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Saturday, October 25, 2008

SF Mayor Gavin Newsom is Fighting the Bigotry of Prop 8

Eric and I have been together over six years now, and we've been domestically partnered for half a decade or so, but the truth is we don't really approve of marriage, at least for ourselves. We've always found it too weirdly vestigially patriarchal and propertizing to enthuse about it overmuch. Still, you better believe it makes us spittin' mad to observe the spectacle of ignorant, fearful, reactionary bigots who would exclude from us the marriage we disdain but to which we should have the right to equal access as citizens. We both disdain car culture, but you can surely imagine how we would respond to theocratic efforts to refuse faggots the right to drive! Clearly this effort to "protect marriage" from loving queer couples (rather than from, say, idiot celebrities who serially marry for publicity, for example) derives entirely from the ugly awful misguided project to find as many ways as possible to stigmatize and harm citizens like us in the eyes of a society that is otherwise growing more open, sane, and indifferent to the "difference" lgbtq folks represent with every passing year.

Observing the advocates of Prop 8 fearmongering and lying and threatening those who fail to share their self-imposed straightjackets of intolerance and fear is quite instructive, especially when contrasted with the earnest arguments one hears from the other side...



I do hope Newsom rethinks the Kennedy hair before he makes his inevitable White House bid. But, hey, he's got eight years to think it over, I'm figuring -- well, sixteen, if my dreams come true and Barbara Lee gets the nod next! Come what may, he's been fighting the good fight here for years and I'm not alone when I say I won't forget it.

It's frankly unbelievable to contemplate the millions upon millions of dollars out of state far right wing and other fundamentalist hate groups are pouring into California to write bigotry against queer folks like me and Eric into the Constitution of our Republic. They seem to think it makes Baby Jeebus cry when his believers don't hate gay people enough. What kind of sick fuck do you have to be to come to believe such a thing?

Brad Dacus, a legal advisor to the kkklatch of hateful zealots who are lying and blackmailing Prop 8 down the throats of California's citizens has many comparably bonkers and tyrannical crusades to his credit, including campaigning against the Wiccan Propaganda of Hallowe'en candy and struggling to censor the Harry Potter series for its celebration of wizardry.

Almost never have the choices between sides confronting voters in an election seemed so horrifying stark, insanity against sanity, hatred against hope, knowledge against ignorance. It's truly flabbergasting, and more than a little bit hard to bear.

2 comments:

Seth Mooney said...

I dig everything you're saying, but for me, there's a little something positive in the prevalence of homophobia that's become so visible in CA's Prop 8 campaign, as well as the prevalence of racism that's become a part of the presidential election.

I like that so many ignorant tools are being caught willingly on camera and outed for the racist, homophobic thugs that they are.

Hatred composes a fairly large chunk of the american psyche. It's sort of nice to have it out in plain view, rather than hidden with everyone behaving as though it didn't exist, and getting offended at so much as the suggestion that it's a problem.

Dale Carrico said...

I agree with you -- if and only if we win.

Shameless and victorious hate in plain sight (a Prop 8 victory for Mormonism, another stolen election for the Repugs) is way too surreally scarily Nazi for me to go scouting silver linings in it.

The starkness of the choice scares me at this point, I'll admit it, just because I can scarcely imagine picking up the pieces yet again in the aftermath of a rejection of sanity and decency should it come. Palin is just so unspeakably bad, the racism and dirty tricks just so bald, the homophobia of Prop 8 just so ugly and deceptive.

I don't mean to sound so negative, tho' -- I really do expect a resounding victory for Obama, for Dems in the Senate and House, across the country, shocking unexpected Dem victories in addition to the desirable but expected ones, and so on. It's just that it's a bit breathtaking to imagine the off chance of a loss to antagonists so palpably rampaging in their ignorance, hatred, and fearfulness.