Caveat
Last night, a huge rally took place right on our corner. A swarm of people gathered to protest Proposition 8, California's anti-gay-marriage ballot measure.
Prop 8—or Prop H8 ("Prop Hate"), as it has come to be called—narrowly passed last Tuesday, forever tarnishing the historic day on which Barack Obama was elected President. Similar bans passed by wider margins in Arizona and Florida, and Arkansans enacted an equally abhorrent measure designed to bar homosexuals from adopting children.
I can fathom none of these initiatives, nor the thinking of those who supported them.
And I can't begin to imagine how it would feel to wake up the morning after an election to the news that the citizens of my state had collectively determined that my marriage—whether long-term, recent, upcoming, or merely hoped-for—violated the law, public policy, and their narrow-minded, discriminatory values.
How is it that a society can strip its members of rights and protections, can reinstate segregation in a different form, on the same day that this nation rendered a resounding verdict on countless generations of racism? How can we have embraced Jim Crow all over again, merely in a different guise?
Zach and I have been together nearly 19 years, married for almost 16. As far as we know, no one is threatening to invalidate our marriage. But that hardly matters. When the rights of any one of us are under attack, we are all vulnerable.
So we stood on our corner for nearly an hour, with news helicopters buzzing overhead and a phalanx of police officers in riot helmets in the street, and we chanted along with the protesters:
Prop 8—or Prop H8 ("Prop Hate"), as it has come to be called—narrowly passed last Tuesday, forever tarnishing the historic day on which Barack Obama was elected President. Similar bans passed by wider margins in Arizona and Florida, and Arkansans enacted an equally abhorrent measure designed to bar homosexuals from adopting children.
I can fathom none of these initiatives, nor the thinking of those who supported them.
And I can't begin to imagine how it would feel to wake up the morning after an election to the news that the citizens of my state had collectively determined that my marriage—whether long-term, recent, upcoming, or merely hoped-for—violated the law, public policy, and their narrow-minded, discriminatory values.
How is it that a society can strip its members of rights and protections, can reinstate segregation in a different form, on the same day that this nation rendered a resounding verdict on countless generations of racism? How can we have embraced Jim Crow all over again, merely in a different guise?
Zach and I have been together nearly 19 years, married for almost 16. As far as we know, no one is threatening to invalidate our marriage. But that hardly matters. When the rights of any one of us are under attack, we are all vulnerable.
So we stood on our corner for nearly an hour, with news helicopters buzzing overhead and a phalanx of police officers in riot helmets in the street, and we chanted along with the protesters:
What do we want?
Equal rights!
When do we want it?
NOW!
Gay, straight, black, white
Marriage is a civil right!
Equal rights!
When do we want it?
NOW!
Gay, straight, black, white
Marriage is a civil right!
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 2:49 PM
1 Comments:
Jody...
I could not agree more!! It shames me to be a resident of Arizona which, even though there is a one man-one woman law on the books chose to amend the state constitution to reflect this narrow minded, biased and none of anyone's business law.
Cousin Janie
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