When Proposition 8 passed on the same night Barack Obama was elected, it meant trying to feel victorious at the same time my legal gay marriage was evaporating.
For those of us who have married partners of the same sex in California, Tuesday night's passage of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban, was accompanied by multiple waves of déjà vu. California, in 2002, approved the Prop. 22 same-sex marriage ban by a wide margin, and same-sex marriages performed at San Francisco City Hall in the spring of 2004—including my own—were invalidated by the California Supreme Court the following summer.
It happens that I agreed with that decision. I saw the 2004 City Hall weddings as acts of civil disobedience, not as a viable way of deciding a constitutional question. When you perform an act of civil disobedience, you ask to be arrested. If you don't get arrested, the state isn't taking you seriously.
From left: The author, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and the author's husband
Still, the ruling hurt. So when the court handed down its celebrated decision legalizing same-sex marriage last May, I felt my guard go up. Friends emailed congratulations and I rebuffed them. "Not so fast," I said, referring them to the yet-to-be-named Prop. 8. "Let's save the champagne until after November 4th."
Soon my husband and I realized that the first day of legal gay weddings coincided with the last day that his entire immediate family was going to be in San Francisco. So we began planning a wedding. Thanks to my mother's acquaintance with the mayor through her executive position with the local teacher's union, Mayor Gavin Newsom married me and my husband in his office on the first full day of weddings. The mayor was warm, charming, and perhaps even a little flirtatious. When I told him my husband and I would exchange kisses rather than rings, he said, "Well then we'll face each other and exchange kisses then!" The three of us giggled.
That night our families and friends came together to celebrate progress. And we did not forget the menace of Proposition 8. For gifts, my husband and I asked that people contribute to “No on 8” groups, and I set up a monthly payment to Equality California. But the hoopla, the media coverage, Gavin's charm, the aura of history unfolding, all conspired to pretty much erase whatever caution I had brandished against my congratulations-wielding friends in May.
Tuesday night I took part in the most exhilarating demonstration of political euphoria I have ever seen or heard. It was the sounds that made the most lasting impression, noise erupting from neighborhoods around San Francisco—people screaming, whooping, ululating, banging drums and blowing whistles, helicopters hovering, the nearly unbroken blare of car horns on my walk from City Hall to the Castro. That's when it hit me—seeing Barack Obama's electoral map projected above the intersection where the San Francisco left had gathered to remember its slain leaders, had assembled to riot when their killer was let off, and had sought and found community when plague swept through and touched every single resident. This was an intersection badly overdue for a celebration, and tonight we would have one.
"So!" said a friend I ran into in front of the Castro Theater. His smile was brittle. "What do you think about all these people celebrating their defeat?"
Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
Joe Mathews is a journalist, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and a contributing writer at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as Justice Department reporter for the Wall Street Journal and as a city desk reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy.
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by Paul Festa
Paul Festa is the author of Oh My God: Messiaen in the Ear of the Unbeliever, which is based on his internationally acclaimed and award-winning film Apparition of the Eternal Church. His writing appears in Nerve, Salon, three editions of the Best Sex Writing anthology, and a 300,000-word novel-in-progress about medical-marijuana farmers.
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Paul you are still married the ATTY General in CA is upholding all marriages that are already performed.
check my blog
www.samesexmarriageadvocate.blogspot.com
I agree that the passage of Prop 8 put a taint on this state at a time when all of America should be celebrating breaking free from this type of prejudice. I have tried to understand why someone would make it their personal mission to deny others the right to be happy in a marriage, a right they take for granted. I have tried to understand how who someone else marries would have ANY affect on their personal lives, but I am unable to even grasp the concept, to understand where they are coming from. I mentioned to my husband (yes, I'm a happily married heterosexual) this morning that we should put together an initiative banning heterosexual marriage, and maybe that would make the supporters of this proposition understand how it feels to have basic freedoms endangered by others who have no right to interfere in someone else's basic rights to happiness. Hopefully this will be attacked and struck down, but what a sad note to an otherwise amazing time in history.
pmontgomery, I agree with you 100%. Living in the VERY DEEP South (MS), as a minority that was educated up North in Massachusetts, I find myself quarreling with my friends and people at bars about this hot topic. What gives us the right to judge whether marriage is a union between one man and one woman and between 2 men or 2 women? People try to claim that these go against the word of God, but being a skeptic, I ask them to highlight and show me the passage, and what do you know? 9/10 people can't even reference what book or verse number. This is usually when the conversation turns sour, but the point I am getting is that God put us on this earth to be keepers of his garden and to grow, multiple and be happy, so why do we have to violate our own happiness?
Obama may not believe in gay marriage, but I have yet to see him endorse an attempt to amend the law to restrict it once the courts have stated that under current law they are entitled to marry.
If people don't like being called mean-spirited bigots, then they should stop behaving in a manner likely to earn them the title. The fact remains that this is not a question of voting to allow it or deny it, it's a question of changing the laws to deliberately exclude a group of people from something the courts have ruled they are entitled to.
There's a huge difference, and refusing to admit it does not make it go away. Nor does attempting to falsely tie what these people were doing to Obama's position on gay marriage. Those who supported and voted for Prop 8 are looking for a legitimacy that is simply not there, and to shift some of the disgust people look upon Prop 8 with off onto others rather than stand up and admit what it is they've done.
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mrsrjv: Thanks for pointing out that fact about grandfathered marriages.
dsmntlr: Obama's and Biden's position on gay marriage is retrograde, lamentable, and politically expedient. The patience I cultivate with respect to their opposition is much like what I am advocating re: Prop. 8's passage and the immensely promising trendline same-sex marriage is on. Candidates for national office are not leading on this issue, and perhaps they can't. Gavin Newsom was surely told that he couldn't, but he did it anyway and thus permanently earned my respect and vote. Point of fact: candidate Obama came out *against* Prop. 8.
The truly shameful thing about this reversal is that the opposition, the same way the so-called "pro life" kooks do, used scare tactics and emotional appeals because their argument has no merit or facts to support their viewpoint.
Ignorant people will gravitate toward arguments based upon their own ignorance rather than allow facts to get in the way.
The bigots who voted down this basic human right should ask themselves if a person's being gay impacts their own life in any negative way whatsoever. If not, which would be the case probably 99.9% of the time, then what possible difference could allowing two committed people to marry make in their lives. They should then simply butt out as its none of their business.
The type of thinking which allowed this proposition to pass is unbelieveable especially in the 21st century. Allowing committed couples to legalize their relationship is good for our society in that it fosters tolerance and would dispel false notions about gay people that are based upon nothing other than sheer ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance breeds fear and fear always takes precedence over common sense. Nothing proves this more than the outcome of this vote.
Given the divorce rate as well of the rates of family violence and incest in straight families, maybe all those "good Christians" are afraid they might learn something from successfully married gay couples.
The religious nut cases who designed this hate campaign need to reassess their so-called "Christian family values". Since when is hate a family value.
A REJECTION OF LOVE
The people who put the initiatives (including the ones in AZ & FL) on the ballot, funded them, supported them, and voted for them reject the notion that "Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Cortinthians 13:13 (International Standard Version)
Paul, your marriage was not annulled. Attorney General Jerry Brown will defend your marriage as still valid. Everyone needs to understand this -- misinformed comments like this in the press do not help.
If the Truth be known marriage has always been between men & women. Not my word but God's Word:)
Thank you.
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