OK, I know a lot of people in California are torn up about the results of Proposition 8. I’m not crazy about it myself, and I’m sure that a lot of people in parts East are thinking “how the hell can something like that pass in California?” Well, I’m going to spell it out for you:
1) California is the largest state in the country, with a massive population that is split in exactly the same fashion as the rest of the country in terms of culture, economics, religion and the urban/rural divide. To use the most hack cliche, there is definitely Red California and Blue California, and once you get outside the major urban centers, it turns really red – mostly because the makeup of the population is largely unchanged from the original Dust Bowl migrants who settled agricultural California during the Depression.
2) The final number looks like it’s going to be 52-48. In other words, if another bite at the apple comes round, shifting 2.5% would do the damn thing.
3) Getting to that 52% took a metric shitload of out-of-state cash and resources, mostly from rectangular states other than California.
4) Most importantly, the “No” vote didn’t jump on this early enough. The initial polling shows the proposition failing to pass by a wide margin, and I think a lot of people who didn’t have a personal interest pretty much punted on the issue – and did so largely out of fear that making a big deal out of gay marriage might worsen the prospects for the Democratic Party’s best shot at the White House in years. You can argue from dusk til dawn about whether this was correct or not, and the morality of it is a SHOW, but what’s done is done…for now.
Now, my understanding is that there’s nothing to prevent offering another proposition next year to basically overturn this one, as all you need in California is 8% on a petition and then 50%+1 in the election. I didn’t expect to find an even longer and more complicated state constitution than Alabama’s all the way out here, but there you go. But most importantly, consider the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside.” Uncle Sam has the hydrogen bomb, and if a federal court were to get involved under the “equal protection” clause…well, let’s just say that from a contract law perspective, it may not be that difficult a case to make, especially in front of the Ninth Circuit.
Don’t forget, too – gay marriage passed in the California legislature twice, only to be vetoed both times by the Governator. Then, when the state court ruling came down, he said he wouldn’t contest it. He even had some words to say against 8, though not nearly enough to actually make a difference, but you have to wonder what he might do now if another constitutional amendment were to pass out of the legislature and go to the ballot next November.
Now, the dry political-legal analysis aside…
I come from a famously benighted state, one that had to have basic ideas about equality before the law enforced at the point of a gun for a very long time. I’ve lived in a cloud of irrational bigotry and seen the effect it has on people. I’ve seen people cut off their nose to spite their face while other people suffer as a result, and I know how discouraging and sickening it is to live with.
But that’s not all there is.
A minority, by the very definition of the word, doesn’t have 50%+1. They can’t do it alone. It takes people with nothing to gain for themselves, people who could go on with their lives unaffected and untroubled, stopping and saying “Hold. Up.”
Ken Burns did a movie about the earliest suffragette movement called “Not For Ourselves Alone.” Or in Latin, non nobis solum. That’s when the important stuff happens – when people start looking beyond themselves. When you get out there and start to push back for your family and friends and loved ones.
November 5 was always going to be the first day of the hard part. The plan is just the same as it ever was. Let’s eat enough Advil to make the throbbing stop, let’s get enough Gatorade down us to get rehydrated, and then let’s ride for our people.