Pizza Diavola

Yes on Prop. 8

2008 November 6 at 2:25 PM (2008, civil rights, GLBTQI rights, Gov. Sarah Palin, Prop. 8, rage, Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Joe Biden)

Yes on Prop. 8 … If you plan on telling me how much progress we’ve made since Prop. 22 or that Obama will make everything better or any other bullshit, stay away from me. I mean it. I am not merely angry. I am enraged.

I hold every person that was capable of voting and didn’t vote; every person that voted yes; and every person that did not work to defeat Prop. 8 responsible. It was going to be a damned close race and anyone that was following the news, the fundraising race, and the contradictory polls should have known that. I hold every person that was capable of volunteering, phonebanking, donating, or at the very bare minimum, talking to their friends, family, and coworkers, and chose not to do so, responsible. I hold every person that said, “It’s a difference of opinions,” and shrugged rather than answer the bigotry of their friends, responsible. It’s not a difference of opinions, it’s a judgment of my worth as a human being and my life. If you had another cause, another campaign you were working for, fine, whatever, we all have different priorities and I spent a lot of time working for No on Prop. 4. If you had no cause other than simple complacency, apathy, or disinterest, fuck you.

I donated hundreds of dollars and raised hundreds more (that thermometer to the left? Mostly donations I raised; I tracked my contributions separately). I called voters, came out to my parents because the personal is political, put up window signs, distributed window signs, talked to people that told me, “Domestic partnerships are enough,” (and that was the politest thing they said), and stood on a street corner for hours on Tuesday, waving signs, handing out cards, and talking to voters. I asked, then pleaded, and then begged my family and friends to come to a phonebank, to put up a damned sign in their windows and homes, to donate, to volunteer on Election Day, to talk to their friends. Very few of them did anything.

My state constitution now discriminates against me. It’s written into the very government of my state in plain, bold, unambiguous text. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Do you not realize what an enormous step backward that is, even if the CA Supreme Court finds that Prop. 8 is a constitutional revision and passes it on to the legislature? Or even if we mounted an initiative campaign to repeal Prop. 8 in 2010, there is no guarantee that it would succeed and it would be hugely expensive and difficult. It would also be fighting against the message that “California voters have already expressed their will!”

Or do you simply not care?

While volunteering at the polls yesterday, I had a lady smile and tell me, “You’re not going to like how I voted!” She smiled and laughed as she told me she voted to declare me part of an inferior class of human being. A man screamed, “Sinner!” as he drove past. Many more people shook their fingers at me, frowned, gave me the thumbs down, and yelled, “Yes on Prop. 8!”

I’m part of an inferior class of human being. This election could have been a significant advance for GLBTQI rights, the first time that a population approved same-sex marriage and equality with a popular vote, rather than resisting until a court forced it through. There would have been immense PR cachet and symbolic significance in being able to say, “The majority of voters decided to vote for equality,” and, “the majority of voters expressed their will.” It would have changed the discourse around the marriage equality movement and indisputably proved that a large number of people disapprove of homophobia.

One message that I heard over and over again from people that voted yes on 8 was that domestic partnerships were sufficient and that same-sex couples in California already had all the rights of marriage. They had civil unions and domestic partnerships, and that was good enough. They didn’t need marriage.

I absolutely hold President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden responsible for repeatedly perpetuating that homophobic and untrue message on a national level, at forums, in interviews, and in debates that were watched by millions of people everywhere in the country. Neither one of them ever had the courage to say, “Separate is not equal and by their very definition, domestic partnerships and civil unions are separate and insufficient. Marriage is a fundamental right and I do not support taking away rights from any people.”

Yeah, yeah, they would’ve lost the election if they stood up for equality and GLBTQI rights, blah, blah, they can’t be expected to show leadership, yeahfuckingrightexceptnot. The Dems won the election in a landslide and for all the talk about how Obama energized a movement, he repeatedly used his position as a leader and his national microphone to stomp all over GLBTQI people. He can talk all he likes about repealing DOMA if he thinks there’s support for it–and there’s a principled stand for you–but when push came to shove, he took every opportunity to emphasize that he doesn’t think marriage is necessary for same-sex couples. He even fed directly into the religious furor by stating that he thinks “God is in the mix” and talking about the “sacredness of sexuality” (I’ll bet anything you like that he didn’t mean nasty icky non-heterosexual sexuality). At every opportunity, both Obama and Biden spread the message that it’s possible to support same-sex couples while denying marriage equality. Given that a majority of Californians support some form of rights for same-sex couples while not supporting marriage equality, the failure of Obama and Biden to say that separate is not equal fed directly into existing homophobic attitudes. Some. Fucking. Leadership.

From the VP debates: Biden and Palin on marriage equality:

@1:57 Palin: –But I will tell Americans straight up that I don’t support defining marriage as anything but between one man, and one woman, and I think through nuances we could go round and round about what that actually means, but I’m being as, as straight up with Americans as I can, in my non-support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.

Ifill: Let’s try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?

@2:21 Biden: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining, from a-from a, civil side, what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically a decision to be able to be left to the faith and people that practice their faith, the determination of what you call it. The bottom line, though, is, and I’m glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she thinks there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay people and a committed heterosexual couple. If that’s the case, we really don’t have a difference.

Ifill: Is that what you said?

@2:53 Palin: Um, your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his, and it is that I do not.

Ifill: Wonderful. You agree. [emphasis mine]

In that debate, Biden–and Palin–laid out the host of rights that they support for same-sex couples, and reaffirmed the message that it’s possible to have those rights without same-sex marriage. Separate but equal. Biden and Obama coddled homophobes rather than challenge them.

One thing that infuriates me is the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments about how could the majority of Californians vote for Obama and also vote yes on 8?

How about his separate but equal comments at the Saddleback Forum?

WARREN: There’s a lot more I’d like to ask on that. We have 15 other questions here. Define marriage.

OBAMA: I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix. But –

WARREN: Would you support a Constitutional Amendment with that definition?

OBAMA: No, I would not.

WARREN: Why not?

OBAMA: Because historically — because historically, we have not defined marriage in our constitution. It’s been a matter of state law. That has been our tradition. I mean, let’s break it down. The reason that people think there needs to be a constitutional amendment, some people believe, is because of the concern that — about same-sex marriage. I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage, but I do believe in civil unions. I do believe that we should not — that for gay partners to want to visit each other in the hospital for the state to say, you know what, that’s all right, I don’t think in any way inhibits my core beliefs about what marriage are. I think my faith is strong enough and my marriage is strong enough that I can afford those civil rights to others, even if I have a different perspective or different view.

In other words: civil unions are good enough. Marriage is speshul and only for heterosexual people!

Remember Donnie McClurkin? Don’t act so surprised by the Yes on 8 and Obama-Biden votes. People made excuses for Obama when it came to McClurkin and when it came to Meeks and touted them as examples of his bipartisanship and his ability to reach out across the aisle and dressed it up however they could. The reality is that he was reaching out to the homophobic vote. And he got it.

While Obama said that he didn’t support Prop. 8, there is technically nothing, absolutely nothing wrong and untrue about the Yes on 8 mailer that had a huge picture of Obama on it and his own reprehensible quotes about marriage equality. His gratuitous comments about religion and God are and always have been repulsive, given the role of many churches in promoting homophobia and especially in light of the concerted effort by the Mormon and many Christian churches in and out of CA in supporting Prop. 8. His comments say, “Vote for me! I’m a church-going homophobe, just like you! You can grant those icky GLBTQI people civil rights AND vote for me AND ban same-sex marriage! Those positions are all totally consistent with each other!”

Back at the convention, Obama’s staffer said Obama wanted the gay vote–wanted the gay vote so much that he wanted GLBTQI people to convince themselves to vote for Obama and do outreach work for him.

I believe that our campaign has not done the effective job it needs to do to persuade and convince LGBT voters that Barack Obama is someone who will lead for them, who will fight for them, fight for us. That’s a failure on behalf of our campaign in my opinion, and I’ve played a role in it. What we need is for all of you to be our voices in our communities and to work tirelessly to give every single day, as much time as you can give, to know Barack’s record and to know John McCain’s failed record and to go out and talk to people who care about the future of LGBT people in this country.

Well, I never worked for Obama. Hell, I didn’t vote for him (no, I didn’t vote for McCain, either, so fuck off). But I have gay friends that campaigned for him in swing states–and so now what? Now what, Obama? Are you going to show that you “care about the future of LGBT people in this country?” Or are you going to continue on your current path and use us as convenient bodies to throw at the social conservatives so that you can win their votes and they can continue to discriminate against us? Fuck. You.

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