Cutting Both Ways
It is November 6th, 2008 and I am twain.
Barack Hussein Obama is our 44th President-Elect. I couldn't be more proud, more amazed and more hopeful. This is a great victory for black folk worldwide and in America. We actually put a man of african ancestry, with an ethnic-arab/african, to be precise-name, into the White House of the United States of America. Far, far beyond that, this is a victory for Americans everywhere. We triumphed over a party that was fine with every election fraud trick in the book. A hegemonic party that was intent on creating a dynasty for itself and an economically enslaved workforce out of everyone else. Instead, we overwhelmed them with sheer numbers and work ethic, outstripping them to the finish line while playing fair. Beyond belief, we held ourselves high and scrimped to fund our candidate, shrugging off every lie and combating it with truth. A. MAZE. ING. We did it. We beat every party machine, RNC & DLC alike.
Then, in the glow of victory, defeat. All those people coming out to vote for Obama, particularly minorities, black ones, voted to strip gays of the right to marry the people they love. Over the wreckage of our communities, over the bodies of our men and women who died for this historic moment, they chose to discriminate against others. Don't worry, gentle readers (all 2 of you), I blame the LDS for their interfering, trifling ways and want them to lose their tax exempt status accordingly. If churches want to be political organizations, they can give up that tax exempt status. It's not just the black people. It's also latinos and whites, protestants, catholics and agnostic bigots. The message of "fear the gay pedophile" was loud and clear and nothing is as comforting and mindnumbingly puerile as the whole "traditional definition of marriage" reason. We needed a campaign that hit back hard against these two things and it wasn't there until nearly the end. I hate to say it, but we thought that getting out the vote for Obama meant we were getting out the vote for social progress too. Sadly, this was not the case.
I've seen love and devotion by gay people in relationships. It's when a partner, nay, a husband holds the hand of his husband as he endures cancer treatments. It's when a wife tenderly listens to her wife as she pushes her through the supermarket in her wheelchair, patiently constructing a language of their own when english has been lost to stroke. It's stolen glances at each other when you're out in a strange city, holding each other in a look, when holding each other physically could lead to violence. Gay people will get married as they have gotten married before, as willing participants in the faiths that allow them in, before friends and cobbled together family. They'll move every legal mountain to make up for whatever legal rights have been denied them, just as they have before. But, in this day, in an America that stands for equal protections under the law, they should not have to. Black America has stood with people who for many years taught we had no soul.
Jubilation and shame in equal, disturbing proportions.
Barack Hussein Obama is our 44th President-Elect. I couldn't be more proud, more amazed and more hopeful. This is a great victory for black folk worldwide and in America. We actually put a man of african ancestry, with an ethnic-arab/african, to be precise-name, into the White House of the United States of America. Far, far beyond that, this is a victory for Americans everywhere. We triumphed over a party that was fine with every election fraud trick in the book. A hegemonic party that was intent on creating a dynasty for itself and an economically enslaved workforce out of everyone else. Instead, we overwhelmed them with sheer numbers and work ethic, outstripping them to the finish line while playing fair. Beyond belief, we held ourselves high and scrimped to fund our candidate, shrugging off every lie and combating it with truth. A. MAZE. ING. We did it. We beat every party machine, RNC & DLC alike.
Then, in the glow of victory, defeat. All those people coming out to vote for Obama, particularly minorities, black ones, voted to strip gays of the right to marry the people they love. Over the wreckage of our communities, over the bodies of our men and women who died for this historic moment, they chose to discriminate against others. Don't worry, gentle readers (all 2 of you), I blame the LDS for their interfering, trifling ways and want them to lose their tax exempt status accordingly. If churches want to be political organizations, they can give up that tax exempt status. It's not just the black people. It's also latinos and whites, protestants, catholics and agnostic bigots. The message of "fear the gay pedophile" was loud and clear and nothing is as comforting and mindnumbingly puerile as the whole "traditional definition of marriage" reason. We needed a campaign that hit back hard against these two things and it wasn't there until nearly the end. I hate to say it, but we thought that getting out the vote for Obama meant we were getting out the vote for social progress too. Sadly, this was not the case.
I've seen love and devotion by gay people in relationships. It's when a partner, nay, a husband holds the hand of his husband as he endures cancer treatments. It's when a wife tenderly listens to her wife as she pushes her through the supermarket in her wheelchair, patiently constructing a language of their own when english has been lost to stroke. It's stolen glances at each other when you're out in a strange city, holding each other in a look, when holding each other physically could lead to violence. Gay people will get married as they have gotten married before, as willing participants in the faiths that allow them in, before friends and cobbled together family. They'll move every legal mountain to make up for whatever legal rights have been denied them, just as they have before. But, in this day, in an America that stands for equal protections under the law, they should not have to. Black America has stood with people who for many years taught we had no soul.
Jubilation and shame in equal, disturbing proportions.
posted by Misanthropic Meanderings | 7:01 PM
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