Hope

Via SFGate:

Outrage and anguish over the passage of Proposition 8 has spurred massive street protests throughout California, and leaders of the gay and lesbian community believe the backlash could spark an unprecedented nationwide push for gay rights.

Today, same-sex marriage supporters have planned simultaneous protests throughout California and in all 50 states, as well as cities in Canada, England and Australia.
It's a never-before-seen response, surpassing in size and scope even the 1969 Stonewall riots, which started the modern gay rights movement after New York City police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar.

I had planned on heading downtown for the protest, but will instead join the locals in front of City Hall at 11:30 am.
If it's true that this vote has activated a new civil rights movement across the nation, then maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe it leads to the repeal of DOMA and a Supreme Court decision that protects the Constitutional rights of every family, every couple.
We can hope.

Last word (for today)

Scott's comments are really very good. So here they are:

The day after Prop 8 passed, Vicki asked me some pointed questions about the nature of possible challenges and the validity of her brother's marriage about three months ago. My bottom line reply was that she was asking for $5 Million of legal analysis in 15 minutes, and that as good as I am I don't bill at $20 Million an hour.

Fortunately, the ACLU, LAMBDA, among others have all opened fire with direct review to the California Supreme Court. Along with several highly respected appellate firms, the plaintiffs challenging Prop 8 have the best representation possible.

Interesting issues include the procedural validity of Prop 8's purported amendment to the state constitution, retroactivity (the AG's statement is not precedent, although I agree with his analysis), and one meaty issue I noticed November 5 (apparently validated by ACLU), that Prop 8 speaks only to the validity of same sex marriages, but does NOT address the Equal Protection Clause of the state constitution. Prop 8 could have avoided this thorny issue by adding the words "Notwithstanding the Equal Protection Clause of this Constitution . . ." So there is a patent contradiction between the purported amendment and the Equal Protection Clause.

Prop 22, by contrast (which amended the California Family Code, not the state constitution) was struck down by the California Supreme Court as violating the state Equal Protection Clause. The constitutional right of course trumped the statutory restriction.

The absence of the prefatory language in Prop 8 was doubtless intentional, as the Mormon Church also has very good attorneys.

In the end this is purely political, even though the legal issues are fascinating. By not including that prefatory language, the drafters of Prop 8 simply created one more issue to litigate, thereby ensuring the “issue” remain active that much longer.

Not surprisingly, the backers of Prop 8 are in business, and business has been very, very good for them. Unfortunately the product they sell is hate and fear.

The longer they can keep the manufactured "issue" of gay marriage alive (cf. the politically conceived term "partial birth abortion"), the longer they can continue to sell their product: "we hate fags." We shouldn’t be overconfident, however, since in 2004 Karl Rove proved this to be a very, very successful product.

But take heart that the righteous fight for a properly expansive interpretation of equal protection under the law and for marriage equality is being fought by the best available. Until then, let’s raise our voices in righteous indignation.

Playing devil’s advocate is essential to being an effective attorney. I, however, am simply confounded by the opposition, meaning either that I’m lacking professional chops, or that the proponents of Prop 8 and its ilk totally lack logic and merit. I doubt very seriously that the problem is any lack of skill on my part.

ed note: Vicki is a friend of ours. Her brother was married this summer to the love of his life. The family rejoiced that, for the first time since he hit adolescence and knew who he was, he was a full member of society, with all of the rights and responsibilities and sheer joy that accompanies that.

California weeps, Arkansas sticks its head up its ass

Nate Silver reminds us that the vote for prop 8 was really a generational phenom, rather than a race or class or geography phenom. And Nate is always right, about everything. At least, so far.

And Dan Savage has an oped in the NYT today, reminding us that our state may be full of stupid, but at least we're not Arkansas.

But while Californians march and gay activists contemplate a national boycott of Utah — the Mormon Church largely bankrolled Proposition 8 — an even more ominous new law in Arkansas has drawn little notice.
That state’s Proposed Initiative Act No. 1, approved by nearly 57 percent of voters last week, bans people who are “cohabitating outside a valid marriage” from serving as foster parents or adopting children. While the measure bans both gay and straight members of cohabitating couples as foster or adoptive parents, the Arkansas Family Council wrote it expressly to thwart “the gay agenda.” Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Savage was also rather good on Colbert last night.

Sarah!

I'll be as thrilled as anyone when you run for president in 2012, believe me. But for the time being, just for a few months, maybe, could you just...

GO AWAY?!

A word on prop 8, and what we each do now

The passage of prop 8 in my state makes me sick. We were right to oppose it, the only arguments made for writing discrimination into our constitution were/are religious, emotional, or outright lies. The Equality For All campaign ran a straight up, honest, and simple opposition, which I think should have been more effective. It was the right campaign to run, and the fight is not over yet. Poised as we all are to continue the fight, I'm concerned now about the anger we're all feeling, and mistakes we may make that will have short and long term impact on our communities.

I spent all day working the polls for No on 8. I worked with a woman who'd just been married. I worked with an 18 year old boy whose conservative religious parents were voting no, for him, and because they realized that prop 8 was not a vote on morality, prop 8 is the denial of civil rights. Period.

I attended two training sessions for the No on 8 campaign, each conducted by very dedicated and talented field organizers, who also happened to be lesbians, who also happened to be married to each other. One of them is a minister, ordained in the Disciples of Christ in the early '80s. Talk about a trail blazer. And the local head of the effort is a good friend of mine. So over the course of the campaign, I became well versed in the aims and focus designed to beat this initiative. It was, and is, very simple. This is about civil rights. This is not about religion, or morality, it isn't really even about marriage. We are free to disagree on all of those fronts. This is about whether we, as a people, believe that our laws should be used to deny certain rights to a specific group, based not on their actions but on who they are. Based on god-given characteristics of their humanity.

The No campaign invested in very sophisticated marketing information. Early on, phone calls were made to the base- people who are almost certainly no votes, as determined by shopping patterns or whatever. Then, the calls shifted to the middle- the people who probably had not made their mind up one war or the other, or who perhaps leaned in our direction and needed to be committed. The press of time, the sheer number of people we needed to reach was the driving reason behind the decision not to engage probable yes voters.

This also meant that we did not intentionally go into the African American community, particularly its churches, and I believe this was the campaign's sole mistake. The African American community understandably does not appreciate it when people try to equate marriage or anything else with slavery and Jim Crow. But I do believe that talking about civil rights and denial of such by law may have touched a portion of the community.

Anyway. We didn't do that, and the courts will probably have to fulfill their traditional role here. Congress could do its part by repealing DOMA. That's worth fighting for. Get used to calling Washington. I think we may even get used to Washington paying attention to us in the coming years.

It's also worth it to get out into the streets, wave your No on 8 signs and rainbow flags, vent the frustration, just mourn the wrongness. Be a presence, a witness, for justice and equality and the values of the American Constitution. Let your heart break wide open with people who share your values, and be a comfort to each other.

While we're venting frustration and seeking our comfort, though, let's not go out of our way to close hearts on the other side. Over the week I've received several suggestions that just don't work for me, and I don't believe they'll do the fight any good.

- When you're painting your signs, refrain from calling people haters and bigots. Some people will change their minds on this issue, probably after some personal experience. They almost certainly will not change their mind because someone called them a name or accused them of bigotry.

- Asking the IRS to investigate the Mormon Church, or any other church, just isn't a good idea. Firstly, churches are within their legal rights to engage in issues based advocacy, and that includes organizing, lobbying, and fund raising. Hell, my denomination has a legislative ministry office in Sacramento and a Washington Office for Advocacy. We're the good guys, and the right loves to threaten us over our tax exemption (FUN FACT! The Nixon Administration even went after us, because our Beacon Press published the Pentagon Papers.). And remember All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena? The right went after them in 2004 after the minister did a sermon on war. They also held an interfaith No on 8 service two weeks ago.

I'm not trying to pretend that churches on the right don't engage in what is clearly disallowed partisan activity. But that isn't what this campaign was. Nothing comes from these IRS attacks, because the churches probably haven't done anything illegal. Don't stoop to the level of the Nixon administration.

- Likewise please don't go marching to churches and calling everyone inside bigots. I think it's wrong when nativists protest outside United Church of Christ in Simi for providing sanctuary, and I think it's wrong to protest outside a church who disagrees with us- even when what they have done is dishonest and hurtful. The marketing decisions were not made by the people who are entering the church for some sacred space and time. Leave them be. Doing otherwise will just harden people in their fears.

- While we're at it: do we really want to attack our local business community? I mean, if they had Yes on 8 signs posted in their windows, ok, avoid that store. I will, too. But what about Lassen's in Ventura, or El Coyote in LA? Lassen's owners, who've been part of our community for years and whose presence has always been positive, happen to be Mormon. And at El Coyote, a Mormon member of the family made a personal contribution to the Yes on 8 campaign. (Jess wrote about this perfectly, please read)

But these are individual, private actions, encouraged by the leaders of these peoples' churches. Will going to war with their employers or their storefronts accomplish anything positive? In the cases of Lassen's and El Coyote, do we really want to destroy places where we experience community bonds, meeting places where we are not merely anonymous consumers? Perhaps, instead, we could strengthen these community bonds by directly addressing the issue: by al means write to the owners of Lassen's and tell them why their support of this issue concerns you. Go to Margie's lunch at El Coyote and talk to her. Provide the kind of personal experience that leads people to change their minds on this issue.

When we win this battle, we will have done so on the merits. Because it is right. Let's not leave bruised and angry churches in our wake, suspicious of thuggery and ever more convinced of some militant "homosexual agenda". It just won't work.

The Constitution is on our side. Discrimination is wrong. We can disagree on religion, morality, and even marriage, but we cannot write discrimination into our laws. It's wrong. It's unfair.

People will change. With personal conversations and experiences, they will change. Like the parents of the boy I volunteered with. People will regret their support of this proposition, like Margie at El Coyote. But not because we bully them. Because it is right.

updated this morning because this is just not a well written post, but it's very important to me.

President Barack Hussein Obama

In 2004, I saw him speak and knew he would be our first African American President. And I am so proud of my country tonight- there are really no words.

I haven't blogged in weeks, I don't know why. Tonight, as I heard him speak again, I heard what I knew I would hear on the day we elected this man.

He said to the people "whose votes I did not earn, I hear you." He will never pretend you do not exist. He will never stand before you and say, "I earned political capital, and I'm going to spend it."

He said to all of us, this is our moment to move- not to stop and rest, this is not the achievement. The work will be pulling our country back together and putting it back on track, and all of us need to work toward that. All of us have to put our shoulders to the wheel.

This day- this is the promise. It remains our task to fulfill it.

And now that I have dried my tears of joy and started looking at California returns, I have to lament that at this moment, Prop 8 seems to be winning.

On the day that we stood up for inclusion and honesty and progress, we may have also written segregation into the California constitution.

I suppose numbers can still change. And I am staying up, for the recently married woman that I worked outside polls with today. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hope alive. But I fear we may have done a really bad thing in this state.

More tomorrow.