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.
1 comment:
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.
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