Last summer, when the California Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional, I found it impossible to get excited. I didn’t know why. It just seemed too good to be true, so deep down I didn’t think it actually was true. Same-sex couples around me started getting married and I tried to be happy for them, but I never quite believed it.
And, well, now I know why. Because it was too good to be true.
Last night, I watched one of our organizers start crying as he realized we were going to lose. I didn’t know what I could possibly say to console him. The stakes were infinitely higher for him than for the homophobes cheering in Orange County. I think of all the other married couples my husband and I worked with on this campaign, and it breaks my heart.
That’s really all I can say at this point. My heart is broken.
(Cross-posted on Alas, A Blog)
Filed under: general bigotry, LGBT
On behalf of everyone in California. . .I am so, so sorry.
The fact that Prop 8 passed… I am so furious. Somehow it didn’t even occur to me that it could. I had more anxiety about Obama winning than about this.
I was very worried it would pass, in part because it was ass-backwards and a “yes” vote meant “no same-sex marriage”. I’m quite sure that was deliberately misleading.
I am furious today – and I’m a married heterosexual living in another state. I can’t imagine what this is like for my gay friends in California.
I sat up until 3 AM, refreshing the CNN web page. I was so convinced that at the last minute suddenly the tides would turn. I just don’t understand anyone who would fight so hard (and so dirtily) to take away peoples’ rights. I had opted to vote in California instead of Oregon (where I just moved) just to help defeat prop. 8.
just responded to petitpoussin about this. i understand your reaction completely – though i kind of had the opposite, because i couldn’t imagine that, once people were allowed to be married and straight marriage didn’t implode/blond children weren’t combusting, that there could really be enough hatred to get the cat back in the bag.
i feel so defeated, and i didn’t even get very involved (money and a sign the world do not change). i was just too fearful, convinced it’d break me too deeply. all the more reason to admire you and t so much for throwing yourselves into it.