Losing California

After all the euphoria of Tuesday night has settled, the harsh reality remains: as a gay person, I, like friends and millions of people I don't know, lost out on Tuesday night because the people of California decided to take a huge step backwards rather than continuing their progressive approach towards civil rights. Ironically it seems that this is in part due to a reverse Bradley affect: African-Americans came out in droves to vote and overwhelmingly voted for Proposition 8, as did Roman Catholic Latinos. While young people in general voted against Prop 8, older people voted for it, and the result: an unholy alliance between older whites and minorities of all ages, evangelicals and Catholics, and a huge number of Democrats, all of whom seem to think that two men or two women hitting it with each other is a dire threat to their own marriages and their kids. A second irony is that nearly the same number of voters opposed a proposition that would have damaged abortion rights in California, meaning that these people are pro sexual rights in one sense, but are homophobic. And, as I wrote much earlier in the year, while president-elect Obama does not support gay marriage but does support civil unions and opposed Prop 8, I see little happening in his administration due to the Democratic position of leaving it up to states. Well the states are speaking: Arizona, which was the only state to defeat such a hateful measure two years ago, amended its constitution. Florida did the same. Arkansas made it illegal for gay people to adopt. Social conservatives are willing this cultural war of fear, stripping rights from a minority by majority vote, a miscarriage of democracy and justice so vile that it threatens to undermine all the hope displayed on Tuesday night. Can we say for sure, as gay people, that our lives will be better under Obama, not so much by what he does, but by a societal schizophrenia that allows change yet stifles progress? Once more, I'm reminded how I am a second-class citizen, and while it may be the case that class or race can help mitigate these problems, the shear fact is this: if Jews or Lutherans or African-Americans were constitutionally prohibited, in 2008, from having rights, Americans would not stand for it. But because two people who love each other happen to have the same genitalia, the American people go holy ape shit and decide they need to "protect" rights by denying them to others. There are few battlegrounds left--over 35 states have legislated our rights away. And if it can happen in California, it can happen anywhere.