, not like it should surprise us, but people still need their scapegoat and bigotry. I think a lot of the lesser cerebellum endowed think they have to trade off: If they vote for a black guy, then they have to vote AGAINST Gay people. But I don’t call 53/47 quite a decisive consensus.
I really appreciate and admire your activism and concern for that issue….in a state on the other end of the continent. I’m sure that it DID affect that 53/47.
It STILL just boggles my mind about how and WHY this is such a huge issue for the religious right? Are we REALLY that terrifying? Are they REALLY that fucking far out to lunch? I always wonder how people THAT crazed about the "Gay issue" can actually hold jobs and get through life?
In my bitter moments, I think about singling out the few individuals responsable for these ballot measures, and ramming them through to the ballot. Those sick animals that appearently make a living doing this…..put them in my cross-hairs. Maybe give them the Matthew Shephard treatment, or maybe leave THEM alone, but do it to their kids, leave them crucified to a fence in the bitter cold…..with "Faggot" carved into their foreheads.
Hmmm….somehow I doubt they would "get it".
November 5th, 2008 at 4:00 am
OK, I found this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/who-is-the-mystery-man-be_b_140801.html
You know, I’ll have to check, but it might STILL be legal to shoot Mormons on sight in Missouri. I think Kansas took that laws off the books a while ago. (However it is STILL illegal to wear a bee-hive as a hat, or to run with a pig in a wheel barrow down Kansas Ave….appearently these things where problems at some point)
Sorry…..I’m just pissed off about prop 8. But over-joyed about Obama.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:14 am
You know, I’ll have to check, but it might STILL be legal to shoot Mormons on sight in Missouri…
You should probably wait until the Mormon church has finished excommunicating everyone who opposed Proposition 8. There actually were quite a few of them. From what I’ve been reading, it’s devastated a lot of Mormon families and destroyed more then a few friendships.
Yes…the apparently massive Obama victory is the rainbow in all this. I’ll have a cartoon up about Proposition 8 before the end of the day. I feel a fire in my belly for some strange reason…
November 5th, 2008 at 11:05 am
All I feel about the Bigots’ Victory is a bit of nausea.
It’s truly mind-boggling.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:17 am
California is such a WIERD state…
It’s a big state. People associate California with its densely populated coastine and that’s not all there is to it by far. Massive amounts of support for Proposition 8 likely came from the central part of the state, which resembles Kansas more then it does Los Angles…except for the fact that it’s a friggin’ desert that’s only green due to its being massively irrigated.
As to the Obama voters who also voted for Proposition 8… Last election I think it was, there was a voter referendum in either North or South Dakota regarding abortion rights. The state republicans had banned all abortions in the hope it would get to the supreme court and maybe get Roe overturned. Instead abortion rights supporters got the measure on the ballot. The ban was defeated…but an anti same-sex marriage amendment passed.
So…dig it…a lot of folks who voted for their own individual freedom in that one regard, also voted to take freedom away from their gay and lesbian neighbors. These are the worst. Not the outright bigots. Not the fundamentalist extremists. Not the committed theocrats. But the quiet, low profile, conscience-free cheats. The ones who would never dream of breaking into someone’s house to steal something, but might take something from the toolbox you left outside next to the car if no one was looking. Mary Renault described them perfectly in this line from her novel, The Charioteer…
Not wicked, he thought: that’s just sentementality. These are just runts. Souls with congenitally short necks and receding brows. They don’t sin in the sight of heaven and feel despair: they only throw away lighted cigarettes on Exmoor, and go on holidays leaving the cat to starve, and drive off after accidents without stopping. A wicked man nowadays can set millions of them in motion, and when he’s gone howling mad from looking in his own face, they’ll be marching still with their mouths open and their hands hanging by their knees, on and on and on…
The Charioteer takes place in Britain during World War II and the imagery in that passage is meant to recall the fanatical crowds of Hitler’s Germany I’m sure. But people like that are everywhere and they’re the absolute worst…the bottom dregs of the human family. Better a bigot then a cheat. I’d hire a Phelps before I’d hire someone who voted both for Obama And for Proposition 8.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
All I feel about the Bigots’ Victory is a bit of nausea.
It’s upsetting. Just keep repeating to yourself that whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger…