California may be the next Alabama

I've been reading about the voters in California voting in favor of Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in the state.

The feelings this news evokes in me are paradoxical. On the one hand, I'm outraged that voters in California want to take rights away from gay people. I live way across the country in Alabama, one of the reddest states in the country, the state in which the fewest number of white people voted for Barack Obama. I was one of those 10% and am proud of it but I am used to being in the minority (a liberal in Alabama).

But I am also the mother of a 21 year old gay man. My best hope for him is that he will find someone to love who will love him back, so that they can cherish each other and share their lives as my husband and I have done, by getting married. And in my day dreams about this parents' dream, I always saw my son moving to California so he could do just that.

Alas, now that California has voted to abandon some of its best citizens, by voting for proposition 8, my dream has faded into outrage. Who are these people who think they deserve more rights than other people?

And now for the paradox. The only good thing about California's faux pas on this issue is the fact that for once some other state besides Alabama or Mississippi is in the media's attention for being bigoted and provincial. Thanks for that, California, but I liked you better when you were the liberal hippie state of my dreams.

Yes, we did!

I was glued to the television Tuesday night. My husband was too nervous to watch and went to his computer and played Scramble on Facebook. My 21 year old son sat with me in the den. While I constantly changed the channels between BBC America, MSNBC and CNN, Ryan had his macbook open and was cruising the New York Times, CNN, Facebook and other sites. We were elated but extremely nervous. When I saw Kentucky had voted for McCain I was upset. Silly, I know but I was afraid that we were about to watch a repeat of 2000 and or 2004. As the night went on however, I realized Kentucky wasn't going to decide the election.

We also started flipping back and forth to Comedy Central so we could watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert covering the election live.

It was an electrifying night. My two cats knew something was amiss and they were on the alert just as we were. They sauntered between the kitchen and the den, presumably thinking with all the excitement that we would surely soon give them treats. After all, the kind of excitement their humans were feeling is usually reserved for Thanksgiving or Christmas and they always get to eat turkey on those days.

The relief in the room was palpable when Pennsylvania was declared for Obama. We discovered that Ohio had gone for Obama while on the BBC network. They were a few minutes ahead of MSNBC which we then changed to.

First we got to hear Jon Stewart say the magic words.

Ryan sat up very tall on the sofa and I saw his face turn red. He turned his beautiful little macbook towards me where Safari revealed the BBC website showing California and the rest of the west coming in and we watched as the number of electoral votes started rising exponentially. Then I heard Keith Olbermann say, "Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States."

I wept. I screamed. Ryan wept too and Jim finally quit pacing and joined us. We were laughing and crying at the same time. When MSNBC switched to the crowd at Grant Park in Chicago, we knew, along with the crowd, that we had changed the world for the better.

Yes, we did!