Not like this

Okay, I'm going to start this off by making it clear that I'm aware that I might be coming at this from a perspective that's skewed because of who I am. I'm a heterosexual male who got to marry exactly whom he wanted to marry. I'm not gay, and I don't know what it's like to live my life as a gay man. I also can only begin to imagine what gay people are going through right now with what's happened here in California.

With that said, I just read about how some people are suing over the results of Proposition 8. I read it a couple of hours ago, but the basic premise is that they're claiming that it was an illegal change to the Constitution, and since it took away rights, it needed to have gone through the legislature first before going to the voters.

I'm no legal expert, so I'm not going to comment on that. All I know is, if they are successful, it's just going to add fuel to the whole "activist judges" fire. Now, that particular argument was total bull the first time around, and it might very well be bull in this instance too. However, what I'd rather see happen is us biding our time. I had several students express disappointment in the results - they seemed genuinely bewildered how anybody could vote the way that they did. This is quite a sight - because as much as I'm against it, I do understand the mindset of the Yes on 8 crowd, as I had to get over a lot of my own ignorant attitudes regarding gay people. These kids though - they were as baffled as I was when I was in second grade and first learned about segregated drinking fountains during the days of Jim Crow. It simply didn't make any sense to me why they'd ever do that.

We're going to need to put some trust in the new generation. We might not be getting what we want right now, but it will indeed come. Of course, I realize that there already are some gay couples out there who got married since the lifting of the ban several months ago, and they're going to do whatever they can to protect their marriages. Personally, I think that they should fight tooth-and-nail to protect what is theirs. After all, love is worth fighting for - even when it is in vain. Shoot, that's the whole point of Cyrano de Bergerac, and you're not going to argue with Cyrano, are you?

Again, I might feel differently about this if I was a gay man. Still, wouldn't it be better if we could simply say that gay marriage is the will of the people AND guaranteed by our basic human rights?