As many of you may know, yesterday Kansas became the 19th state to make hatred against homosexuals part of the state constitution. The amendment passed 70% - 30%. It was a landslide, though no rationally minded person expected otherwise.
I count myself as one of the rational people. However, I did not let that keep me from putting up one hell of a fight.
Those of you living in firmly Democratic, tolerant states may be wondering how a person can continue to put blood, sweat and tears into lost causes. I wonder that myself. For a look at how my friends and I cope living in Kansas, follow me over the fold...
Blue = Yes to affirm the amendment.
Red = No to oppose the amendment.
See that solitary red community? That is Douglas County, home of the city of Lawrence and the University of Kansas. This town is how I avoid a deep cynical, apathetic depression. While the rest of the state was voting Yes by a 2:1 margin, Lawrence voted No by a 2:1 margin.
The rest of Kansas thinks Lawrence is a different universe. Having endured living in Wichita, Ks for a few years I heard plenty of people reference Lawrence as "Sin City" where the "heathens, pagans, and feminist outcasts" of Kansas reside.
I am proud to report that it is true. We have plenty of pagans. Feminism is alive and well. Half the campus of KU wears buttons that say "This is what a feminist looks like." We have a vibrant and thriving gay population, including a wildly popular Drag Queen Fashion Show held on campus that should be coming up soon.
We are the town where a 1500 seat auditorium sold out in 45 minutes for Howard Dean. We are the town that so vociferously heckled Ann Coulter she tried to incite the young republicans to violence. (As an aside... the question that really put her over the top was "Which is larger, your adam's apple or your cock?")
Just tonight there are two different benefit concerts going occurring. One for the Sudan sponsored by Amnesty International and the other for tsunami relief.
I suppose the purpose of this diary to is remind the rest of the country that even in Kansas there remains liberals. Trapped, lonely, vastly outnumbered liberals. But brothers and sisters of the movement all the same.
I'll leave you with Kansas' new tourism slogan:
And the most popular bumper sticker in Lawrence:
Update: Its Simple If You Ignore The Complexity pointed out an editorial today in the Wichita Eagle decrying the amendment's passage. Here is an excerpt:
Also, a scary social amnesia pervades this vote among the unlikeliest of groups -- some Catholics and some African-Americans in particular -- who'd been oppressed but now want to deny others their rights.
I've heard stories for years from older Wichitans of how Klansmen chased Catholics off downtown streetcars. A black man once told me he'd actually attended a Klan rally. His friend's father didn't mind a black kid attending the rally, he said, because the Klan seemed far more consumed with its hate for Catholics than with its hate for black people.
I'd include in this milieu some African-Americans, whose history has been one long struggle, and many contemporary Christians who've felt their spiritual voices muffled by politically correct secularism.
But now, they've eagerly joined people who don't believe in "special rights" but actively seek to impose special wrongs on people, betting our collective future on a world of narrowing rather than expanding rights.
How soon, it seems, that oppressed people forget.
So today marks the dawning of a new day of narrowing rights. Make no mistake about it, as soon as the busybodies pushing this amendment finish their work this session, my rights are next. And then yours.
Don't think this bill won't change things. It already has.
Almost certainly for the worse.