The Mourning After, Part One

On Election Night, my friend Joe invited me over to his house to watch the returns. I was grateful for his invitation on many levels. I had been feeling somewhat disconnected and anti-social over the last few months, he was offering free pizza and Diet Coke, we have the same smart, though self-deprecating and sophomoric sense humor, and he has a family. Now, I've never told Joe that I like being around his family because, it's--well, a family. A real live suburban family unit. I've also rarely said out loud to anyone that I want a family. So there, now I have. I want a family, with a husband and a child (maybe two), a house with a two-car garage, and a Labrador. A yellow one. And apparently, a lot of other people want this too. I know this because I see them often and in droves. This means I am not as unique as I though was. I am pretty frigging ordinary, though special in the way that there will never be another me--ever.

And yet for some reason, there are people who want to take away my dream. They already have it for themselves, and yet they don't want to share it like a greedy little brat at Halloween who eats all the candy until he moans from the cramps in his hateful little abdomen. But I'll stop here, because in order to move forward with this story, we're going to take a little voyage.

Back in good ‘ol 2000, months after the Y2K Armageddon prophesies faded into memory, voters in California were presented with Proposition 22. A ballot measure that defined marriage to be only between a man and a woman. At the time, I lived in Huntington Beach, a burg in Orange County, which is among the most conservative, Republican areas in the state. A senior at Cal State Long Beach, I commuted from home to save money, and frankly, to enjoy the benefits of being an unemployed college student. This was the beginning of the post-Clinton years, a time of prosperity at home and abroad. The harbinger of George W. Bush was on the political horizon, soon to take this country through the worst eight years in memory.

I remember turning left into the tract of the 1970's cookie cutter starter homes, and greeted by what else: a YES on PROP 22 SIGN. This is the place where I had lived for 23 years of my life. I rode my first bike here after my dad took of the training wheels and let my ride, however wobbly and unbalanced down Larthorn Drive. I lit firecrackers during the 4th of July (when they were still legal), I trick-or-treated, longed for summer to arrive, and played outside until the soles of my feet were blackened with asphalt. I smoked pot for the first time in our tree in the front yard. Hell, I even kissed a boy for the first time in front of my childhood home. Too many rites of passage to count. And now, the most insidious rite of passage of all. My personal introduction into the institutionalization of homophobia.

Homophobia, Ian. Ian, homophobia.

It's not like I hadn't been the victim of that kind of hostility before. In school, I received the brunt of it from very misguided and insecure boys. Mostly, I presume, because their parents taught them to do so. And maybe because on some level, they saw my vulnerability as a gay kid, recognized it in themselves, and lashed out. What you resist persists, what you take a look at ceases to trouble you.

But this time, it was different. This type of bigotry was not an in-yer-face, queer-bashing bravado. It was far more odious, like a deadly cancer metastasising its way through the circulatory system of the electorate. A deft killer of rights, of hopes, and of dreams. Instead of sexually repressed adolescents shouting, "Fairy!" or "Fag!", it was adults in the privacy of their voting booth, quietly marking ink on a ballot. It is a lot easier to take away some one's dignity when you're not staring them in the face. In the end, 62% of Californians approved Proposition 22.

After I graduated in May, I quickly moved to Los Angeles, thinking I would forever erase the years of verbal and psychological abuse I had endured. And this Prop. 22 thing? L.A. would be different. Not so many Republicans, I mused. People are a lot more open-minded in L.A., right?

So eight years go by. And the Good Gays and the Straight-But-Not-Narrows are fighting the fight. And it works! In June of 2008, the California Supreme Court overturned Prop. 22 by declaring it unconstitutional. To amend the constitution to take away the rights of anyone is unconstitutional. We won! I went to my first legal wedding in August. I continued to sketch the dream in my imagination. I held my head a little higher. I felt my heart soften a bit. And I had hope.

And then comes along a shadow from the past like a frozen feeling that creeps up your spine. A new Prop. 22. Proposition 8. And this time, I convinced myself, it would surely be struck down by the pretty people of Los Angeles. By the friendly folks of California. Because eight years had gone by. Will and Grace was in syndication. T.R. Knight was on Grey's Anatomy. Ellen was giving Oprah a run for her money as the Queen of Daytime Talk. I mean, Doogie Howser is out! And hot! Come on! People have evolved, right?

Back at Joe's place, MSNBC called the election for Barack Obama. I was beside myself. Verclempt. Gobsmacked. I worked hard for Obama's election. I phone banked three times, I donated money, I obsessively watched Rachel Maddow and CNN and read the Times of both coasts. I ranted, I raved. I wept and my friends wept with me. A feeling that what I had done, however minute, was part and parcel of a shift in American politics. November 4, 2008 instantaneously became a part of future history books. This was the day that Americans came together and said, "Enough!" Enough of the hedonistic, bull-in-a-china-shop policies of the GOP and W., enough of our soldiers dying in vain, enough of corporate culture draining taxpayers' 401Ks and pensions. In a millisecond that lasted an eon, I experienced the joy parents must feel when they give birth.

And then, the proverbial shoe drop.

I slid my iPhone open and typed in the URL for the LA Times. Proposition 8 was winning. This had to be a mistake. This night was too precious. And, like in a movie, when someone has some revelatory moment, all the noise drained from the room. My hope evaporated. The change that I longed for was ripped from my heart. All of the excitement and disbelief I felt about Obama's win vanished. I crashed to Earth. And someone turned the dial up on the master volume. Joe gave me a look. "Prop. 8 is winning," I said with a voice that escaped from my lungs. How could this have happened? Could all of the work and the tears and the pain we've spent over the years be in vain?