The Difference between Nov. 4th and Nov. 5th *

Photo taken Tuesday Nov. 4th, 2008 at about 3 in the afternoon, just after voting.

Text written last night, Wednesday, Nov. 5th, 2008.

please note that these are my opinions only. i have zero interest in discussing this if you have an opinion that differs from mine. i have zero interest in a debate or an argument right now. this is something i am very invested in and very upset about. and i’m not in a place where i can be objective or listen respectfully to other standpoints at this time.

most of the time, i appreciate hearing different perspectives from people i consider to be intelligent and knowledgeable. i’m well aware that not everyone will agree with what i believe to be ‘right’, and i often listen and try to understand opinions that are unlike my own.

however, because the issue of gays being allowed to legally marry is extremely important to me, right now i am not open to entertaining dissenting views or engaging in discussions about it.

when you are fresh off a painful breakup, your reactions and thoughts and views will be markedly tainted with emotion. that’s similar to how i feel, and in the realm of politics, i think it best to keep most emotion off the table.

but i’m just not there right now. simple as that.

yesterday morning was about hope and change and equality. by this morning, all of that changed.

today some of the people i love most in this world have had some of their basic civil rights taken away from them by 52% of California voters, just a few short months after they were given to them.

yesterday, a proposition was passed that will put an amendment in California’s constitution that is pure and unabashed discrimination. it says that one group of people is not as good, less than, inferior to others. that they do not deserve the same rights and choices that i get simply because i happen to be attracted to the opposite sex. which was NEVER a choice I made.

52% of this state’s voters have passed a proposition that will change our CONSTITUTION.

gay marriage will now be illegal.

and i don’t see a difference between this struggle for equality and women fighting for the right to vote, blacks fighting for the right to be allowed to sit in the front of the bus, not the back. or eat at any restaurant, not just the “blacks only” restaurants, people fighting for the right to marry inter-racially which was only made federally legal roughly half a decade ago. *** oops. i meant half a century ago.

had the law remained that any inter-racial couple may not marry, you or a friend of yours or your spouse, if they are of mixed race would not exist today. half asian, half white, half black, half native american or any combination you want to put together. and i’m fairly certain that most do not find find anything ‘wrong’ with people they know or know of who are of mixed ethnicity.

again, i see no difference between the gays being allowed to marry and inter-racial couples being allowed to many.

some of the best people i know, and are very lucky to call my friends and family, are gay, or the product of two people that aren’t the same race but loved each other and created a life. or have a different skin color than mine. etc.

it’s not about whether being gay is ‘wrong’ or ‘right’. i’m not trying to change your opinion on what you believe is morally okay. or what you believe your God sanctions or does not sanction. this is about a basic civil right, regardless of anyone’s opinions on someone else’s sexual orientation.

it’s about every human being in this country being EQUAL.

ideally, that is what i believe to be right and should happen across the board. every single person should be considered and treated as equal. call me naive, but that’s how i believe it should be. however, i’m not naive enough to believe that’s what it WILL be, always, every time, but that will not deter me from believing it, nor fighting for it.

i was so excited yesterday. i sincerely thought to myself “i can’t believe that we’re going to elect the first black president.” and“i’m so proud to live in a state that is going to do something so important and progressive”.

i said this to my closest friend in the world, aside from my husband, who at the age of 32 realized that she is gay. and though I’ve felt this way since i was eleven, i now get to watch as someone i love struggles daily now with pressure from her family, her friends, society, to “turn straight again”. who considers trying to do so because it’s “easier” and she doesn’t want to be treated unkindly, or loved and respected less or not at all by some of her family and some of the people she knows. my heart hurts knowing what my best friend may face and what she will not be allowed to have.

some of the best people i know have been treated horribly because they are gay. they have been kicked out of their homes and disowned by their parents long before their 18th birthday. they have been physically beaten solely because they were attracted to the same sex. they are expected to disclose who they have sex with, when i am not, at places like their work. they are told to their face, uninvited, that they are going to hell, that they are evil. they are browbeaten by people, insisting they are ‘choosing’ to live this ‘lifestyle’. they were not able to visit their partner of 21 years in the hospital when their partner became suddenly ill because their partner’s family does not agree with their lifestyle. and much more.

i have believed for more than twenty years, before i even knew a gay person, that they deserve every right i have. and i will continue to believe that.

and when i can help to bring us closer to giving one basic civil right – the right to marry the person they love, just as I am able to do – i will help. over and over again.

i do not entertain the possibility that “marriage is sacred” when the people who tell me that have been divorced. i do not entertain the possibility that “they can have the same rights and benefits as an opposite sex married couple have, but they shouldn’t be allowed to call it ‘marriage'” as being even remotely fair. i can’t remember the last time “Separate But Equal” worked. i do not entertain the possibility that it is ever okay to think that any group or individual is less than another because of who they are attracted to, what color their skin is, what God they believe in. i am not better than anyone. and no one is inferior to me. feel free to substitute “me” for “you”.

there are many, many issues that have more than one, or two, sides. and even if i disagree, i can find something in another side that i understand. i may not agree, but i can understand why others do not feel as i do.

however, on this issue? i can’t say that anymore. i will not pretend to be objective. i believe with everything that i am that every person in this country deserves equal rights. period. and that is the core of this issue.

today, i am saddened and disappointed.

but i am also so, so grateful that nearly every single person i call a friend – gay or straight, of different faiths, different races, republican and democratic friends – believes in equality for every American and feels even more fiercely passionate about that belief today.