Numb

I should feel angry or upset or confused, I know. The California Supreme Court has decided 6-1 to let stand an amendment to the state's constitution that singles out gays and lesbians as a distinct class of people for whom the rights of marriage are not available. I should be joining my tribe in the streets marching for equality and demanding that we be treated the same as anyone else who wants the privilege of marrying whomever we choose. However, all I feel inside is numb. I don't have the energy to march just yet; I'm still too shaken.

I understand that the court was not being asked to consider anything regarding the "rightness" of Proposition 8, a hateful, mean-spirited attempt to keep gays and lesbians as second class citizens. I know that the court could only consider whether or not the change was an amendment and not a revision to the constitution, with a revision requiring much more rigorous steps to enact. I acknowledge that it was perhaps outside the purview of the court to strike down the alleged "will of the people" when our constitution explicitly allows for ballot propositions.

Still, I had hoped that the court might decide that the public should not be granted permission to determine to which rights a group has access. I knew it was a long shot, as did almost everyone I know who had discussed this issue since November, but still we thought there might be a chance. It has, for the most part, been the court system, not the people or the legislatures, that has ensured the protection of civil rights and ensured equality and fairness for everyone. Instead, what we are left with is a court determined to let the forces of bigotry win out. How can we expect a public vote on the rights of a minority ever to result in protections for the minority?

I'm very puzzled over how the court can say, on one hand, that Proposition 8 is merely a minor change that doesn't keep gays and lesbians from enjoying all of the privileges of the state's laws and then say, on the other hand, that the 18,000 or so gay couples who managed to get married last summer have legally recognized relationships that are true marriages. The actual decision states, "Although Proposition 8 eliminates the ability of same-sex couples to enter into an official relationship designated as 'marriage,' in all other respects those couples continue to possess, under the state constitutional privacy and due process clauses, 'the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage.'... Like opposite-sex couples, same sex couples enjoy this protection not as a matter of legislative grace, but constitutional right." How is that possible without the legal designation of marriage? It is a legal term for very specific reasons and with very specific benefits. The court adds that Proposition 8 "does not otherwise affect the state's obligation to enforce the equal protection clause by protecting the 'fundamental right...of same-sex couples to have their official family relationships accorded the same dignity, respect, and stature as that accorded to all other official recognized family relationships.'" How can our relationships be considered the "same" without having the same legal status?

I've read some blogs and articles that have already compared this decision to the infamous Dred Scott case or to Plessy v. Ferguson. Those were U.S. Supreme Court decisions that let stand the cruel tyranny of slavery and that established the discriminatory practice of "separate but equal." Those rulings have since become part of the more shameful aspects of our history, and I can only hope that Tuesday's ruling joins them soon.

As I've said before, I have no one to marry. But I would still like to have the option should the opportunity arise at some point in the future. As of now, convicts are allowed to marry, but not me. People who have been married and divorced several times are allowed to marry, but not me. Horny teenagers are allowed to marry, albeit sometimes with the required permission of their parents, but tnot me. People who have chosen their spouses on a television show are allowed to marry, but not me. People who are way past the age at which they could procreate are allowed to marry, but not me. Hell, even people who get drunk on a weekend trip to Las Vegas are allowed to marry, but not me. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true. I could marry a woman. I would merely have to deny my true self and submit to a lie in order to make those so-called people of religious faith feel appeased. Then I'd have to spend the rest of my existence unhappy because I couldn't be with the kind of person to whom I am truly attracted.

Someday, perhaps during my lifetime, all of this will be over. People will write dissertations for degrees in history about the marriage debate and how it all ended with full equality across the United States. Someday. For now, though, my options are to move to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, or Iowa, where marriage is legal for my tribe, at least for now, or to continue living in a state that considers me to be a lesser citizen than its heterosexual residents or even a small group of gays and lesbians who were lucky enough to make it under the deadline. I still don't quite comprehend how there can be a right that is available only from March to November of one year. How can you take away a right that the court itself said last year should be granted in order to achieve the equal protection promised by the constitution?

So I don't yet know what I'm going to do. I will probably join the marches this weekend because, yes, there will continue to be marches and protests. I will donate what money I can to the groups trying to get a ballot proposition for 2010 or 2012 to reverse the amendment. I might eventually locate my anger (my rage, really) at the decision and at the people who are so narrow-minded that they cannot even listen to the pleas for equality, but I will certainly listen to our leaders who will have suggestions for how we should respond. I just don't know yet. I'm still too numb.