Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.
Some parameters, as preface. This isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics, and this isn’t really just about Prop-8. And I don’t have a personal investment in this: I’m not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics.
This is about the… human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not… understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want — a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them — no. You can’t have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don’t cause too much trouble. You’ll even give them all the same legal rights — even as you’re taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.
If this country hadn’t re-defined marriage, black people still couldn’t marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal… in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn’t have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it’s worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn’t marry…black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery.Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are… gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing — centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children… All because we said a man couldn’t marry another man, or a woman couldn’t marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don’t you, as human beings, have to embrace… that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate… this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness — this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness — share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
—
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of…love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don’t have to help it, you don’t have it applaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it.Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand and maybe you don’t even want to know…It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person…
Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.
This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:
"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge.
"It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:
"So I be written in the Book of Love;
"I do not care about that Book above.
"Erase my name, or write it as you will,
"So I be written in the Book of Love."
—
Good night, and good luck.
Emphasis mine. I see I’m not the only person who remembered those words of Omar-Khayyam.
"What is this to you", he asks. Simple. When your own soul is an open sewer, you cannot bear the sight of beauty in your neighbor. They want to empty our hearts of all hope, all joy, all peace, all love, so they won’t have to see the dead and stinking corpse they’ve made of their own. They want to drag us all down into their gutter, so they won’t have to know the beauty the human heart is capable of. That is what this fight is all about. That is what this fight has always been about. They want to empty our hearts of everything, so they can write their devotions on the bare walls inside.
When I finished my remarks, it was question time, and the first question was: “But you’re not gay!?” I must radiate a kind of straight guy dumpiness that no self-respecting gay man would be caught dead displaying in public.
Anyway, I took it to mean, “So why do you care about this?” and gave an answer I’ve always been proud of.
“I see it through a Jewish perspective,” I said. “I see you guys as another loathed minority trying to get through the day.”
Which they are. Readers complain to me that homosexuality isn’t a God-given condition, but a sinful choice, and I always respond, “It is? A choice? Really? I couldn’t choose it. Could you?” They never have a good answer to that.
The look-how-far-we’ve-come aspect of Obama’s triumph was mitigated by citizens in California, Florida and Arizona voting to bar gay marriage. An awful intrusion of government into the private sphere, one we would never tolerate if it didn’t touch upon the American obsession with sex. I mean, we’d never ban gays from holding fishing licenses, arguing that they somehow spoil the fishing experience for the rest of us.
But religious conservatives have cooked up this palpable lie about gays and marriage, based on nothing at all, and the public has accepted it because it tickles the unexamined biases they already have.
Just like civil rights, this is a generational war that will be won, I have absolutely no doubt, in the fullness of time. But not yet.
Emphasis mine. And actually…time was a homosexual might not be allowed even a fishing license. Time was you could be denied all kinds of professional licenses if you were known to be homosexual. You could have your plumber’s license taken away. Your license to practice medicine. You could be fired, evicted, rounded up by the cops in your local bar, or just walking down the street in some places, and tossed into jail.
The marriage barrier is a bitter, lingering part of all that. It isn’t marriage they want to protect. It’s the right to persecute homosexuals. They can’t just round us up and toss us in jail anymore. But they can still torment loving couples…still remind us that a whole human life is not ours to have…still drive the knife into our hearts every now and then, so they can feel good about themselves.
The Side Of The Comic Book Rack I Always Stayed Away From…
…had a lot of these in it…
When I was a kid, I just couldn’t imagine how even girls liked these. Although I never actually saw any browsing that side of the comic book racks anyway. Maybe they were too embarrassed to be seen looking at these. Or maybe they just waited for the boys to leave first, before approaching them. I can imagine the snickers coming from the boys side of the rack were a girl to wander over and pick one up…
But there must have been a market for these, because the comic book publishers kept grinding them out. Some of the most famous names in comic book…er…excuse me…Graphic Novel history did these. Here’s one by Jack Kirby…
At the age I was buying a lot of comics, I could barely stand to look at these. They just completely creeped me out. That whole icky love stuff just totally mystified me. Who cares? I used to fidget in my seat at the movies whenever the love interest parts of the story were going on. I’d be sitting there thinking to myself, Ah Jeeze…come on, come on, let’s get on with it…
Had I bothered to sneak a look inside one of these, I might have found something like this inside…
…which would have just confirmed my suspicions for me. All that love stuff was for the birds. Who cares? Leave me out…please.
I just couldn’t fathom it. As I said…those things really creeped me out. Why would anyone…even a girl…bother with crap like that. Especially when you could buy a really neat comic like…oh…this one…
Or…this one…
Man…I couldn’t get enough of that when I was a kid. For some strange reason. Even though the stories were usually pretty lousy.
They say girls mature a tad sooner then boys in the romance department, and maybe that’s true to a degree. Also, I was a bit of a late bloomer. But there was a section missing from the comic book racks back then too, and had it been there, maybe I could have grown up understanding all that gooey, icky love stuff a little bit better. Maybe by the time my hormones really started to percolate, I wouldn’t have been so fumbly, clumsy and deathly shy.
I grew up in a world where homosexuals were twisted monsters who lurked behind schools waiting to pounce on kids my age. The messages we all got back then to beware of strange men fell on the ears of gay kids too…and looking back on it, I can clearly recall flinching away whenever my thoughts began to stray toward how…attractive…some of the characters in my comic books were. I didn’t want to be a monster. I didn’t want to be sick. So I just kind-of let my eyes wander over whatever it was something deep down inside of me had jerked them towards…
…and then wander away again without thinking about it too closely.
What I really needed in my young teenage life was something that spoke to me. Well…what I really needed was to grow up in a time when adults were willing to talk to teenagers honestly and rationally about sex and sexuality. The girls weren’t getting any of that either back then really.
Even so…as horrible as it was back then, to even contemplate being homosexual, had I seen something like this on the comic book racks, I would have snatched one up instantly…
I don’t know if I could have worked up the courage to actually take it to the cashier or not…but I’d have gotten it out of the store one way or the other…
Well…of course there would have been no “explicit content” allowed. But just the idea that boys could fall in love with other boys, and that it was okay, and that you weren’t a monster if you felt sexually attracted to one, would have made so much of a difference in my life later on… So very, very much of a difference…
Romance. Maybe it wasn’t so icky after all…
…maybe I could find one of my own someday…
Every time I buy one of these now…and I have several bookshelves full of them…I have to laugh at how contemptuous I felt toward those girl’s romance comics way back when. Yes…they were horribly sexist. But at least love always won in the end in those things. It was something you could hope for, for yourself too. Here’s a portion of the back cover of Constellations In My Palm…
What would you do if you lost the best thing that happened to you because of your own pride and selfishness? What would you do if you lost the best thing that happened to you because you were taught to be afraid of it? What would you do if you lost the best thing that happened to you because you were never taught how to reach for it like the other kids were? What would you do if you had another chance and lost it again? And again? And again? What would you do if you spent your whole life trying to get beyond that fear and confusion they put into you when you were a kid, and you couldn’t?
My generation, and the one just before us, the pre Stonewall generation, began this movement to break down those barriers of self loathing, fear and confusion, and reclaim our human right to love and be loved. And this is our great victory: that gay teens no longer have to live in a world where all they ever hear about themselves is that they are sick, broken, twisted, monsters. They can grow up now, believing that they are fully human too. They can grow up now, believing in the promise of love too.
It was, and still regretfully is, a hard and bitter fight. But every day now, more and more of us are finding our way to the promise land. Even, thankfully, some of us older gay folk too. Some of us will only stand on the hillside just beyond, never to find our way in after all, stricken by how much more beautiful it really was, how much more beautiful then we could have ever imagined, back when we first started fighting to win it back. But we can take heart in this, and carry on: so no kid will ever have to grow up in a world that tells them they will never find love, never be loved, because they are gay.
And Now…A Word From Some Useless Fucks Who Need To Just Go Away Now…
This came in the mail just a little while ago. And here I thought I wouldn’t be hearing any more from these folks…
Dear Bruce,
This has been an incredibly difficult week for Californians who are disappointed in the passage of Proposition 8, which takes away the right to marry for same-sex couples in our state. We feel a profound sense of disappointment in this defeat, but know that in order to move forward we must continue to stand together as one community in order to secure full equality in California.
In working to defeat Prop 8, a profound coalition banded together to fight for equality. Faith leaders, labor, teachers, civil rights leaders and communities of color, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, public officials, local school boards and city councils, parents, corporate law firms and bar associations, businesses, and people from all walks of life joined together to stand up against discrimination. We must build on this coalition in order to achieve equal rights for all Californians.
We achieve nothing if we isolate the people who did not stand with us in this fight. We only further divide our state if we attempt to blame people of faith, African American voters, rural communities and others for this loss. We know people of all faiths, races and backgrounds stand with us in our fight to end discrimination, and will continue to do so. Now more than ever it is critical that we work together and respect our differences that make us a diverse and unique society. Only with that understanding will we achieve justice and equality for all.
Dr. Delores A. Jacobs
CEO
Center Advocacy Project
Lorri L. Jean
CEO
L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center
Kate Kendell
Executive Director
National Center for Lesbian Rights
Geoff Kors
Executive Director
Equality California
This is all well and good…especially the part about not putting all this on African-Americans. Yes, they voted heavily for it, but they didn’t put four out of very five dollars into the kitty for Proposition 8 either. They didn’t get it on the ballot. They didn’t donate vast amounts of logistical support for it.
But…leaving all that aside… You know…you folks lost the fight...
I worked for both the No on 8 campaign and the Obama campaign this year and cannot tell you how far apart those two were in style and substance. One was top down, the other bottom up. Ironically, it was the presidential campaign that was the grassroots model, not the state-level proposition campaign. As soon as I started working for the No on 8 campaign I was amazed at the level of scripting: "don’t say ‘civil rights,’ don’t say ‘constitution,’ don’t say ‘gay.’" I couldn’t believe it.
One of the most brilliant things about the Obama campaign was that they didn’t expect callers and canvassers to be policy wonks. They just said "tell your story, let people know why you’re voting for him. Connect with people." I can’t help but feel at this point that if the gloves were taken off we could’ve helped people get a grip on the real issues at stake here, which I happen to think is a matter of soiling the state constitution.
What was even more confounding was the No on 8 campaign’s decision to stay away form polling places at churches and schools. First of all, most polling places are at churches and schools, and second, that mentality buys right into the Yes on 8 brainwashing campaign that same sex marriage is going to corrupt our morals and our children. This idiocy was obvious to everyone that I worked with on the campaign. What was going on with the leadership upstairs?!!!
I don’t think I’m the only one who gave you a lot of money I couldn’t really afford who is wondering now why you let a substantial lead over the yes vote when this campaign started just…evaporate. So why don’t all of you to just shut your traps now and stay out of this. I’d rather watch ten hours of James Dobson gloating then one second of you pathetic milksops lecturing us about respecting the people who just cut off our ring fingers. You don’t bring a handshake to a knife fight.
SAN FRANCISCO — The California Attorney General, Equality California, and the nation’s leading LGBT legal groups agree that the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who married between June 16, 2008 and the possible passage of Proposition 8 are still valid in the state of California and must continue to be honored by the state.
As Attorney General Jerry Brown has stated in previous court papers and as he reaffirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle, those marriages should remain valid notwithstanding Proposition 8’s possible passage. On August 5, 2008, Brown told the Chronicle, "I believe that marriages that have been entered into subsequent to the May 15 Supreme Court opinion will be recognized by the California Supreme Court,’ He noted that Proposition is silent about retroactivity, and said, ‘I would think the court, in looking at the underlying equities, would most probably conclude that upholding the marriages performed in that interval before the election would be a just result.’"
There is absolutely nothing in the language of Proposition 8 to suggest that the initiative would apply to couples who have already legally married. Unless the language of an initiative specifically says that it is to be applied retroactively, California’s courts have been very reluctant to do so, especially when the newly passed measure is in such stark conflict with existing constitutional provisions.
And that stark conflict makes it just possible, barely, that Proposition 8 will be found invalid by the courts. Simply put, it is a revision to the state constitution itself, as opposed to an amendment. The distinction is important because a revision must be, according to the constitution, first approved by the legislature, and then by a super-majority of the voters, not merely a simple majority. But at this point, to strike down the vote, especially after the court already had a chance to rule on this very matter before the vote, will take more nerve then I think this court has now. It takes a special sort of person to stick their necks out for a hated minority they themselves are not one of. And then stick it out some more.
But that’s a post for another day. The interesting thing here is this sudden…enthusiasm…by the Mormon church elders for…healing the rift…
Now that California voters have outlawed same-sex marriage, an LDS Church leader called Wednesday for members to heal rifts caused by the emotional campaign by treating each other with "civility, with respect and with love."
Hahahaha! Civility. Really?
Although it is extremely unlikely that California courts would apply the initiative retroactively, the proponents of Proposition 8 may file a legal challenge trying to invalidate the marriages of those who married before Proposition 8 possibly passed.
May? Yeah. Right. And the sun May rise in the east tomorrow. According to the bigots no heterosexual marriage is secure so long as a single same sex couple remains legally married. They’ll sue all right. The least we can do is wave all their rhetoric about "civility", "respect" and "love" back in their faces.
Now that California voters have outlawed same-sex marriage, an LDS Church leader called Wednesday for members to heal rifts caused by the emotional campaign by treating each other with "civility, with respect and with love."
"We hope that everyone would treat [each other] that way no matter which side of this issue they were on," said Elder L. Whitney Clayton, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Presidency of the Seventy.
…
In a statement, the LDS Church said it does not object to domestic partnership or civil union legislation "as long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches."
Which same sex marriage does not. But…you know that…
As for Proposition 8, "we consider this to be a moral issue," Clayton said. "We’re not anti-gay, we’re pro marriage between a man and a woman."
Right. Like you weren’t racist when you were denying black people a seat in your church…just pro white. You don’t have to be racist to be pro-white.
You gutter crawling scum have been lurking in the background of this battle for over a decade now, and all that is over. You fought to make your gay and lesbian neighbors second class citizens in their own country. Own it. Trust me…you will have to. Nobody is forgetting this. You want civility? Get The Fuck Off Our Backs.
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:
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.
It would be so nice to have someone to come home to here at Casa del Garrett on any night, but especially tonight. I might not get myself tied up in knots waiting for the outcome in California. But then…hey…I’ve been single for nearly all my life and I should be expert at handling stress all by myself.
If only.
I don’t expect my friends to go to any great lengths to find me dates. But when something that looks like a good match just drops in their fucking laps and they just let it sail off into the sunset with little more then a shrug of the shoulders it’s hard not to feel betrayed. No…strike that…I’d be in denial not to see that for what it is.
Hopefully there are enough good-hearted people in California that come tomorrow morning their gay and lesbian neighbors won’t have to wonder if their hearts ever really had a home there among them. But if not…whatever doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger…
Not sure if that applies to all the Tequila I’ll be drinking tonight though…
I see Faux News is reporting this morning that the total raised for the fight over Proposition 8 in California is something like 74 million dollars. Let me repeat that: 74 Million Dollars.
There’s your fall of western civilization right there. Not same sex marriage, but that it’s a knife fight, just to let loving, devoted couples tie the knot.
Who still believes in this day and age that gay people are twisted sub-human monsters? I don’t think half the people voting today to cut the ring fingers off their gay and lesbian neighbors think that. I doubt a tenth of them think that. But they are all of them, all of them, taking right now, right this moment, some kind of visceral self righteous pleasure in sucking the hopes and dreams from our lives.
I’ve only ever lived with one romantic partner in my life, but I’ve been married twice. Once in a big, celebratory ceremony on the beach in 1998, in front of almost a hundred friends and relations, in a ceremony that the Renaissance Woman and I wrote ourselves; and the second time, five years later to the day, on a different beach, in front of exactly eight guests (not counting the picnickers and rollerbladers all around us), with brief boilerplate state-issued vows, in front of a Marriage Commissioner we’d never met before.
The first ceremony, in legal terms, meant nothing. The second also meant nothing legally as soon as we got home to Seattle, but made us next of kin according to all authorities just a couple of hours’ drive to the North.
We used to joke about it, or sort of joke, whenever we drove up to Vancouver to visit friends. "We’re married now!" We’d cry, after crossing through Customs and handing over all our papers and the Mermaid Girl’s birth certificate with both our names on it. And then, on the way home, as we passed the Peace Arch: "Not married any more! Hey, girlfriend!"
It wasn’t that funny, though, to tell the truth.
One of RW’s relatives, older than us, an established doctor with a great house in the San Francisco Bay area, flew to Niagra Falls with her partner, a lawyer, to get married at around the same time we did. They were so inspired by the ceremony that they up and moved to Canada a few months later. They live in the Okanagan now, in a house surrounded by vineyards.
Four years after our Vancouver wedding, we also moved to Canada. Now we’re married all the time.
The prospect of legal marriage wasn’t the only reason or even the main reason that we emigrated, but we’ve both been surprised at the depth of the difference we feel. It’s a difference that makes it possible for me to shrug off the opinions of sweet old ladies on the street and even, to some extent, the prejudices of my child’s teacher, because– and here’s the part I didn’t think about much– here, we are not different. We’re not special, we’re not the subject of battles over court decisions and legislative changes. We don’t have to go to lawyers to make special arrangements and get special papers written up. We don’t have to qualify anything when insurance companies and mortgage brokers and doctors ask for our marital status. We’re married, period. The law is on our side.
Let me repeat that: the law is on our side.
This is a new concept for me, and not one I’d given much consideration before our move. After all, in Seattle we lived in a liberal bubble of tolerance and acceptance, taking for granted that under almost all circumstances– except legal ones– we’d be treated the same as our straight friends and neighbors. And just about always, we were.
But a bubble is just what it was. Underneath it all, recognition of our relationship was based on nothing but the good graces of our friends and relations. And while those good graces were pleasant and much appreciated, they still left us hugely vulnerable in the face of all the vicissitudes and disasters that could happen to any family. We were lucky that none of those happened to us. And we took for granted that dependence on luck and good grace, and the slight anxiety it brought with it.
Now, we don’t have that any more. It’s not just that we consider ourselves married, and our families consider us married, and our friends and neighbors and bosses and dentists consider us married: now, the Province of British Columbia and the Nation of Canada consider us married, too. And that has made all the difference.
Let me tell you about something that happened a couple of days before our wedding:
In Canada, you don’t go to City Hall to register for a marriage license, you go to a big drugstore and wait in line with the people who are getting their auto insurance renewed, all the while shopper push past you in their search for Q-tips and deodorant and hairbrushes.
And so, a few days before our legal marriage ceremony on the beach in Vancouver, the Renaissance Woman and I found ourselves at a booth in London Drugs, with our passports in hand. The clerk who processed our paperwork was a bored-looking middle-aged guy whose first language wasn’t English (not unusual in a city of immigrants). We filled our the required papers and passed them back to him, along with the payment, and he took them with barely a glance at us.
This was back in 2o03, and same-sex marriage hadn’t been legal for very long in British Columbia, and we were anxious and wanted to make sure the papers were done right, so they wouldn’t be invalidated in some unforseen way. So we pressed the point.
"We’re both women," we explained carefully, ready for shock or disapproval or at least the need to fill out a whole other set of special forms. "We’re getting married to each other."
"Yeah, yeah, okay," he nodded, filing and stamping and perforating and barely stifling a yawn. "Lots of people doing this. You sign here."
His shrugging matter-of-factness, the face of the machinery of bureaucracy chugging along on our behalf, was as sweet as wedding bells, as satisfying as the New York Times wedding announcement I’d wangled, as celebratory as the flowers MG tossed enthusiastically at the ceremony that weekend. It was the story we ended up telling over and over, in wonderment, after the ceremony. And it was one big reason that we packed up and moved four years later, and that we live here now.
I might live in Canada, but I’m still an American. I want everyone in my home country to have the chance at what I have now: an ordinary, boring, un-notable married life with the person I love. I’m seeing a chance of that, or at least a step towards it, in California. And like so many people, I’m e-mailing and reading and donating and watching and worrying about the prospects of Proposition 8: if it passes, that hope is so much further away.
And if not, if same-sex marriage stays legal in California, it’s at least a bit closer.
We used to joke about it, or sort of joke, whenever we drove up to Vancouver to visit friends. "We’re married now!" It won’t be a joke for me if I ever do manage to find my other half. There will be many states in this country we simply couldn’t pass on through, let alone visit, because the instant we were to cross that border we’d be, in effect, forcibly divorced for the duration, and if something were to happen to one of us…an accident or medical emergency…it could quickly become a nightmare for both of us. Life in some other country could start looking a lot more attractive.
And, as this blogger points out, not only for the legal recognition. I suppose when the stress of always knowing in the back of your mind that you are living on the edge of a precipice goes away, life probably does become a lot sweeter.
This is what writing us out of the state constitutions, if not the federal one, is meant to do. Not protect marriage, but keep us fearful. Life can’t be sweet for us. Maybe they can’t always prevent us from finding love…but they can make fear walk in lock-step with love. The sweetness of life for a bigot, comes only from taking it away from the ones they hate. That is the beginning and the end of what this fight has always been about.
Please Donate to No On 8. And if you live in California, please be sure to vote on Tuesday. Take nothing for granted. As the saying goes, pray as though everything depends on God, but act as though everything depends on you. In an election this close, your vote Will make a difference. So please…vote…so that love can have a chance in this world.
It’s Not About Teaching Children That Gay Couples Are Alright…
Andrew Sullivan almost gets it from time to time…
Althouse makes marriage equality opponent Dean Broyles’s argument clearer:
Let me see if I can make Broyles’s point. I think he means to say that if same-sex marriage remains a legal right, enshrined in state constitutional law, then homosexual relationships will come to be regarded normal and good, and, consequently, anyone who objects to them will start to look like a bigot who should not be permitted to have his way. Thus, in order to preserve the right to discriminate against gay people and to keep schools from teaching children that gay couples are perfectly nice and so forth — all things Broyles wants — it’s important to outlaw gay marriage, because it will be a powerful force in changing perceptions about gay people and those who think gay people are doing something terribly wrong.
Yes! That’s it. One reason I favor marriage equality is that the simple public fact of gay married couples will in itself teach something about the reality of gay people and our lives – without any school or parent having to say a thing. It gives us a way to talk about gay couples for the first time in human history without talking about sex acts.
There is something else that the haters don’t want happening in schools, beyond teaching children that gay couples are perfectly nice and so forth as Althouse puts it. Look more closely. Kids don’t usually socialize with adult couples other then those of their own immediate family. Yes, we can hope the next generation grows up without hate in their hearts. But if they are immersed in anti-gay hate at that age, it’s their peers, those who are gay and those who are only thought to be gay, who will feel the impact of that.
And that’s what Broyles and his kind are adamant must never happen. Gay kids must be hated. And that is because gay kids must hate themselves. What the example of same sex couples living normal, decent, whole lives will do is this: show the gay kids a future where love is possible to them too. That cannot be. Gay kids must never feel loved. Because they are vermin. More despicable even then the gay adults they will eventually become. Because their hearts are sincere. Ever wonder why right wingers seem to hate children so much?
Or to put it in a way that might appeal to social conservatives: grant marriage equality and we can stop talking about homosexuality. We can start talking about love and friendship and commitment and family – for gays and straights. We can leave this horrible identity politics division behind.
Why would social conservatives want to do that? Identity politics is their creation. It’s a belly laugh listening to you blame liberals for it. When people are discriminated against based on things like race, religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation, when doors are closed to them again and again and again, when they are driven from neighborhoods, job opportunities, when a decent education is denied them, simply for being different, do you really think they’ll continue to see themselves as a part of the whole, or as one of the outcast? They are supposed to see themselves in terms of their assigned identity. You can’t marry…you’re a homosexual. Your very presence in the house of marriage defiles it. We don’t want no faggots in our community. I’m just telling you Bruce that there is no place in this company for homosexuals… That’s the whole point of prejudice. Not to elevate the bigot, but to make hated other feel hated, cast out, separate.
I would love to see my sexual orientation as just another random, and not particularly important aspect of my being. But I can’t. Bigots like the ones pushing anti same-sex marriage amendments keep telling me that it’s the only part of me that matters. You need to stop blaming the victims of identity politics, for being imprisoned in it.
That said, I’m really heartened to see you acknowledging that the breaking down of real barriers in this election cycle will go a long way towards the day when we see and end to identity politics. I agree. Liberals have been trying hard to break down these barriers for decades now, so that we can all be Americans one day…free and equal.
Click on the graphic above to join bloggers all over the world in taking a stand for freedom to marry.
This is not just a fight over same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage is but a battle ground in a much larger war against basic human freedoms. All over the world the fundamentalist haters of liberty, from al Quada to our own domestic Taliban, rise their fists against us…we who believe in liberty and justice for all. They call us heretics. They call us corrupters. They call us destroyers. We are. For as long as there exists one place on this good earth were people can stand on their own two feet unbeaten and unoppressed, and embrace their dreams unafraid, no tyranny on earth is safe. We are the sons and daughters of the revolution of freedom, and liberty, and justice. For all. Join us.
Donate Here, to No on 8. Any small amount…any at all…can make a difference in the fight for the freedom to love, and honor, and cherish…
Believe in love. Believe in your right to love, and be loved. There is no more noble cause you can fight for, no greater good you can do for this poor angry world, then to take a stand for the freedom to love. Donate now to No on 8. Make a little more room in this world for love to grow, and endure.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 17 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
A reader sent me this overnight and I’m posting it here in full…
Hello Bruce!
I’ve been reading your blogs and your writings on aph for nearly twenty years now. Thought I’d share something I wrote to my neighbors in Lake Manor CA (just to the west of Chatsworth). And I’ve been sharing it, and sharing it, and sharing it…
Feel free to share it as well.
Cheers,
Bill
———–
Neighbor to neighbor on Prop 8
Dear Neighbor,
Bill here, as in Bill and Robert and our three dogs. I normally don’t suggest to my neighbors how they should vote, but this time the stakes are too high. On November 4, the Yes–On–8 campaign wants you to take away a constitutional right. This is unprecedented in California, and it’s wrong. I’m writing to ask, neighbor-to-neighbor, that you vote NO on Proposition 8.
Robert and I have been together for 16 years, and we’ve lived here in Lake Manor since 2005. We’ve grown to love Lake Manor, not just for its beauty, but also for its people. We’ve shared many dinners, holidays and block barbecues together, a few Super Bowl parties, and countless evenings just chatting over a few beers. During the wildfires, our neighborhood pulled together to see that everyone and their pets came to safety. Never have Robert and I been treated as less than other couples. We love our neighborhood and our neighbors. We’ve found our home here, and we are profoundly grateful.
Proposition 8 seeks to legally make us lesser people, and relationships like ours less protected under the law. There are dozens of legal rights – and responsibilities – given to married couples and no-one else. The backers of Prop 8 say they only want to preserve marriage, but marriage is not threatened by gays and lesbians living the same quiet life as any other couple. It’s sad that Yes-On-8 ads have used fear mongering and falsehoods to deny that which everyone else enjoys. I can’t believe what they’re saying, but it’s not hard to see through their campaign:
Claim: Same-sex marriage infringes on religious liberty.
Fact: The California Supreme Court specifically stated that no church, synagogue or other religious institution can be required to perform or recognize a same-sex marriage.
Claim: Children will be forced to learn, over parents’ religious or moral objections, that same-sex marriages are equal to opposite-sex marriages.
Fact: Prop. 8 does nothing about education. California law expressly gives parents the right to review classroom material on health and family issues and remove their child from hearing what is objectionable. That won’t change.
Claim: Domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians are enough, and activist judges shouldn’t make new law.
Fact: I actually read the Court’s decision. The Court recognized this as a ‘Separate but Equal’ argument, and court after court has ruled that separate-but-equal has no place in American law.
You may have genuinely-felt religious objections to same-sex marriage. I respect that. I grew up Lutheran, and if my conservative congregation isn’t exactly gay-friendly, neither is it gay-hostile. They don’t perform same-sex weddings, but they still treat Robert and me like any other couple when we’ve gone on visits to my home town. In fact, people hear about what’s going on in California, and ask us when we’re getting married!!! Why? Because in addition to marriage being a religious rite, marriage is also a civil and legal institution apart from any particular faith. The law doesn’t care who performed your marriage, nor should it. Legally, it makes no difference if you were married by a priest, minister or rabbi, or by a judge. My congregation is happy living in a pluralistic society, because while their faith is strong, they know that everybody should be equal under the law. Everybody.
It’s wrong to make gay couples pay the price for someone else’s misplaced fear. On November 4, it’ll be only you in the voting booth. Nobody will see how you vote – that’s your business. But before you mark your ballot on Prop 8, please take a moment to ask yourself, in all honesty, what does it hurt you if gays and lesbians get married? Will it make you love your spouse any less? Does it make you love your children any less? Would it hurt your family if, after 16 years, Bill and Robert finally get to tie the knot? I think your answer will be no. Your marriage will be no weaker if Prop 8 doesn’t pass. Your family will be no less under the law or under God.
This will be a close vote, so what you decide matters. Vote NO on Prop 8.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you for helping make our life in Lake Manor a happy one.
Your neighbor,
Bill
P.S. Feel free to share this letter if you like. Get the facts at www.NoOnProp8.com and contribute if you can. If you want to talk about this issue, drop by the house or send e-mail.
P.P.S. You may have heard from Yes-On-8 about those school kids who threw rose petals at that gay wedding in San Francisco. What they didn’t tell you is that the idea was from a parent, not the school, and every one of those kids had their parents’ permission to go. Some parents declined, so their kids didn’t go. That’s OK, but the Yes-On-8 campaign seemed to miss those details.
Thanks for sending this. And…wow…I had no idea that some of the folks who read me once upon a time on aph (that’s alt.politics.homosexuality, the Usenet newsgroup I used to post to often, long ago, before I set up my own website), were still reading me. That’s…amazing.
Please, give what you can to the fight against Proposition 8. We have closed the fundraising gap and the vote is close, very close, and that’s only made the other side raise their own stakes more furiously. They want to swamp TVs all over California with anti-gay propaganda in the closing hours of the election. We need to be able to match them ad for ad in the last days before November 4th. Please give. Anything you can spare. So that love can have a chance in this poor angry world.
Donate Here, to No on 8. Any small amount…any at all…can help make a difference in leveling the playing field.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 17 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
Submitted for your idle viewing pleasure… A wee taste of what your gay and lesbian neighbors have to endure every single fucking day. To my heterosexual friends and family, those of you who have married…while planning your happy day, did you remember to take into account that one or more total strangers might decide to crash it, so they could hurl insults at you, your beloved spouse to be, and everyone else in the chapel?
Of course you didn’t…
More on the guy trying to piss on the happy couple’s big day Here…
…when my editors at SN&R decided that someone with journalistic sensibilities and a sense of humor ought to look into these folks—with their extreme approach to protesting; their bold, yellow “Sodomy is Sin” banner; and their retro use of language that even many anti-gay groups have abandoned as insensitive—I volunteered. The timing was right. Real anger had been stirred up between parts of the local gay community and some members of the Slavic evangelical churches, who have protested at gay events for a few years. And since Proposition 8, which aims to end marriage equality, is on the ballot for November, the upcoming months promised plenty of discussion of gay rights as well as ample opportunity to see Luke and company in action.
So through the rest of the spring and summer and on into fall, I followed Luke and his small crew of activists to protest after protest. With my notebook and camera, I trailed after them during the first local same-sex weddings at the Sacramento County clerk/recorder’s office, at the Sacramento Pride Festival and while protesting at an area McDonald’s, which they perceived as gay-friendly. I kept an eye on the activities of Luke and his friends Viktor Choban and Yuriy Popko at American River College, where they’ve stirred up quite a fuss over the past couple of semesters. They’ve managed to aggravate an impressive list of people: the GLBTQ club, Latinos Unidos, campus progressives, Muslim students and the Improv Club.
The most important thing I’ve discovered through all this: Luke and company won’t compromise. They believe they’re on God’s side, and as far as they’re concerned, if you’re arguing with God, you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.
Gutter crawling bigots like these are no more representative of most of America then Ed Gein, but I’ve often wondered why more good people don’t speak out about the torrent of hate coming from them. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for that, but one is almost certainly that they don’t experience this sort of relentless hatred themselves, first hand. They don’t get to see how completely disconnected the haters are from anything remotely resembling reality, and how that unreality they live in gives them a kind of schizophrenic permission to attack anyone and everyone they perceive as an enemy, without any sort of moral or ethical restraint. They embody not just virtue, but God’s own righteousness, and so they are immune from the moral considerations the rest of us must live by.
Gay Americans have been living with this adversary for decades. We’ve watched it grow in reach from the political gutter to the summit of American political power. The only thing that surprises many of us, is how surprised, how shocked, the rest of America is whenever it catches a glimpse of its essential moral degeneracy. How easily…how effortlessly…they will look you in the eye, and lie through their teeth. How they cheat, and even when flagrantly caught doing it, will deny everything. How they ignore every moral law they insist everyone else must live by when it suits them. Because fighting for God’s truth excuses them from having to live it themselves. It’s not absolute power that corrupts, it’s absolute certainty.
We gay folk need to document our experience more, so others can better understand what America faces. These people want to take everyone down into their gutter and they are determined. It isn’t just our freedoms that are at stake here. If you think these people are just a bunch of irritating, but basically weak and harmless wackos, if you don’t think they’re dangerous, you aren’t paying attention. Perhaps that’s something your gay and lesbian neighbors can help you with. Look again. That guy in the video who called us ‘sodomites’…if you don’t obey his rules, then as far as he’s concerned, you’re one too, and you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.
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