I was sitting in the lovely Wisconsin home of another Obama volunteer on Tuesday night. We had spent the afternoon knocking on doors, supplying people with the information on where they could go vote. That afternoon had left me cautiously optimistic of the results. Though Wisconsin was no longer an official swing state, there were enough McCain-Palin signs in the neighborhood to suggest that it had once been an area with strong Republican tendencies. Yet it was also a neighborhood with a large number of "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs as well as blatantly vacant and foreclosed upon homes. Many of the people we encountered were so fed up with President Bush, whom they equated with Senator McCain, they could not wait to vote for Senator Obama. After talking with them, seeing that neighborhood, and living in the U.S. as I have for most of the last eight years, it was with great relief that at 10pm CST, I watched the numbers tick up next to Obama's name. He went from being the front-runner to being Mr. President-Elect as soon as the polls closed in California, Oregon, and Washington.
While I cannot express to you my complete joy and relief at the outcome of the presidential election, I find myself dismayed by the outcome of California's vote on Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage. This dismay was increased when I learned that a friend of mine went to vote in the Vista Samoan Seventh Day Adventist Church. Let's leave aside the momentary question of why churches are valid polling locations (as opposed to public institutions like say, schools). My friend informed me that this church actually violated California Elections Code Sections 18370-18371. All over the polling location, inside, next to the voting booths, the church had local newsletters advocating for Proposition 8, and the logic of these newsletters made false suggestions, like somehow gay marriage will threaten their tax-exempt status (which only would have increased my support of gay marriage were it true, but alas it is not). No advocacy for anything on the ballot should take place inside or within 100 feet of the polling location, and this is a law I am familiar with as someone who has volunteered on previous campaigns.
So though Colorado stepped up and voted down an amendment defining human life as the moment of conception, California proved itself home to homophobic bigots willing to lie and break the law in order to prevent gay couples from experiencing the same marital miseries as the rest of us. When I looked over the list of reasons given for support of Proposition 8 on that website I linked to earlier, I couldn't help but wonder why these groups were so willing to lie. I also couldn't help but wonder about how their mind works on such domino-effect logic, that if "A" happens, it will topple through the alphabet and destroy "Z." If you oppose gay marriage, then don't marry a gay person, but it has absolutely nothing to do with your daily life. And, I also need to comment on one final thing said by Orange County's own Rick Warren: "For 5,000 years, every culture and every religion – not just Christianity – has defined marriage as a contract between men and women...There is no reason to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2% of our population." This is actually historically inaccurate. First of all, marriage has in much of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world been defined as a contract between one man and multiple women. Secondly, even in the state of California, cultures have existed within the last five hundred years with different views. Certain indigenous Californian tribes actually had chieftains who married transvestite men, and these men were believed to have special powers and were selected as one of the chief's "wives" to bring blessings upon his household. In his book Converting California, James Sandos eloquently describes many of the customs of indigenous Californian tribes regarding marriage that Warren would no doubt find scandalous. But just because they scandalize Warren doesn't mean that these practices did not take place.
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photo from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/7712138.stm
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