At this hour the status of Proposition 8 in California is still unclear, with early results from largely "conservative" areas showing it ahead, and yet with exit polls too close to call.
We are united with all of America in celebrating the end of an eight-year national nightmare and the beginning of national renewal. Yet we stand in a lonely place as the minority it is still "OK" to hate, even to the point of passing laws and state constitutional amendments against us.
There is a path forward toward full equal rights under the law, at the Federal level, from sea to shining sea.
It is as inevitable as evolution, and the result will be as inexorable as the end of racial segregation.
It will come with surprising rapidity.
Past as prelude.
In World War II, the United States fought enemies whose ideologies were founded upon racial, religious, and ethnic hatreds. We stood with our principles of liberty and equality and justice for all, and in the end, we stood with the Allies in victory over Nazism and other forms of fascism.
In those days the United States military, as with much of civilian society, was racially segregated.
Liberty and equality and justice for all ...and segregation for some.
Out of this intolerable contrast was born what became the roots of the Civil Rights movement.
On 26 July 1948, President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which integrated America's military.
Still, America's black warriors continued to come home to a nation where they were told where to sit on the bus, where to sit in the restaurant, and even where to go to the bathroom and which drinking fountain to use. They were also forbidden to marry white Americans.
By the early 1960s, the Civil Rights movement took hold with ferocious intensity, and through long struggle, segregation was finally ended and justice began to dawn.
Today we see the fruits of that struggle, and few of us could hold back a tear when we saw a brilliant progressive black American stand at the podium as America's new President-elect and we heard him speak with a voice that has inspired a transformation.
At the time Obama was born, the laws against interracial marriage were still on the books in many states, and would not be struck down until he was in elementary school. In many states his own parents would have been criminals as a result.
Fast-forward.
One of Bush's legacies has been a degree of damage to America's military that could not have been worse had he been working directly for foreign foes. In particular our Army and Marines, and our National Guard and Reserves, have continued to function effectively only due to the sheer strength and dedication of our fighting men and women.
Yet enlistment and reinlistment have declined, and in particular the mid-level officer corps has taken a serious hit. Many of the best and the brightest have resigned their commissions. Meanwhile the military have been made to lower their enlistment standards to the point where they take people who would have been considered thoroughly unfit in the past, including some with serious criminal records.
One of Obama's tasks will be to rebuild our military to its full fighting strength, even as he redeploys forces from Iraq to Afghanistan.
There is an obvious place to turn. Most of those in uniform today say quite clearly that they could care less who their fellow warriors sleep with, so long as they are fully professional on the job and fully reliable under fire.
And so we will see the end of the discriminatory "don't ask / don't tell" policy, by a stroke of Obama's pen on an executive order as Commander in Chief. Gay and lesbian Americans will be able to serve without having to live under a mandated exception to the ethic of honesty.
When America's gay warriors come home, in most places, they will still be forbidden to marry.
Once again, liberty and equality and justice for all, will be faced with an intolerable contradiction. And once again, this contradiction will not long stand.
The wheels will have been set in motion for the inevitable: If you can die for our country, you must have full equality under our laws, including the right to marry the person you love.
Meanwhile...
In the event Prop 8 passes, the NO campaign has legal strategies in mind, that they have not yet made public. They will start to wage the necessary battles in the courts, and the legal actions will work their way through the system. I have some specific ideas about what I think their strategies may include, but I'm not going to speculate in public about that.
One thing is certain though. There will be a new Supreme Court waiting to hear those cases.
At the right moment, the legal cases will be brought to the Supreme Court.
And the Court will affirm the precedent from Loving vs. VA, that the right to marry is an absolutely fundamental right:
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
The implications of that precedent are clear beyond any reasonable doubt. And when we have a Court that has been brought to a reasonable balance of philosophies once again, that Court will affirm that our rights are no different than those of interracial couples, and that the state may not interfere on the basis of bigotry.
And now a word from science. (this section is an update added around 12:30AM).
The hate amendment defines marriage as between "a man" and "a woman." OK, how do you define a man or a woman? By their genitals, or by their genes? This is not merely academic.
About one million Americans have chromosome combinations other than the usual XX for female or XY for male. For example ther is XXY, and XXXY, each of which can be read as "both." If we define gender by genetics, then these individuals are "both" and therefore forbidden to marry at all.
Yet there are also kids born with ambiguous genitalia: physically "both." Usually the parents or doctor make a "choice," enforced by surgery, and the kid grows up taught to be "one" or "the other." What if the genes and the genitals don't match? And more to the point, if parents can surgically determine the gender of a child, then an adult must have the right to surgically determine their own gender.
You can see where that takes us. Adam and Steve are in love, but are forbidden to marry. Then Steve has gender surgery and emerges as Stephanie. Now they're allowed to marry. Let me be slightly crass about this in describing the message the state sends with this: chop it off and we'll let you marry who you like.
And what about those who are transgender in their soul but cannot afford the surgery, or are opposed to surgery in general, for whatever reason?
Last but not least, if gender is defined as the capacity to produce sperm or eggs, what about those who are biologically sterile and can produce neither...?
The bottom line is, there is no truly meaningful way to define gender. And in fact nature places us on a continuum with a large region of "in between" and "both," sometimes as subtle as an emotional predisposition in regard to the things we find attractive in others' personalities. No matter how one tries to define gender, sufficient exceptions exist to invalidate the rule.
Laws of this type based on gender have as much scientific validity as laws based on astrological signs.
Equality is inevitable. Count on it.
What we must do is to support each of the steps that will be occurring in parallel: integration of the military, the nomination of progressive Justices to the Supreme Court, and the progress of the legal battle through the Federal courts along the way to the Supreme Court.
And when the day of full equality has finally dawned, it will be as unremarkable as if it was always just a matter of common sense that finally caught up with the nation at large.
With Obama's election we can say: Eight years late, but better late than never, the 21st Century has finally dawned on our shores.
In less time than we realize, full equality will come with the new daylight.