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.
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