No on 8 was the first time I'd ever volunteered to a political campaign, and I was angry, frustrated and discouraged by the result, as I'm sure were so many of you reading this. This letter is my attempt to take a different view of what the Prop 8 campaign means for LGBT rights:
As someone who believes all people should be treated equally regardless of sexual orientation, I would like to thank the proponents of Proposition 8 for your contribution towards advancing this cause. In the last few months, millions of straight people who never thought about gay and lesbian rights began to do so. Many became allies. Thousands of conversations started between gays and straights that otherwise would have never taken place. Those conversations helped humanize a misunderstood and oft-stereotyped minority in the minds of thousands who just needed the opportunity to understand. Even many conservative religious persons began to reexamine their views, and decided that taking away rights was not the compassionate, decent thing to do. A sometimes apathetic queer youth was stirred to action, and now stands ready to take up the challenge from the previous generation. And nearly four million Californians went to the ballot box to cast votes against bigotry.
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All this was made possible by you who hold hatred so dear your felt it necessary to write it into law. You may think you achieved a victory on Tuesday, with the insertion of the language that "only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" to our State Constitution. You are wrong. Same-sex marriage is not the issue. Equality, true equality, where people are not insulted, attacked, discriminated against or ostracized because of their sexual orientation; where sexual diversity is celebrated, not just tolerated, is the goal – it always has been. Same-sex marriage is just one step on that march, one symbol of progress towards that dream. In the process of securing the battle you have helped raise an army that will defeat you in this war.
You got a sentence on Tuesday. It is an important sentence, a sentence that takes away people’s fundamental rights and treats them as less than full citizens. But a sentence does not change what is in anyone’s heart. It does not make a couple’s commitment any less real, a parent’s love any less pure. On the other hand, the equality movement got a renewed focus, a fresh energy, and literally millions of new supporters. The cause of those who believe that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated as such is immeasurably stronger. And it is all thanks to you, a group of heterosexual bigots, who turned out to be better recruiters than you ever claimed homosexuals were.
History has taught us that there will always be resistance to the fight for liberty, but also that such resistance can at most only delay the inevitable. You now stand in front of the courthouse steps the way George Wallace stood in the doorway of the Foster Auditorium, with the same futile obstinacy, the pathetic self-righteousness. You have temporarily barred same-sex couples from getting marriage licenses, but you can’t hold back the 61% of voters under 30 who voted against hate. You can’t quell the rebellion you helped stoke this fall. The sun will set on the time of anti-homosexual bigotry, and it will set sooner, not later, thanks to your efforts.
(cross-posted at my blog Notes from the Hovel)