Progression is Unstoppable.

The pendulum swings. And as we as the human race discover more and more about our own minds and bodies, we have no choice but to progress. What's the quote? Something about once you learn something you can never go back?

Proposition 8 passed in California, my home state, and the state to which I will probably always swear allegiance, if it even makes sense to do that in this country or on this planet; to swear allegiance to one part of this whole floating all alone in the vastness of the universe is kinda stupid. But I digress.

Proposition 8 passed in California, banning gay marriage and ultimately determining that some people have more rights than others. I seem to remember (from my textbooks) that the same kind of shit went down in the 1950s and 60s with another oppressed group and, well, history is repeating itself.

I started writing a scathing entry to those in CA that voted to ban gay marriage yesterday, but I was too angry to talk straight (pun... intended?) so instead I let myself cool down and searched through my Facebook friends to find people that were pro-Prop 8 and promptly deleted them. C'mon, it's Facebook - don't talk to me about intolerance.

And this morning, I received an email from Prince Gomolvilas of Bamboo Nation who has been very vocal and eloquent in his fight against the hateful amendment. I include some of it here:

"It's unbelievable to me that so many people in the land of the free have effectively spit on the U.S. Constitution, which makes very clear: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." ...

Either the supporters of Prop 8 do not believe in the U.S. Constitution—or they simply do not consider gays and lesbians to be equal citizens of the United States. Neither explanation sits well with me. And if those notions don't give pause to even the staunchest opponents of gay marriage, then there is something fundamentally broken about their vision of this country.

But you know what? Despite the fact that I almost titled this post "Fuck You, California," I refuse to despair over this for a number of reasons.

First of all, supporters of Proposition 8 may have logged a victory and dealt a blow to equal rights, but theirs is an empty victory. It's been well-documented that their campaign of TV ads, e-mails, mailings, and direct appeals was built on a foundation of absurd scare tactics, distorted facts, and outright lies. Apparently, for them, the ends justify the shady means, and they do not take ethical implications into consideration, even when their God is watching them. But, deep down, I'm sure they realize that cheating to get to the finish line does not make them winners. And claiming that they are not being discriminatory and homophobic over and over again does not make it so. To them, I say, "Shame on you. Shame. On. You."

What we continue to struggle with is making people—even people within the gay community itself—understand the idea of interconnection. But it's simple, really. Cultures of intolerance—whether overt and ugly or whether hidden behind a "loving-the-sinner-but-hating-the-sin" veneer—communicate to society that treating gays as second-class citizens is acceptable, which leads to things like increases in anti-gay hate crimes. One thing does follow another. Diseases spawn many symptoms. And just because you can wash blood off your hands doesn't mean that the blood was never spilled.

Secondly, let's put things into perspective, lest we become consumed with gloom. In 2000, when the first proposition to propose banning gay marriage (Prop 22) was put to a vote, it passed with 61.4% approval. (It's the ban that was reversed by the California Supreme Court in May and that led to Proposition 8.) Prop 8 received 52.4% approval (as of this writing)—although the measure passed, it was a narrow win, and the 9% drop in supporters of the ban is nothing to scoff at."


There's more on Bamboo Nation.

"No one is free while others are oppressed."