Proposition 8: no place in 2008

Today wasn’t an all good news day. I’m still celebrating - nothing can take away from the excitement of electing Obama - but California’s vote on Prop 8 to constitutionally ban gay marriage shows that while a majority of voters in our country just elected a black president, discrimination is far from over.

In Los Angeles, the ads and the signs supporting Prop 8 seemed almost comical. Driving on Laurel Canyon yesterday, a group of young adults held “Say NO to Prop 8”. I pressed down on the horn to join in the noise - it seemed as if every car driving by honked. Further up the road, a lone man held a “Vote YES on Prop 8”. The cars passed by silently and I almost felt sorry for him standing out there by himself. Little did I know.

Meanwhile, as we passed by these signs, Evie and Lucy asked for an explanation. I told them that some people were trying to pass a law that would make it so that men can’t marry men and women can’t marry women. Evie responded, “I just don’t get it. Why would you pass that law?” I told her I didn’t get it either. She was silent for a minute and then said, “It just doesn’t make sense. I mean, it’s not like they’d make someone go to a hospital or something.” I was trying to figure out what she meant when she said, “I mean, why would a man marrying a man hurt anyone else? Why would they care? It doesn’t hurt them, so why do they care?”

In an ad that aired before the vote, a little girl asks her mom, “Guess what I learned in school today? I learned how a prince married a prince." The girl’s mother looks as if horns have just sprouted out of her child’s head and a voice says: "Think it can't happen? It's already happened. . . . Teaching about gay marriage will happen unless we pass Proposition 8." Think what can’t happen? That a teacher might teach a child to be tolerant and accepting of others? Or what? That suddenly the little girl will go running to her mom and say, “I heard about the princes and now I’m gay too!” And what would the mom say then? That she should have kept it to herself? Or would she break out her own book about a prince who fell in love with another prince but, knowing that his mother the queen was intolerant, he decided to live an unhappy life instead of ever acting on his feelings?

I will confess that, upon my explanation about the diversity of relationships, Lucy announced that she will be marrying her friend Gabriella. Evie turned to her and, in an authoritative big sister voice, said “Well, Lucy, then you’re going to have to go to a sperm bank to get a baby.” Apparently in some parts of California, this is where a voice over would come into the car saying, “It’s already happened!”

In Obama’s speech last night, he mentioned Ann Nixon Cooper, a 106-year-old woman. He talked about her life, saying: “She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.” Now, in that same lifetime, she is witnessing a black man elected president. I hope it doesn’t take a lifetime for my girls to see our nation embrace marriage between two loving partners of the same sex.