i don't know that i've ever felt more thoroughly frustrated and let down in my life. i could be mistaken about that, but at the moment, it seems unlikely.
what happened?
i'm going to break this down into several posts assessing the damage. we'll work our way up to el presidente and congress. we'll also take a look at how things fared on the local level. but i'd like to start this first post off with an epistle. please indulge my artistic license just a bit.
Dear citizens of North Dakota, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oregon, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, Missouri and Louisiana:
There is a lot I feel I should say to you, my fellow Americans. There is a lot of disappointment and frustration I have with being so thoroughly unable to understand your mode of thinking. Most of all, I am afraid of what you may be helping the United States to become.
When you went to the polls yesterday (or, in the case of you, Missouri and Louisiana, earlier this year) and passed the various forms of anti-gay marriage amendments to your constitutions, although I was unsurprised, I was saddened. It is so hard for me to understand why the love of two humans for one another, a love that undoubtedly most of you have felt for someone at some time in your life, seems to offend you so deeply and so unflinchingly. It is also hard for me to understand your wishes to yet again, in the ugly tradition of Jim Crow and anti-womens' suffrage, relegate citizens of our fine, beautiful and illustrious nation to second-class status. This is not a defense of marriage; it is a defilement of love and humanity.
It is one thing for those of you in Mississippi, Montana and Oregon to have simply made illegal the idea of a gay marriage. The rest of you, however, have decided to outlaw even civil unions, the right to which seems unquestionable given our constitution. You are stepping up to deny people the right to visit their loved ones in the hospital; the right to cover their loved ones with the health insurance that they have earned at their jobs; the right to adopt and become loving, committed parents for children who need homes. You are denying them the very right, my fellow citizens, to be human.
To put this in perspective: I could easily go and locate a woman tonight, fly to Las Vegas, have a semblance of a wedding, and soon have her covered with my health insurance, give her visitation rights, adopt children with her, give her the power to make life/death decisions should I be ill and any other number of important, serious decisions within her power as my wife.
Meanwhile, partners who have been dedicated, loving beacons of hope and light for eachother for decades are still spat upon by the very law that they crusade so strongly for each time they step into a voting booth; the very law that ought to protect them just for being citizens in our country. The very law which has decided instead to turn its cold, dead and unfeeling eyes away from them in disgust, claiming that they are not love, are not what is real and true.
Law cannot and will not dictate the course of love in human hearts. I can only hope that love will light your way back to our unity as human beings. Until then, I can only wish you luck in the dark wilderness of your hatred.
all good things,
Joshua S. Neas
and thanks to ed cone for a touch of hope in an otherwise bleak day:
Amid a terrible election for the civil rights of gay Americans, North Carolina elected its first openly gay State Senator.
You go, North Carolina.
you go indeed. follow the link and read the whole post and story. it's rather fascinating. and reassuring.
