Today I wake up overjoyed with the election of Barack Obama to be the 44th President of the United States.
Today I wake up devastated that the good people of California do not feel that gay and lesbian people deserve the same rights as everyone else.
Today I need to try to sort out those feelings, and they are deeply personal for me.
I lived in San Francisco for seven years before moving to Puerto Vallarta where I manage a hotel for the gay and lesbian community. In the last few months, we have welcomed honeymooners from California (and other states) come to celebrate their love and enjoy a tropical honeymoon, just like everyone else. It felt, well, normal! But we all knew the California law was tenuous.
Now we know it has been overturned. Knowing that the leaders of the Morman church, who poured millions of dollars into this campaign to stop gay people's happiness, are gloating over their victory, makes it harder. Feeling the rejection of the people of California, makes it harder.
I cannot help but believe however, that this is a last gasp of the Christian "Right" in their hypocritical efforts to tell everyone else how to live their lives, without minding their own morals. It's like a car that is running out of gas. At times it lurches forward, but overall it's slowing down and you know it will soon stop running.
As a child I remember hearing about racial riots in Newark in the late 60s when I was growing up in New Jersey. Last night, 40 years later, they were celebrating and dancing in the streets in Newark. Many people are saying, myself included, that we can't believe we are seeing the first African American President in our lifetimes.
I don't believe we will have to wait 40 years.
I had a Union Ceremony with another man in 1995 when I lived in Seattle. We had a full ceremony with all the trimmings: officiant, reception, parents, family, honeymoon, rings, even a china set. At the time, many of my straight friends were getting married, and I felt I deserved a china set too! I watched the faces of my friends as we embraced, and cried with my mother as we danced together after the wedding. We needed no change in the laws to do this. But we did need about $5000 worth of contracts to "legalize" our relationship in the eyes of the law, and of course even that was incomplete.
We moved to San Francisco a couple years later and our relationship fell apart, after 6 years. At the time, around 1998, the gay marriage movement was just starting to pick up steam in the late 90s. I was resentful and did not support it. I felt moving to San Francisco, with its gay life and parties, had helped destroy my union. I only hoped to actually FIND a potential husband first, and that was hard enough! Didn't seem like most were interested in a relationship that lasted longer than a few nights. I felt employment equality was much more achievable and desirable, and a better first step.
Now I live in Mexico and even in Mexico City they have passed the ability for gays and lesbians to marry. Mexico, as a completely Catholic country, realized long ago (in 1917) that the Church could not run the country, and changed its Consitution to reflect that. Here, the Church cannot own property (it once owned a majority of Mexican land!), cannot hold religious ceremonies on public lands, cannot (legally) be involved in politics, and much much more. These laws were a reaction to the overreach of the Catholic Church in Mexico at the time, where from the day you were born you were in debt to the Church for your baptismal sacrament.
Because of its history, Mexicans realize that there are two kinds of marriage: one is a civil marriage, and one is a church marriage. They actually have two ceremonies. You can also be in a "Union Libre" which is kind of a domestic partnership or common law marriage, which by the Constitution can be either male-female or same sex (although it is rarely taken advantage of for that). While gay rights in Mexico are, in general, miles behind those in most US states, people here already get the concept that marriage is both a recognition of two people's relationship by the state, and separately a blessing by the church.
Where does this all leave me? Where does it leave us? What do I say to our guests who have been married in California only to have this horrible act repudiate their legitimacy?
The world runs a lot faster now than it did in 1968. It took to 2008 for us to elect an African American president. And by "us", I mean white people, black people, latin people, asian people, straight people, gay people, democrats, independents and some republicans. Obama was not elected to be our "Black" President. He was elected to be a hopeful leader for the future, one who based his entire message on hope, working together, and ending the politics of governing by division and blame so we can make our country better again.
So now I have my hopes on 2018. I know it sounds far off. But it's only 20 years from 1998. During that time, as a movement, I believe we need to harness the message of Obama to stop demonizing those who are different. To stop blaming the country's problems on Mexican immigrants, on gays, on liberals (funny, as most of my friends are gay Mexican liberals!), on the non-faithful, on Democrats, on elitists, on anyone who doesn't get their news from Fox or isn't a white, Christian Republican.
I believe we need time for this message to spread, sink in and take effect. We need to be bigger than the homophobes and bigots, and breathe deeply while their divisive car runs out of gas. We will continue to love each other. We will continue to marry in other states, and the number of those states will grow. We will have our domestic partnerships. Fear will subside (I believe heterosexual marriages and children are both still surviving in Massachusetts) and new generations will grow up and take over.
We need to support Obama's movement 100% and show that we are a country that is, as Obama says, not a black or white America, not red or blue states, not a gay or straight America, but "One Nation...the United States of America".
People's minds will open and change as they see and accept an African American president lead all of us in a smart, effective, non-divisive way. Maybe even Obama will come around to realizing that our love is as valid as his and Michelle's, and will support us in our efforts. But let's not pressure him to do that in year one. We learned, from Bill Clinton, that overreaching in the first term can destroy a presidency. It should become a priority for us for his second term.
Progress comes in a few steps forward and one back. This was our step back. We will learn, we will regroup, we will eventually win, as time and justice are on our side. In the meantime, our love and relationships can be as strong and vital as ever with or without that legal word "marriage", with or without the thousands of laws that make things easier for couples. It will be hard, and it isn't fair. But it will change.
So what I see is change the country first for the next four years. Let the rightwing car run out of gas. Focus on our marriage rights in Obama's second term, beginning in 2012, and implementing our rights fully by 2018. It's only about 20 years since our movement started, half the time our African American friends waited. Just one more generation to mature. And it will be our time.
UPDATE 1: Here's something to celebrate: I'm pleased to see that it appears as though super-homophobe Marilyn Musgrove, CO-04 is going down to Democratic challenger Betsy Markey according to CNN, 55%-45%. With homophobic voices like hers gone from the national scene, and Obama's victory blowing away 8's win in the national headlines, the overall losses by the homophobes are very significant. This will be our bump in the road, I'm sure of it.