Deirdre Bourdet, left, and Leslie Caccamese spent Saturday with hundreds getting married in San Francisco, March 2004.

There are so many reasons that I’m proud to live in California, and a few that make my stomach turn.  I’ve used this blog to show my support for the rights of gay couples wanting to get married in California, and although I thought that I’d done my piece to help, seeing the press today brings tears of frustration to my eyes and renews the anger that I feel towards the majority of Californians that consider it acceptable to legislate discrimination.  Where is their conscience?

Right now my biggest hope is that I won’t have to explain to my daughters that we live in an environment that discriminates against people because of the color of their skin, where they go to church or their sexual orientation.  I hope that my daughters will know that all Americans share the same rights and privileges under law because we, as a country, have voted to maintain those rights.  Ultimately, I hope that our “don’t ask, don’t tell” military will continue to defend those rights so that someday it might be possible for all world citizens to share those same rights.  For now, I’ll tell them that how Connecticut does it is right and that California will catch up at some point in the future – hopefully sooner rather than later.

Our neighbor and I were talking tonight and although I hate to admit it, because I don’t think we’re too backwater, he’s a little bit white trash.  We don’t have a ton to talk about so I brought up Proposition 8.  Figured we’re both around 40, middle class, white men, we should be able to at least talk about this without anyone getting too ignorant.  Boy, was I wrong.

I’m against Proposition 8 – let people marry who they want.  He’s for it – believes there’s something wrong with the law.  Figuring that didn’t make much sense I asked, “what do you think is wrong with the law?”  Now, I’m not much of a legal mind, but his response saying “it’s not written correctly” sounded odd to me. He’s married to a Fillipino, so I added in there, “how would you feel if they said you couldn’t stay married to your wife because she’s not the same race?”