[ So Prop 8... ]

I've been going on many tirades about Prop 8 here at Notecarder, but in truth, the revolutionary tone I've taken doesn't really echo how I feel. I don't feel enraged or empowered or ready to take to the streets. All I feel is blue.

LA is a hard city. They say if you can live in NY, you can live anywhere, and I often feel the same way about Los Angeles. Traffic is a nightmare. It's crowded as shit. And so many people have so much money, it drives the cost of living up for everyone else. Still. It's five hours from San Francisco. Two from San Diego. Five from Arizona. Seven from Vegas. Ten from Lake Tahoe. And you know what else made California great? The gays and how they could get married and how the rest of the country could fuck off while we pursued the actual American dream -- you know, Freedom.

Despite LA's problems, I could almost do it. I could live there with my person and my family. At least my kids wouldn't be bastards.

I firmly believe that this is a country where we need to be saying "yes" to our people. I can always make a better decision for my life than the government can, and you know, I think there's a lot of Americans who would agree. Don't tell me I can't smoke weed. If you don't want to smoke weed, don't fucking smoke weed, but don't fucking tell me not to. Same with terminating a pregnancy. Or lighting a cigarette in my fucking bar. Or wearing a seat-belt. Or giving me the option of "pulling the plug" at the end of my life. Just let me do my thing and I'll let you do yours. This is Social Contract 101 - the government should only intervene to protect their citizens from harm.

For the record, my libertarian attitude extends to conservative issues as well. If you don't want to sell birth control at your drugstore or perform an abortion at your private practice, you shouldn't fucking have to. Somebody will. Fuck. Wallmart will. If you don't want your diabetic son to have insulin, because medicine conflicts with your religious beliefs, then so be it. If you want to have multiple wives, fine. I'll never have multiple wives, but what-fucking-ever.

You sure as shit can't do it in Iran. If not in America, where?

...and herein is where democracy fails. Because the majority... the people... the crowd... well, they aren't always right and, yet, they're given a voice even if that voice is racist or sexist or homophobic or xenophobic or whatever... and there's people like Arnold Swartzeneggar who are on record for being against Prop 8, just like we wanted him to be, but was so tied to his party that he wouldn't do anything about it. Obama, by the way, is no less absolved from responsibility. We needed him to come out against this, but he never did, at least not in a satisfactory way. He could have made an ad or something, but he had an election to win.

In the same night, Bush was out and so were the gays... and I keep going back and forth between whether or not the election was a net loss. for me personally. Yes. Our country will be way fucking better now that Obama's in office. But whatever Obama does for Detroit or Iraq or Global Warming or the national deficit seems really fucking insignificant compared with who I can and cannot marry.

People in Iraq have a stake in Iraq. I don't. You probably don't either. If the whole country was wiped off the map and everyone in it was executed and there weren't newspapers. It wouldn't fucking matter at all. Same with global warming. More pollution. Famines in Africa. Another hurricane in the South. Maybe another terrorist attack on the east coast over oil. Who cares? It would only exist in newspapers any way...

What I do have a stake in, however, is whether or not I can fall head-over-heels for someone and make a marriage commitment to them that not only binds us together, but legally protects us in hundreds (if not thousands?) of ways.

I'm not really sure why the Mormons cared so much about this issue or why 70% of African Americans voted against us, but it makes me sad to realize that sunny California with its beaches, rollerbladers, movie stars, shameless drunk-drivers, and 420 friendly police officers isn't as groovy as I thought it was.