I wept last night. I wept reading the papers this morning. This will get my name scratched of the invite list of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which is famous for its anti-racist-training seminars, but whatever. And please note: My original post described black homophobia as a big problem for all gays and lesbians, whatever their color. I can't defend the votes of my fellow Californians -- but I couldn't help noting that the Mormon-backed campaign for Prop 8 was seriously deceitful.
Massive mailings aimed at African-Americans falsely claimed that Obama supported the Proposition; and other ads and mailers lied about children being forced to learn Gay Studies in grade school etc. It was nasty and despicable. I am now taking a couple of day break from being overjoyed about the new president to be depressed about the unfairness of what just happened in california. I swear, if Obama and a democratic congress can't deliver federal civil unions within the next four years, I am not voting for Obama for re-election.
Fuck change. Gay people aren't doormats you can use to help win an election and then forget like Clinton did. Prop 8 passing was the one buge heartbreak of the night for me I thought our country was better than this.
Black and white, I thought we had figured out a bit more about what love and respect meant. I guess not: I just had a conversation about how marriage equality all boils down to allowing couples in love as many choices as possible reguardless of their gender and a really progressive white co-worker used the analogy "if a 40 year-old man and 10 year-old girl want to choose something, how do we not legislate against it?
I am feeling the same bittersweet feeling this morning. How can the parallels between banning interracial marriage and banning gay marriage not be seen? How long will it be in the US before we have a gay president? I was just coming here to post about this. It's a maddening statistic, and it took away all of my hope that somehow, this relatively close vote could somehow have been a fraudulent one.
