The majority of Californians just granted rights to chickens (which I agree with), but took them away from gay and lesbians.
That's the world we live in.
I'm sick....
But I don't want to just wallow in this. I'm trying to figure out what to do to turn this sadness into hope and into something productive.
Maybe one day you and I will be standing in a huge crowd somewhere in America celebrating the election of a lesbian or a gay man as president. And maybe this defeat, and the defeat in Arizona and Florida are part of the history that had to take place in order for something huge like that to happen in our lifetime.
All I know is that I won't walk down the street the same way again after today. I'm proud of the people in this country for electing Obama (more on that later!) and at the same time SO incredibly saddened by the 5 million people in the state I live in who think its perfectly fine to discriminate against me and most of my friends.
I'm sure the majority of those people are citing their *faith* and belief in God as the reasoning behind voting YES. For the first time in my life, I'm grateful that I've never been properly introduced to whoever this "God" dude is. Thought I was missing out, but this dude is a total buzzkill.
-arlan
p.s. as of 12:30pm Wednesday, there are still 3mill+ absentee ballots to count and only a 400k margin between YES and NO on PROP 8. However, most are already calling it. There will be a rally tonight at 7pm in West Hollywood. Please join me there...
8 comments:
As a Californian currently in Berlin, I had NO IDEA that there were that many people behind 8. Here in the blissfully liberal German capital, the Europeans and I were too busy drinking and celebrating Obama to notice that roughly 52% of California is out of their fucking minds.
But don't worry. Mine and many other absentee ballots are still coming.
I know there will be a day when we will cheer a gay man or a lesbian as he or she steps to the podium to accept the presidency. People said we would never see a black man in the White House, and look where we are now. There is light at the end of this tunnel.
And about the God thing... well, there's something on my page about it that I wrote last week, but I understand how you feel. Trouble is, God's not who everyone else says he is. He's different for me, He's different for you, and He's certainly different for all the fundamentalists. At least, that's my opinion... don't let anyone define your religion for you. Define it for yourself.
Someday our children will look back at this in absolute disgust... in the same way we look back in disgust at our forefathers and how a nation could only think some citizens were 3/5ths of a person.
I am truly saddened, hurt, and disgusted by those propositions being passed in Cali, Arizona, and Florida. I don't understand how people are so filled with hatred that they want to go about passing something that will hurt others. I'm very pissed about Arkansas banning gays from adopting too. I just don't get it. We just have to keep pushing and fighting.
My former state (Florida) passed a law banning gay marriage, even though it wasn't legal there in the first place.
There are legal documents you can procure to assure most of what is granted to your partner in marriage (assets, living will, will, other rights) are granted to your partner without marriage.
At this point, were I in a serious relationship, I'd almost prefer that then to be "allowed" by our government to marry. If I want to spend the rest of my life with my partner, and they with me, I don't want/need a piece of paper.
I agree with you completely. I have been so sad over this. It just seems wrong that we should even get to vote on this basic human right. The state supreme court decision should stand. It really depresses me that so many people I know voted yes on prop 8.
This should be a wake-up call. Instead you're all feeling hurt, sad, angry, vengeful, etc.
Three states voted against you. Not three corn-fed, hayseed backwaters. The largest state in the Union and the two fastest-growing (by percentage) sunbelt states. Hello-o!
Two thoughts.
1. The Black vote. For the first time, blacks voted in huge numbers. They came to vote for a black president, but they also voted 70 percent against you. Barack energized them and as long as he's around, they'll be back, probably in even larger numbers. That bodes ill for your chances.
2. Your branding anyone who voted against you as a hater. In California, Obama got over 60% of the vote. A lot of those Obama voters (like me) voted yes on 8. If you think all the yes on 8 peeps were Sarah Palin crypto-nazis, you're up to your earlobes in crap.
http://playwrighter.blogspot.com/
God isn't a buzzkill. The religious right and evangelicals Christians who claim to know God with absolute certainty are the buzzkills. I should know; I was born among them.
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