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Alongside the incredible, amazing, and truly historic victory of electing Barack Obama President, an enormous triumph of the civil rights movement, that same movement suffered a defeat. In fact, three defeats.
California, the second state to formally legalize marriage between same-sex couples, became the first to repeal that. It was joined by Florida and Arizona in banning gay marriage, though those two never formally legalized it to begin with. And that leaves only Connecticut and Massachussets, changing what I said a few weeks ago from "Three down, forty-seven to go!" back to forty-eight.
But hey, I'm an optimist! Discrimination like this never stands, even if it takes decades to get rid of it. As Kate Kendall recently said, “We pick ourselves up and trudge on. There has been enormous movement in favor of full equality in eight short years. That is the direction this is heading, and if it’s not today or it’s not tomorrow, it will be soon.”
And as Martin Luther King Jr. and many others said, "We shall overcome."
And as President-Elect Barack Obama and many, many others said, "Yes, we can."
We can what? In this case, end hatred of people who happen to be different than the majority. Establish equal rights for people whose only difference from everyone else is that they happen to prefer something different. They're not doing anything to you! Let them love! And, the harder thing for people to accept, let them enjoy the same rights as you!
Because love is always better than hate, and I think we can at least agree on that, can't we?
Now, the real question, should I leave this open? I would hope people could respect each other even if they disagree, but at the same time this is just slightly on the controversial end of things. Well, this shall be an experiment. Hopefully I won't have to close this, so don't make me (or the blogfolks) have to, okie?
~ ToM
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