It is a week and a half since election/voting day, and my fury will not dissapate. My thoughts stay on California, and the heinous passing of Proposition 8. The hard-won right for gay couples to be legally married has been taken back. Turns out the majority of California does not consider gay people human after all.
Love is love. There is too little love in the world already. Now we must punish those who do not love as we tell them to? The fact that this came about on the same night we elected America's first black president boggles the mind. One giant leap forward and backward at once? I don't even know how to wrap my mind around that. (And California was generally considered so "in the bag" for Obama that he didn't even have to focus much attention on campaigning there. Everyone I know in the state was campaigning for him!) So tell me, California, how does one manage to be only half open-minded?
I am too outraged to even write an effective, lucid rant on the matter.
I want to see another civil rights movement spring from this. I am not expecting a complete victory. The black community didn't get one. They won many legal rights, but are still not treated as equal humans by their government, their society, or many of their neighbours. But on paper, at least, they get to be humans. On this issue, I am excited about our first black president. I want to see the black community catalysed.
I stray from my point, but it is difficult not to draw parallels. California is not the only state to hold such laws regarding gay marriage. This is a worldwide human rights issue. There is no satisfactory religious or legal argument against basic human rights. The campaign for Prop 8 was funded by the Mormon church, insurance companies, and banks (amongst others). This proposition was about money, just like so many other atrocious laws passed in this nation. (If not most/all of them. I don't have figures, but we all know it. Note that the props concerning renewable energy failed miserably in this same voting night in California).
The message we are being sent? If you want to be considered an equal human, you have to make "us" more money. And there is your real foundation. In so many ways, most of us are subjected to inhuman violations of our basic rights as people because we cannot afford to fund campaigns or buy our way through whatever hurdles.
But this only explains how Prop 8 got on the ballot in the first place, and the powers that funded the Yes campaign. What upsets me is the blindness that drove the majority to vote for it! How can that be justified? What do you gain by denying others equal rights? How is your life changed by the marriage of a gay couple? How can you rage about family values and then destroy so many families? Does acceptance have conditions?
We are people. All of us.
Who will you turn to when your human rights are being stripped from you? Do not make the mistake of thinking they aren't and will not be. If you do not fight for others, who do you expect to fight for you?
I don't know how I shall proceed, what changes I can effect....I have no money to buy the biggest microphone and drown out other voices with my outrage, nor am I sure that would even be the right course. If I posted this on every public site on the internet, I would not be daft enough to think I have done my part. I am just one voice, bitching in the night. I may make no difference at all.
But I am still going to try.
Author notes
This piece is personal, and written out of emotion. There is no attempt to gather facts or present a case. I expect to piss off at least one person, and to hear at least one religious retaliation. So be it; I do not care. I post it here simply because the idea of feeling such outrage and not being willing to state it publicly would shame me.
I will read all comments gladly, on either side of the issue, but I will respond to none of them, at least not publicly. I do not see the point.
We either intend or we pretend.
note added 12July2009: I have never enjoyed reading comments more than these here on this piece. I found them intelligent & lucid, and full of the kind of love I'm trying to spread around. Thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts with me.
Comments
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I agree completely!
When John and I traveled to Northern California in October 2008, they were in the middle of the campaigning for Prop 8. Every commercial on the radio was "yes to prop 8" or "no to prop 8", there were billboards, television ads... it was EVERYWHERE!
I was astonished that California (the state I'd always thought to be forward-thinking and liberal) would even debate it at all - much less so heatedly.
My whole thing is (like you said): who the hell does it hurt? How does it hurt anybody for two people who love one another to get married?
In fact, doesn't it help society?
The whole purpose of marriage to is to stabilize society! Wouldn't it be better for them to have the ability to get married?
Even apart from that, how selfish it is for people to want to prevent the happiness of others. How ignorant to dismiss that which you do not understand. How foolish to hate it because you are afraid.
Ignorant buffoon cowards. People make me sick.
You have to realize, too, that I grew up in the countryside, in a small Bible-belt town full of Bible-backed tyrants --- people too ignorant to understand or care about anything but their ridiculous traditions and high-and-mighty selves.
Lexington, just 15 miles south of me, still hosted KKK rallies when I was in high school. My friends and I rode through the town square where they stood in their white robes, holding their crosses. I felt sick. My friends held black power fists out the car windows and yelled at them and called them idiots. I was too terrified to speak.
The majority of people I know are racist bigots. Even if they are not racist, they are pretty much all against homosexuality.
Thank you, whatever higher power there may be, that I was smart enough to have my own opinion and view and didn't take the lead of these morons I grew up around. Thank you for giving me sight to see things as they should be and not blinding me with fear and cowardice.
I'm going to shut up now.
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As a Californian, I'm opposed to Prop 8. I'm a practicing Muslim, by the way. Just before the election, I read an article by an American Muslim scholar, Dr. Sherman Jackson, who is African American by the way. In it, he presented the case that traditional Muslim scholars of the Middle Ages specifically said that Islamic shari'ah (Islamic law) was not to be used against non-Muslims, let alone in a secular society. Although my religion considers homosexuality forbidden, we don't (shouldn't) force non-Muslims to live by this. I wouldn't force a non-Muslim to agree with Islam's teachings, just as I wouldn't expect someone else to force me to think and believe what they do. Mutual respect and tolerance should be the order. We have to acknowledge that we don't live in a theocracy.
I hate the California proposition system. Someone with enough signatures can get virtually anything on the ballot. Tomorrow, these evangelical Christians may get a proposition on the ballot outlawing Islam and Muslims. -
Geez, Andypants, take a breath! Why is it that homophobes' imaginations run absolutely wild when they think about gay men? The vast VAST majority of child sexual abuse is committed by sick heterosexual men. And why can't they see that it isn't about where the penis is put, or what goes into (or not) a vagina! It is about the right to love the person of our choice, to make a life and yes, a family, and to have that family protected by the law. All the other crap people argue is just that, crap! And about the children: The vast VAST majority of children raised by gay and lesbian couples turn ot to be -- gasp -- heterosexual!!! So where do gay and lesbian children come from -- yep, that's right, those legally protected heterosexual marriages... Some states and countries have already recognized the human rights issue. We just have to keep pushing for the rest. Good work Cubert!
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Wow....interesting take on the elections and so full of contemplativeness. Nicely penned
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I hear your concerns and echo them...I cannot affect any vote in the USA as am in the UK but I do agree that same-sex unions should be allowed to be blessed by the sanctity of marriage in every city and every country...
It is such a strange state of affairs when a couple may bear the right to bear arms but not bear the right to wear wedding rings...
No one questions the sexual orientation of two same-sex individuals that kill each other so why question the sexual orientation of two same-sex individuals that love each other...
Quite what the solution is I don't know but peaceful and pro-active petitioning is at least a step in the right direction.
Maybe all gay couples could also switch banks from those that don't support them...maybe form their own co-operative bank...
Maybe form their own Church ( the Westboro baptist church was formed to cause disaffect why then not create a new church to have a harmonic effect specifically for gay couples and those heterosexuals that support rainbow love...how about The Church of Rainbow Love ) ....
I'd suggest a web site /forum wherby ideas can be garnered and worked towardfds collectively making a change...yes one voice in the wilderness may not be heard...but gay people are in all walks of life...gay lawyers may be willing to give free legal advice...gay poets /artists could help with slogans and promo...
An angry stance may well be ignored...an assertive voice making pertinent points in harmony with many other voices assertively making points harmoniously stands more chance of being heard...
If anti-gay people believe it is right for government to pass laws re who may marry how would they feel if the law was reveresed and only gay couples were allowed to marry and heterosexual couples were banned from marrying...they would choose to do exactly the same...to campaign for a change in such a ludicrous law...
All lands need laws so that there is not chaos in society per se...what are these anti-gay people afraid of...that without this law gay couples will cause a shortage of confetti...a law should be passed to serve and protect its people...this law serves only some people and does not protect anyone as there is nothing to be protected from...
Marie Antionette said " let them eat cake" My name is Yvette and I say " let all lovers marry and eat wedding cake"
Ok...enough of my rambling...but a few ideas which I hope may engender many others...
Rainbow Love
Yvette
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If I want pork, I say I want pork! I do not point to the steak and say I want pork then expect someone to hand me the steak.
A marraige, is a union between a man and women, always has been, should always be. If two people of the same sex want to commit to a lifelong bond, we should call it something else, because it is not the same as marraige. To say marraige is just the joining of 2 people in a contract is to only look very vagualy at the meaning of the word. A relationship between a man and women is not the same as a relationship between 2 same sex people, they have different oppurtunities and different family structures. For the concept of marrage to apply to same sex couples, you would have to redefine its meaning, making it more vague and generalized, this takes away so much from its authenticity. Marraige should stay as it is, and if same sex couples want to create a new type of union, with a new type of meaning, which would accuratly refer to the relationship they are looking to make, then I will not stand in their way despite my disagreement with their choice. However we should not be teaching our children that a man having sex with a man is the same as a man having sex with a women or vis-versa. This is a very minority view, as most people can quite comfortably see that penis's quite clearly fit inside vaginas. And when you stick stuff in your butt there is much higher chance you could get infected.
Think of this..
How would you feel if you found your small child fiddling around with a child of the same sex. Then they turn around and say but I thought it was normal? There are barriers between a girl and boy that generally stop childrens curiosity getting the best of them until their later ages. These barriers are much smaller deterents to children who do not understand little boys shouldn't play with little boys like mummys play with daddys (or vise-versa). Think of the children someone!
It is also a human right to defend valued costumes from new-age ideas. These new-age idealists should make there own customes, not demand old ones be changed. They ahve a right to exist, but not at the expense of well respected and very symbolic traditions of many people.
A new word, for a new type of union. Then noone is confused, angered, or left stratching their head over why common sense isn't being followed.
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