Justice for All

Upon reading my last post, my fabulous gf forwarded the post to several of her family members. I was touched by their support, and their support fueled my fire to keep on fighting the good fight. With permission, I have included C's niece's response.

Response from my niece, Jeanette. Wow. Made me cry a little…

I was so sad to wake up this morning to see that not only my home state but my new adopted state are supporting hatred and fear. People around school today had all sorts of explanations about why Prop 8 passed but there is only one- the American people are not as tolerant as they would wish the world to believe. I often ride the city bus to school and have the opportunity to speak to a wide variety of humans. Yesterday I spoke to an African-American couple who were offended when I compared this fight to the civil rights movement. They could not see the correlation between a movement promoting equal rights for all races to a movement promoting equal rights for all sexual orientation. How do you make people see that? I've heard people blame Prop 8 passing on religious groups but I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think there's still a culture of closeted/latent hatred and disgust towards homosexuality and it takes elections like this to bring that out in the open. It just saddens me to know that the state and country in which I choose to live is not living up a basic idea that we learned in grade school- liberty and justice FOR ALL. I love you much,Jeanette

And I agree with Jeanette. It's not just the religious right (wrong). It is the everyday folks who have it stuck in their heads that marriage is something only for them ("normal" and "straight" being their belief). Case in point, a man that I worked with who "had no problem with gay people", and in fact I have a great relationship with said to me one day "I understand that these people want to get married, but they don't get that marriage just isn't for them...they have to do something else." The question I didn't ask because I was so flabbergasted was, "Why isn't it for us?"

And or course this brings up the question of "what is marriage?" There are many answers of course, but historically, it has much to do with ownership (particularly ownership of women) and/or creating alliances. So are straight people who oppose gay marriage just afraid that by forming these strong gay-alliances through marriage we will pull a William Wallace and overthrow the straights???