i missed most of it. and for this, i suffered the loss of the full experience, and i regret it. however, considering i was up most of the night before with the heat & the winds & the allergies that felt like a flu, i accept that i did what i could. got up, got some Zyrtec (amazing stuff, fixed me right up), cleaned the car (it was bad), packed it with me & some kids, headed down to Mission Park right around the time the main protest was supposed to be ending.

it did not end then, nor had it ended by the time i left, an hour & a half after that. a core group of energetic anti-haters stayed and stayed and chanted and chanted and passers-by either honked & waved & thumbs-upped, or (and there were less of these) averted their eyes & pretended we were not there.

but we were there, we will be here, and we will not go away. ever. so get used to it.

we found this sign, adopted it, waved it, and passed it on to others when we left.

i missed so much, but i still came away with such a feeling of love and pride. my two sons came with me, along with their friends. we waved signs, we chanted chants, we talked to some amazing people. and do you know what? there were more straight people there than not. there was such an amazing variety of right-thinking humans there making their voices heard for what is right. there were families, kids, grandmas, teenagers, and a drag queen or two in full regalia (assuring his friend that he was indeed wearing panties under his short skirt). there was a pretty young dark-haired girl who did not appear to know anyone there, with a small homemade sign saying Prop 8 was unfair & wrong. she did not wave it, nor chant; she stood off to the side with her sign, alone, not interacting with anyone, just being there for the cause. i refrained from taking her picture, it would have been intrusive i think, for she radiated shyness.  and i might respect her most of all, just for getting out, just for showing up, just for standing up for what is right even though she was doing this, in her own world, all by herself.

because as i, and my children, and everyone who attended this rally today know, there is only one right thing, and that is our rights. civil rights, human rights. anything that everyone but a select few can do, is a right. anything that any minority is excluded from based solely on their status as a member of that miniroty, is a right that is unfairly granted to all who enjoy it. it’s in the California constitution, still: “A citizen or class of citizens may not be granted privileges or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens.” they didn’t amend that with Prop 8. they can’t. the fight is not over, yet. but there is no doubt in my mind that right will prevail.

i will confess i suffered a rather painful shock, last tuesday, when i clicked over from the transcendent presidential election victories to check the returns on the the fight against prop 8 to find it up by a good 10 points in the early returns. i could not imagine why it was doing so well, in an election where liberal candidates and causes were prevailing by a decisive margin. we came out to vote for hope, what the hell happened to hope?

i thought we would beat it. i really did. it’s simple logic! the arguments for it made little sense, and were universally untrue. there was no threat to marriage, to children, to churches. nothing bad was going to suddenly start happening, the only possible result was that nothing would change, that people who had civil rights in california would continue having those rights. simple! logic! the thought that the electorate would come out in favor of writing discrimination into the constitution seemed surreal, especially in the context this historic election.

and then i clicked over to the exit polls and suffered a second shock, looking at the demographics – the highest percentages (in the early exit polls) of yes votes cast against the civil rights of their fellow citizens were people of color, the african-american and latino voters. this made the least sense of anything (to me, at least). why would people who knew firsthand the pain of discrimination and the struggle to be granted the same rights as everyone else suddenly decide that, while civil rights are nice and all, that they’re just not for everybody? now, we know that even if these percentages were reversed, that it would not have changed the outcome, it just … it did not make sense to me.

so i asked this question on Plurk, and what resulted was a very long and very educational thread, the gist of which i shall attempt to convey here, in hopes it somehow helps:

what we had, was a failure to communicate. “…the commercials that were EVERYWHERE kept talking about how this was going to be taught in schools, how it was going to take 501C status from churches etc. And they kept saying it over and over. Those people KNEW what they were doing. Nothing is more sacred to black people (I’m one) than children and church.They didn’t say . . . look if you talk about HIV at school you have to SIGN a WAIVER, if you talk about puberty at school you have to SIGN a WAIVER of permission. So, there is NO WAY they will teach this “gay marriage” without YOU the parent knowing about it . . . cause we don’t do that here. This is for CIVIL marriages . . . if a church does not want to do the marriage they are PROTECTED and NOTHING will happen to them. And you have to say it over and over and over and over again. Like Obama had to do with the message of cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. He said it over and over again until we could hear it in our sleep.”

and you know, Telemill, who i’m quoting here, is absolutely right, although it took me awhile to catch on. i argued that yes we had said those things! and i went back and i looked at the commercials. and you know what? we actually kind of did say them, only … well, not really. the other side told their lies with precisely engineered emotional propaganda, like a wide-eyed, innocent child, “mommy, today i learned a prince can marry a prince.” we, on the other hand, got some politicians to dryly explain the facts, who listens? and then we had samuel l. jackson on repeat for the last few days before the election, talking about the wrongness of denying rights in terms of internment camps, interracial marriage, armenian home ownershsip. why did this message not ring true to those who had shared that pain, those struggles? what would cause them to come out heavily in favor of changing the constitution to revoke the rights of a minority, based solely on their status as a member of that minority?

it’s so simple: family. church. the important things, the things that sustain you when the society you live in treats you like a lesser human. and the other side, they knew this. as Telemill explains it, “You WERE up against them . . . conservatives I mean . . . but they knew they couldn’t do it themselves so they said, what would get the minority vote against them? Hmmm. . . I know . . . children. Let’s say that it will affect their children (you have the black vote and Latino vote with that one). OK, and then let’s say it will affect their church! (Catholic Latinos and Devote Christian Blacks will go nuts). They knew EXACTLY what message to through out there. And gay citizens were ignorant of that technique. Black people know it well . . . we’re just used to the conservatives pushing it OUR way, it’s different when on the other side of the coin.”

Mark Morford put it this way: “And I must say — and you might not want to hear this — a big chunk of blame for 8′s passage has to go to the No on 8 campaign’s initial arrogance, followed by their utterly limp reaction when the Yes campaign started attacking and gaining real steam. As one of my politically savvy Chronicle colleagues put it, ‘No on 8 was a bad campaign. Bad bad bad. Inept, amateurish, incompetent and, above all, guilty of committing the first and worst sin of politics: taking the voters for granted.’”

i admit it: i am guilty of complacency and naiveté, and of astonishing ignorance to the factors that ultimately motivated the voters. i am guilty of not knowing the enemy, and not seeing how well the enemy knew me and mine. and evidence suggests i was nowhere near alone in these failings. i know these are harsh words, and how dare i criticize the good people who fought a fair fight and got beaten by cheaters? yes. i have a lot of nerve, especially when you consider this is not my cause, in that i am a straight, white, middle-aged geek, fully endowed with all my inalienables: life, liberty, the pursuit, all that. but since this ridiculous travesty in which out of state religious interests have succeeded in imposing their bullshit on the constitution of my state, causing immeasurable harm to so many of my fellow californians, to my friends … well, forgive me if i’m so pissed off i’ve decided to barge on in and see if maybe i can help figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

it is possible i have no business opining these opinions. feel free to point this out, i’ll listen. meanwhile, i remain hopeful that these harsh lessons will serve us well as we continue this fight. as Telemill tells it, “…you must look at it this way. You lost for fight by a very SLIM margin when the enemy used LIES and dirty tactics. That means that people didn’t ACTUALLY turn their back on you. It means YOUR COMMUNITY didn’t fight HARD ENOUGH, didn’t push back enough You can never let up. You have to push back. Power never secedes . . . remember that. The small margin loss means the dawn is there . . . you are almost there.”

ok. so, what’s next?