My marriage is real

Thursday, November 06, 2008

My marriage is real.

I know that I share an almost irrational exuberance for the election of Barack Obama with most of you. It has been said today by millions of people that "Today Feels Different." It's hard to verbalize. I am letting myself be taken over by Obamamania for the sheer fact that this election is the best thing to happen to this country symbolically since the emancipation of slaves in America. I do not apologize for the hyperbole.

However, civil rights has taken a major step backwards with the passage of prop 8. The rights of millions of Californians have been TAKEN AWAY. The revoking of a civil right in this country, in the same hour that the dreams of generations of civil rights advocates are realized is almost too surreal to even comprehend.

Maybe the reason this has happened is because the right to marry the person you love is so fundamental to humanity, it was easy to take for granted. "So what's in a word?" you may ask yourself. Why do you have to be "married?" Why is "domestic partnership" not good enough? It's simple: Dignity. 2 million other Californians and I just want to be treated as any other citizen of this country.

But giving validation to people who are different than you is an unthinkable act to bigots. For the homophobe, racist, anti-semite, what-have-you, the fear of the Other is fueled by deliberate ignorance. Fear-mongers are terrified by idea of empathy with the person they hate. The most frightening thing to bigots is that the person that they are trying to put down may be "JUST LIKE THEM". They cannot and will not envision that the person who they have villified in their minds might be an honest, God-fearing, family-oriented, tax-paying, home-owning, grocery-shopping, video-renting, church-going, child-raising American just like them. All they allow themselves to see is that "mankind shall not lie with mankind" but fail to recognize that the passage is sandwiched between prohibitions of eating shellfish and shaving.

What really eats at me is that the leadership in the LGBT community has gone to extraordinary lengths to NOT demonize mormons and the LDS church, catholics and the council of Bishops, nor any other christian group that has been pouring money into getting prop 8 passed. That would have smacked of anti-religious bigotry and it would not have been fair. YET, the LDS church and catholic Knights of Columbus raised $20,000,000 to push their hateful agenda under the misleading guise that it would protect straight marriages and schoolchildren from the so-called "homosexual agenda". And they had the nerve to say that they do not hate gay people.

I sincerely hope that your rights aren't taken away by well-funded religious fanatics. After all, anybody who is a minority who has had their rights trampled by a majority knows and understands that it's not their neighbor that they should be afraid of. It is the power of Ignorance (not stupidity- don't get me wrong) in which people JUST DON'T QUESTION what they are being told. They Yes-on-8'ers know that their propaganda was misleading. They KNOW. I hope they come to the realization that they have interfered with California State Constitution and changed it to include discrimination. What a failure of American Democracy!

When Corey and I first met and fell in love as mere teenagers, we knew that we'd be together for the rest of our lives. 14 years later we are still together. 14 years later, we were finally told we could celebrate our relationship just like every other straight American. It was a day whose time had come and it felt good and right to be married. But today? We no longer have the same rights that we enjoyed on our marriage day. But here's some small, yet selfish good news: I just read that the California Attorney General has stated that the 18,000 marriages performed will still be recognized. How about that? Mine, yes. But what about the millions more now and in the future. What about the dream they have to marry the person they love?

I would like to take this opportunity to offer my forgiveness to the person (who congratulated me on my own wedding) who told me that she will vote yes on 8 for religious reasons. I don't want to be angry at her forever. Perhaps some day she will stumble across this blog. Finally, if you voted No on prop 8, thank you. It did mean something.