Tuesday night was like New Year's Eve in my neighborhood in San Francisco. Packs of young people crawled the city sidewalks all night long, hollering, baiting cars to honk their horns, jumping up and down in exuberant glee. Barack Obama is president-elect of our country. All over the city people wandered down into the streets with a mixture of elation. Change is coming to Washington. Change is coming to our economy. Change is coming to our 7% unemployment rate. Change is coming to Iraq. In an eerie echo of George W. Bush's 2004 campaign slogan, Barack Obama led a sea of supporters in call and response to herald in his victory. "Yes we can," he called out into the midnight air. "Yes we can," the collected mass of supporters shouted back, many in tears.
Meanwhile, in state ballot measures around the country many of these same re-energized American voters were busy stripping away fundamental rights from people based on their sexual orientation. Arizona approved a ban on gay marriage by a resounding ten points. California approved a similar ban on gay marriage by half a million votes. Florida followed suit in a crushing landslide with a margin of almost two million votes to ban gay marriage. Arkansas approved a ban on same-sex couples adopting children by fourteen points.
Last week two of my friends in Seattle had to go register for something called a domestic partnership. They've decided to spend the rest of their lives together, but because they are two consenting adult women their union can only be considered a partnership. In September I went to another friend's wedding in Missouri (of all places). She was also marrying a woman. The morning after I was at her parents' house for a post-party breakfast and asked if they were excited to do their taxes together for the first time as a couple. Oops. Their status as a same-sex couple means they can't get the same tax credits afforded straight people. Neither is guaranteed visitation rights in a hospital, and they both could be squeezed out of life insurance claim should someone on the other side of the family decide to push the issue. Should they want to start a family, they'll have to make sure to avoid Arkansas, even the little town called Hope.
I don't have much experience with marriage. I've never been married and never had any long-term relationship that could be described as a success. My parents stuck together, though their union is an unhappy one, something that has left me more skeptical than inspired. Staying together with one person for the rest of your life seems impossible in a lot of ways. People change, attractions dwindle, the charm of feeling wanted turns into a constrictive weight over the years, familiarity turns into boredom, then resentment. Committing a lifetime to one single person is terrifying. It's a promise of permanence in the face of something overwhelming and fundamentally beyond our control.
Maybe it's the vanity of inexperience, but I can't imagine a better way to spend my life than fighting alongside a partner, and for a partner, against all the unpredictable ravages that our indifferent universe gives us. It seems like a fundamental human right to seek companionship and build a relationship, a family, and a community around the idea of two people loving each other and offering one another the benefit of the doubt even after the hormonal spark of eroticism has worn off. The universe is huge and nonsensical. Under the best of circumstances, a partnership between two loving partners can be a way to bring meaning, purpose, and progress into the primordial tumult.
So how can it be that a country built on meritocracy, individual liberties, and the pursuit of happiness can stand obstinately in the way of so many people seeking to carve out some metaphysical shelter from the storm? It's wrong. On a night when so many people were out in the streets, cheering, drinking, celebrating the victory of "hope," millions of other people were being told that their lives and the lifelong commitments they make are not equal. Obama has made a point of referencing gays almost everytime he stumps, in an effort to normalize their existence and legitimacy. In a speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta he addressed the issue directly. "If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them."
It's hard to reconcile that direct statement, with the fact that the election that will have brought him into office has also been one of the biggest setbacks for gay rights in recent memory. I voted for Obama and Joe Biden, but I remain deeply skeptical about his ability to stand up for the right thing under moments of duress. John McCain has been the arch villain of this election, the cringe-worthy Nosferatu who curdles the blood of the affluent twenty-something voter. He was my choice for president up until Biden's emergence as vice-presidential candidate. Eight years ago, in another heated election, he addressed this same issue of discrimination and homophobia in Virginia, speaking directly to those in his own party lured by the "agents of intolerance."
"The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion, or in the name of the Republican Party, or in the name of America shame our faith, our party, and our country."
Maybe I'm too cynical, or too romantic, but it would have been nice to see the great ambassador of change actually speak up more forcefully about some of those issues that were at stake this week; to have actually led his constituents and supporters with more than a subtle nudge. We made history in selecting Obama to be our next president. He let an opportunity to help shape history pass by in comparative inaction. That's change, but not the change I was hoping for.
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Sex Machine: Let's Have an Orgy
Sex Machine: My First STD
Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV
Love Machine: Let's Make Babies
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines
Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner
Date Machine: Don't Make Poopy in the Office
Hooksexup Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty
Crying In Public: Some Corner in Brooklyn
Dating the Web: Don't Google Fisting and Why Women Apologize So Much
Date Machine: The Woman in the Coffee Shop and The Woman at the Bus Stop
Love Machine: Your Mom Will Do
Date Machine: Scary Movies or I Peed My Pants
Date Machine: Rate My Ethics
Love Machine: Let's Just Be Friends
Love Machine: Must Be Willing to Lie About Where We Met
Sex Machine: Why Women Are Great In Bed
Sex Machine: Why Women Suck in Bed
Date Night: All By Myself on a Saturday Night
Sex Machine: Spank My Ass
Love Machine: Infidelity or How Long Can You Go Without Cheating?
Date Night: The 45-Minute Walkout
Date Night Redux: H's Version of Our Night Out
Celebrity Confession: Who is Lauren Cohan and Why is She Hitting on Me?
Sex Machine: My First Muff Dive
Crying in Public: Remember the Cheerleaders
Sex Machine: Masturbating Upside Down
Date Night: Two Women in One Night
Hooksexup Confessions: Rate My Penis Size
Crying In Public: The Sichuan Night Train
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Sex Machine: Rate My Blowjobs
Crying in Public: My Cubicle