“My”* guy won last night. We have elected our first black president in the United States; a date that will go down in history and I am predicting might be one of our generation’s “Kennedy moment”**. We will be asked by our children where we were when we heard that the first black president was elected.
Anti-choice measures all across the country failed tonight (including the 3-peat “Parental notification” measure that failed in California). Children won’t have to worry about being thrown out of a house or beaten because of an unwanted pregnancy.
Dole, the atheist-baiting bigot, was defeated in Nouth Carolina.
But, like getting an A on all of your classes but failing one, my disappointment today is about Proposition 8 in California. I was hoping against hope that people wouldn’t want to take away people’s right to marry. I was hoping against hope that even though they wouldn’t give the rights to people, that they would recognize those self-same civil rights when the courts were forced to step in.
But they didn’t…
And now, after a major stepping stone forward for the civil rights of one group, all I can think of is the civil rights lost to the ones who tripped and fell. They lost their right to legal recognition of their love, and all of the privileges therein. All of the rights of marriage: the health care from the partners insurance, the community property, the tax break, the visitation rights; all of the things that took me and my Hubby 15 minutes and 65 bucks; are being taken away from people who are my friends and loved ones.
All so people don’t have to tell their children that gay people exist. All so people get to keep the magical word “marriage” to their happy little heterosexual selves. All so “traditionalists” who don’t what the hell the word “tradition” means can stay stuck in their backwards, bigoted world, afraid of how fast the world is changing, and too lazy to want to keep up with it. And this is bigotry; plain and simple. This is not wanting homosexual people to have the same rights as heterosexual people, because some pastor said that a 2000-year-old book written by a bunch of bronze-age, nomadic goat herders about a megalomaniac, sadistic sky fairy that had been translated and re-translated a bunch of time through the centuries had a few, taken-out-of-context phrases that meant to literally say that “gays are icky”.
I’m disappointed, and I’m furious. I’m angry because I’m now going to be told that the gay rights movement just needs to ask nicer next time, and if they wouldn’t be so in-your-face about it, and just wait nicely, then they would have won. I’m angry because people are proud in their bigotry: they are CELEBRATING it under some sort of fuzzy definition of “values”. And I’m angry because anger is a much more productive emotion than sorrow.
*Technically, I would have preferred McKinney. But, Obama’s the one I voted for.
*That and 9-11.
100% agree. Pam’s House Blend has some other interesting notes about what happened, and some other potential negative fallout.
No one should have to ask nicely for their basic rights.
What you said.
In California, it looks like Prop 8 has a good chance of passing. With 92 percent of precincts reporting, the gay marriage ban is winning 52 percent to 48 percent. And if it does pass, it will be because of black and, to a lesser extent, Latino voters.
According to exit polls, whites opposed the amendment 53-47. But blacks supported it 70-30, and Latinos supported it 51-49. The polls have blacks at 10 percent of the electorate for this issue, with Latinos at 19 percent and whites at 63 percent. (Asians, at six percent, opposed the proposition 53-47.)
Chris,
Prop 8 passed. And it’s not because of race, it’s because of religion. 47 percent of whites being bigoted is nothing to be proud of, and the Latinos could possibly be a statistical error.
Not to mention, exit polls aren’t always the best indication.
And, uh, 47% of whites is a HUGE total number of people, way bigger than 70% of black voters or 51% of Hispanic voters. So don’t let white people off the hook one bit or blame “others” — that’s exactly what Pam was getting at.
Religion definitely has to answer for this bigotry.
Asians opposed it 53-47?
There may be a dynamic worth exploring here.
I would say age, far more than religion, is the deciding factor. Older people tend to be against gay marriage. Young people, not so much.
Having said that, the most likely demographic, by FAR, to vote to ban gay marriage in California was African American democrats. They are also the most reliably democratic voters.
In a two party country, both parties are made up of uneasy coalitions.
***
FYI: Elizabeth Dole was not defeated in South Carolina.
Chris,
Age was most definately a major factor. But, in sheer numbers, it was white evangelicals that pushed this over, not Democratic blacks.
And, um, yes she was: http://www.wsoctv.com/politics/17868553/detail.html#-
Kinda like the Daks, there are two Carolinas. One is called North Carolina, the other South Carolina. Elizabeth Dole was never a Senator from South Carolina.
This prop 8 thing breaks my heart. I just got back from class and went to read the news to see if anything changed for the better and I got this. I think maybe the only reason why I’m not just crying now is that I don’t want to wake up my roommate. I just… I just… I don’t know what to do with this kind of stuff, especially in my home state. People here keep saying “well, you can’t ask for too much at a time, maybe next election.” I just want to scream
It is not too much to ask to be treated like an human being, it is not too much to ask to not have someone else’s beliefs made into law. I’m done waiting and I’m done being nice and friendly and polite about getting my rights. It obviously doesn’t work.
Guh, I’m just overwhelmingly angry. This makes my first time voting so incredibly bittersweet.
Whoops, typo, my mistake. It would have been nice to have that pointed out that the dispute was about the “North and South” and not Hagan v. Dole.
I was crying for a lot of reasons last night.
Fuck, California. Seriously. What’s wrong with you?
A part of me feels bad for even feeling angry about this. I mean, marriage isn’t exactly a radical institution, I shouldn’t care, etc., etc. But all that aside, this says that most of the voters in California think my relationship isn’t valuable or real, my sexuality isn’t valuable or real, and that we ought to step back into the closet like good little homos. And the fact that people are celebrating that makes me want to vomit. (Radically.)
Could be that Asian voters are more likely to be young and less likely to be Christian (particularly evangelical).
Or that could be an ass-pull.
Violet, according to my Asian friends, Asian parents want EVERYONE to pair up. Nothing makes them happier than people getting married! They all agree that their parents would much rather see a gay child marry than see a straight child stay single.
Ginger, I don’t think that you can reasonably assert that your friends, or their parents, necessarily speak for all Asian-identified people. I know that’s not what you said, but the generalization you made implies as much.
Not, mind you, that I’m trying to be nitpicky. I’m pissed off about Proposition 8 as well, and think that the exit polling demographics are interesting enough to warrant further analysis. Although social justice movements are generally incited by radical goals, they often become increasingly liberal with the passage of time.
Currently, the mainstream LGBT movement is focused primarily on gay marriage and the right to serve in the military. Frankly, those issues aren’t all that high on my list of priorities. I believe the gay community would benefit from redirecting the attention placed on those topics toward trans-inclusion or domestic violence in queer communities.
Nevertheless, gay marriage would be a nice symbolicstep toward equal rights. I know that there are tangible benefits to state-sponsored marriage as well; however, in my opinion, promoting the radical notion that gays are people should be the most imperative reason to legalize marriage for everyone.
Perhaps I’m asking for too much. Liberal activism is a lengthy process with dubious results. Women fought for eighty years to gain suffrage. The ERA still hasn’t been ratified by enough people to pass it. If women don’t have equal rights under the law, keeping my fingers crossed for gay marriage amounts to unalloyed wishful thinking.