August 13, 2004

This Day in My History

TODAY's QUOTE

To our family and friends,

With sadness we announce that today the Supreme Court of California has decided that our marriage is not legal and has voided it. We are extremely upset but have decided to continue our fight through legal channels and in the legislature where we are sure we will win. We need you to stand by us and give us support in any way you see fit.

Thank you for standing with us in our fight for equality for all people,

Love,
Shelly and Ellen

Yesterday's Entries

2000: The Pipes are Calling
2001: Day of Rest
2002: Tinsel Town
2003: I Didn't Want to Know

CURRENTLY READING

Strange Life of Ivan Osokin
by P.D. Ouspensky

TONIGHT's ENTERTAINMENT

Sublimus,
a dance show

SHEILA's BLOG

cuteface.jpg (26587 bytes)

Another cute picture of me. I'm so photogenic!

Sheila Video 1 ("See Sheila Run")
Sheila Video 2 ("Meet Barkley")
Sheila Video 3 ("Play time")

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

13 August 2004

How would you feel if someone walked into your house and turned everything upside down, took away your most prized possession and didn’t even apologize.

That must be how the over 4,000 couples who were legally married in San Francisco last year must feel today. The Supreme Court of California has declared that Mayor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority in allowing the marriages to go forth.

And then they invalidated all of the over 4000 marriages which were performed.

Over 4,000 couples who have spent the past year as legally married citizens. After a lifetime of feeling different from their married neighbors, the relationships between people of the same gender who love each other and who have committed their lives to each other were validated. Society (or a portion of society) said "we understand. Your relationship has value. You are worthy of the same respect that we have."

The Supreme Court of California just yanked that away and spit in the face of over 4,000 couples who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace and to enjoy those rights to which, as tax-paying citizens, they feel entitled.

The justices also decided with a 5-2 vote to nullify the nearly 4,000 marriages peformed before the court halted the weddings on March 11. Their legality, Justice Joyce Kennard wrote, must wait until "the constitutionality of California laws restricting marriages to opposite-sex couples has been authoritatively resolved through judicial proceedings now pending in the courts of California."

The same-sex marriages had virtually no legal value, but powerful symbolic value. Their nullification by the high court dismayed Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license in San Francisco.

"Del is 83-years-old and I am 79," Lyon said. "After being together for more than 50 years, it is a terrible blow to have the rights and protections of marriage taken away from us. At our age, we do not have the luxury of time."

I've listened to a lot of rhetoric, pro and con, on the whole subject of gay relationships. I hear words like "abomination" and "unnatural" and other such inflammatory phrases tossed around. Nobody will stay quiet long enough to listen to the feelings of the gay couples. Everyone has his/her own idea, based on something written in a book thousands of years ago.

My feeling is that unless you have actually felt those feelings, you have no business passing judgement on those who have.

We accept what we find normal for us as normal for everyone.

I am reminded of when I was a child, 10 years old. I had undiagnosed ambliopia. My left eye did all the work, my right eye was (and still is) essentially useless for vision, though I'm not blind.

But as a child, I just assumed that everyone had one good eye and one bad eye, because I had one good eye and one bad eye and there was nothing unusual about me. It's just the way I was born and since I accepted that as normal, everybody must be just like me.

For those who find same gender attractions, love between two people of the same gender, unnatural, just take a minute to stop and think. For you, the attraction between a man and a woman is the norm. You have never felt attraction for someone of the same gender, so you assume that anybody who does is unnatural.

Now, suppose that the tables were turned. Set aside things like procreation and vague Biblical admonishments. Just assume that the norm is for people of the same gender to be together, so that the majority of the population consists of same gender couples. But you can't feel that attraction. You look at someone of the opposite gender and your heart goes pitty pat. You fall in love with someone of the opposite gender and you want to make a lifelong commitment to this person, but society tells you that you are unnatural. That you must stifle your feelings and learn to be attracted to someone of the same gender.

Could you do it?

Of course not. Because that's not the way you're wired. You are wired to be attracted to someone of the opposite gender. That is your norm.

For those people, like the women in San Francisco who have lived in a committed relationship for 50 years, like my friends Ellen and Shelly who have now been together over 30 years, the norm is an attraction to someone of the same gender. Their love doesn't affect your life. It doesn't impact on society. They are good citizens. They work hard for the community. Many raise families. They pay taxes. They deserve nothing less than equality.

They don't deserve the scorn of the community. They don't deserve some court coming in to tell them that the marriages they had longed for, worked for, prayed for for so long no longer exist.

Goddamn it, it's not right!!!!!

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Ellen and Shelly's wedding --
now told by the court that it has no meaning