The California Supreme Court agreed to hear 3 cases today around the passage of Prop. 8.  This is good news.  One way or another, the court will decide early next year whether the California Constitution allows for a 50 + 1 majority of California voters to amend the Constitution in order to take away rights from same sex couples who want to marry.  The state Constitution has never been amended to take away rights, to make it legal for a tax paying class of citizens to become 2nd class citizens. 

Oh, and a question for Mike Huckabee, who believes that until your head is bashed in you do not deserve equal civil rights.  When was the last time a friend of yours was bashed in the head by a stranger just because of who your friend chose to love?  When was the last time a straight friend of yours was crucified on a barbed wire fence in Wyoming because he loved the “wrong” person? 

Onward and Upward.

I want the decision on Prop. 8 to happen quickly, too.  The following is from Lisa Leff, writing for the HuffPo, 11/17/08:

“Meanwhile, the interfaith California Council of Churches and the Episcopal bishops of Northern California and Los Angeles added their petition Monday to those asking the high court to invalidate Proposition 8. They argue that if voters are permitted to take away rights from a group based on sexual orientation, the same could happen to religious minorities.”

25 years ago today I met the man I married on Aug. 9, 2008. We celebrated our 25th Anniversary today by marching, along with 15,000+ fellow San Diegans, against the passage of Prop. 8, which ended the rights of same sex couples to get married in the state of CA, a right Luke and I exercised in August. The crowd was enormous as we marched down 6th Avenue alongside Balboa Park on one side and high rise condos on the other. As we turned the corner onto Broadway downtown, I looked back up the 6th Ave. hill, it was filled with marchers as far as I could see. I carried a sign that said, “Let’s Make Harvey Milk Proud Today.” Several “old” hippies like me were cheered by my sign. I suspect some young folks who marched didn’t know who Milk was and what part he played in the history of the Gay Rights Movement, which is one of the many benefits of this movement, all generations coming together, learning, feeling the energy. Cruising the web since I returned home I know one thing, this day will be remembered by all of us, all generations. The time is now.

Since Prop. 8 passed, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that it will just take a little more time, another few years, just wait a little longer, and people will get it and “allow” gay couples to marry. I’m tired of waiting. In the current issue of The New Yorker (11/17/08) David Remnick writes about Obama’s campaign for the Presidency. Remnick quotes the Reverend Joseph Lowery, a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a leader of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, when he told an audience in Atlanta in January, 2007, that “a slave mentality” still haunted those who counselled Obama to wait his turn. Remnick continues: Lowery compared those who discouraged Obama to the white ministers who in Birmingham told Martin Luther King a half century ago that the time was not ripe for civil dissent. “Martin said the people who were saying ‘later’ were really saying ‘never,’ ” Lowery said. “The time to do right is always right now.”

http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/?t=anon

The California State Constitution was amended a week ago with the passage of Prop. 8.  It is now illegal for same sex couples to marry in the state of California.  As for those gay couples who were married during the past three months while marriage was “legal” in California, there are now conflicting legal opinions on whether or not those couples are still married. 

Hence, 

NATIONAL PROTEST AGAINST PASSAGE OF PROP. 8

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2008

MARCH BEGINS AT 6TH AND UPAS, MEET-UP AT 10 A.M.

MARCH ENDS DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO

There are protests planned all over the country this Saturday.  As soon as I have a common website or thread, I will post it.  Until then, organize.

6pm: Kay Hagan wins NC, thanks to sis Susan for working so hard in NC for Hagan and Obama. Udall and Shaheen win!

7pm: Blue is spreading across the country. Luke and I are glued to the tube, the Mac, and NPR downstairs. Goal is to get more than 50% of popular vote for Obama.

7:25pm: The shots of people still walking toward Grant Park in Chicago to rejoice in Obama’s win, joining the already gathered throngs, is historic. And I mean it now!

8:06pm: He Won! Congratulations President and First Lady Obama.

10:04pm: Prop. 8 is winning which means California will amend the State Constitution to ban gay marriage if the trend continues. Luke and I got married on August 9. If it wins, are we still married? The only v e r y sour note in the election tonight. But there are still northern CA precincts to report so I’m not giving up.

There were times during the past 8 years when I wondered if the Bush/Cheney siege would end.  Tonight I’m still not convinced.  I worry McCain will win by a fluke or contrived election results.  Pundits tell us the big issue in tomorrow’s election is the economy and that is why Obama will win.  My motives in voting for Obama are different.  It started for me on election day, 2000, and the long weeks afterward until the Supreme Court selected George W. Bush president.  I just heard Neil Conan on NPR state that Bush’s legitimacy had long ago been confirmed.  Not for me.  And I’m not alone.  I suspect the increased numbers of new registered voters along with increased voter turn-out is based in part on Election 2000 and the subsequent Bush/Cheney mauling of our Constitution and our rights after 9/11.  This view is not being reported on or talked about in the television media.  Can the reluctance to report be blamed on Bush/Cheney fatigue?  Or is it the unwillingness of the reporters and pundits to discuss the issue because they would in a sense be reporting on themselves and their support of the illegitimate Bush presidency and the Iraq war. 

One final thing:  The Wall Street bailout, which I’ve written about and opposed from the outset, is being abused.  Big shock.  The banks are sitting on our bailout money, refusing to lend it, instead using it to bulk up their quarterlies.  It is time to demand they release the money into the economy, back to the lenders of the money, the taxpayers, you and me.

Luke and I went to one of our favorite restaurants, The Gathering, today.  Our table was beside the window.  We saw the same familiar faces we always see.  The waiter took our order.  The middle-aged, rather hip blonde woman who has been working there since Luke and I first visited the restaurant was doing the crossword at the end of the counter.  I ordered a burger and Luke ordered half a turkey sandwich.  While we were waiting for our order both Luke and I picked up on the conversation the hip crossword woman was having with the gay waiters.  She told them she was voting yes on Prop. 8 because marriage was a religious ceremony and she didn’t want her church forced to marry two gay people and especially more than two gay people at the same time.  Then she laughed.  Our food arrived.  I asked our waiter, he’d been conversing with the hip crossword woman, if she was playing devil’s advocate or if she was really going to vote yes on Prop. 8?  He said he wished she was playing devil’s advocate but she was serious.  She was going to vote against my right to stay married. 

The fact that this woman could talk within earshot of the man I love and married on August 9, 2008, after being together with him for 24 years, and the fact that she has a vote, yes a vote, about whether I can or cannot stay married to Luke struck me as a violation of everything I know about myself as an American.  It’s humiliating.  First of all, the very idea that the people in the state of California get to vote on my rights to stay married is madness.  And secondly, leave me the hell alone Mormon Church.  You have funded close to 70% of the campaign that wants to take away my marriage rights.  What the fuck have I done to you?  Keep your hands off me, my life and my marriage.    

“I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

Ms. Cholodenko. 

Onward and Upward.