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.

Reading through some of the political pieces that are out there and even trolling through craigslist.org, the arguments against gay marriage are so far out there it’s difficult to completely understand how people can put those words together and still sleep at night.  Seriously, to clarify for those of you looking to support the ban on gay marriage, this isn’t going to get rid of gays, force your children to be homosexual, teach gay sex in school, or change what it means for you to be married to your husband or wife.  It’s not going to change anything for you – other than allowing you to sleep at night because you know that you’ve worked to uphold the constitution.  If your religious beliefs that are impacting your beliefs of what constitutes husband and wife, I would recommend that you look really deep and make sure that the institution that creates your church is translating the words of the bible correctly and not interpreting them to meet what the church wants to continue their stranglehold on it’s flock.

For those of you that continue to support equality for everyone and the rights of gays to marry, I applaud you and wish you success.  I will continue to fight from my stand here and in the community until we have distanced ourselves from the blight of discrimination.

Ranter

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?”

He paused for a minute and said, “I’m still voting for Prop 8, because it’s not written right.”  Now I was getting a little frustrated – this didn’t make sense to me.  We’re not even talking about writing a law here we’re talking about repealing a law that’s already been written.  So, I asked my question again, “seems like a stupid response considering how its written isn’t the point.  Are you voting to legislate discrimination or not?”

His response: “It’s not written right – marriage is between a man and a woman.”  After that and my comment about the next change being race related we parted ways and finished our Trick or Treating with the kids separately.  How do you feel?

Ranter