Have you ever felt like you didn't have a place to take your shoes off and put your feet up? Like the place you came to at night was filled with people who couldn't hear you and weren't interested? Like you were always in motion, unable to get the much-deserved rest you needed just to get through your day?
That's how I feel this morning.
Today, November 5, 2008, I do not feel welcome in my own home.
More to that in a moment, but first, a story...
When I was a resident advisory at the University of Michigan many years ago, I was in charge of the only all-male floor in my coed dorm. My almost-all-Freshman hall was a terror for much of the year, as several of my residents took on the moniker the "Five Bad Apples" and smashed glass in the showers, pulled the fire alarm several times in a single night before finals, and burned signs in the hallway. One night in particular I stepped out of my bedroom door to find "Luke is a faggot" scrawled all over the walls, with giant arrows pointing to my door. The hate directed my way was perpetuated by the same people I would see eating in the cafeteria, cleaning up in the bathroom, or walking down the halls. The same people who would smile or say hi to my face, and then make my life a living hell when I wasn't looking.
I didn't feel welcome in my own home, and by March I had a bad case of mono, my grades were falling, and I felt alone.
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Today my home is the United States of America. My home is California. My home is San Francisco.
Last night, at 8:00PM Pacific Time, as I walked through my quite liberal neighborhood, I heard Keith Olbermann's baritone voice announcing that Barack Obama was the next President of the United States, and hundreds of people started cheering and car horns started honking everywhere. People spilled into the streets and a night of raucous celebration began.
An hour later I was at the Westin St. Francis hotel, watching Barack Obama give a soaring victory speech, which brought me to tears, and an hour after that, I was depressed at the state of the race on California's Proposition 8, which appeared then (and continues to appear) headed to victory, thus enshrining discrimination into our State Constitution.
Let me make this as freaking clear as possible.
More than 5 million Californians voted to take away my rights.
Do you understand? Do you get it? I'm trying to be happy about Barack's win, but I feel like crap.
As millions of people around the world (rightly) celebrate an incredible victory for Barack Obama, it seems as though hardly anyone can understand the utter sadness I feel at this moment, having simultaneously seen a racial ceiling shattered and a sexual orientation ceiling fortified - all in one night.
I don't feel welcome in my own home.
As I looked around the bus today, I wondered of the those faces staring blankly toward me, "did you vote to take away my rights?"
As I walked the streets of Oakland yesterday to encourage "NO" votes on 8, I wondered of these voters, "will you vote to take away my rights?"
As I stood on a median last night waving a sign in the cold Pacific air, I wondered of the car drivers and passengers going past, "are you going to vote to take away my rights?"
Surely, enough people did. No matter what anyone says about this one not being settled because there are still a million ballots to be counted, it's winning by 400,000 votes, and that is a margin we simply cannot make up. Proposition 8 will win.
Surely, there's enough blame to go around on the "No" campaign side, which failed to capitalize on Barack Obama's opposition to Prop 8 until days before the election after a third of the votes had been cast, which ran a largely reactionary campaign rather than a proactive one, and which didn't understand that in order to win we had to impress that Prop 8 was about taking away rights, rather than making it appear that a "NO" vote gave people more rights.
Surely, there's lots of fingers to point and frustration to air. But that's not the point.
Because today, I do not feel welcome in my own home.
California was a landslide victory for Barack Obama. More than 6.1 million people voted for Barack Obama. Yet only 4.8 million people voted against Proposition 8. And we know from polling that a small percentage of them were John McCain supporters.
So that means about 1.5 million people who voted for Barack Obama (or a quarter of his total vote in California) voted to take away my rights.
That is not a victory for equality. That is not some major shift which signifies the dawning of a new era. That is the same old sorry outcome and politics which tells us that some of us are inherently better than others.
I don't feel welcome in my own home.
For the foreseeable future, I am a second-class citizen. In this "land of opportunity," I am still denied my basic civil rights.
For today, I am not welcome in my own home.
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The last week of my first year as a Resident Advisor, one of my most difficult and homophobic residents knocked on my door. He wanted to talk. When I opened the door, he walked right into my room, past the rainbow flag hanging on my wall and to the couch in the corner, where he sat down. I asked him what was up, and he proceeded to tell me that he wanted to thank me. He wanted to thank me because I had taught him a lesson, whether I understood it or not, about gay people, and he had learned from me that I was just like anybody else and deserved to be treated equally.
He said thanks, gave me a quick hug, and left.
And suddenly my home felt welcoming.