A Bittersweet Day
by slaveofone

Today is both a sad and happy day in California. The California Supreme Court–after ruling that prohibiting gay marriage was anti-Constitutional and then allowing 18,000 gay couples to be married–nevertheless upheld the people’s will to change the State Constitution and to make the terrible injustice of Prop 8 a reality. I think that the California Supreme Court did the right thing in upholding the will of the people to make their Constitution and to decide for themselves what they will legally allow and what they won’t (much better the people decide what they want than government decide for them!). And yet what the majority decided is, in my opinion, a great and disastrous inhumanity. I feel like I’m living back in the days of Martin Luther King when he was speaking and marching and protesting the injustice and the inhumanity of our nation first against African-Americans and then against those we demonized in Vietnam. It seems like no matter all the progress we have made, we have returned to where we were before. And it is startling to think that there are now parts of Europe like Denmark and Belgium that are MORE free and just than California–at least on this front. And yet, there is great good in the free will of humanity to make their own choices and to be self-governed–to be able to make WRONG choices. Ultimately, I think right will win out and the choices of gay couples will no longer be coerced, oppressed, and controlled by the wills of others. And then we can work on the next injustice. But until then, here we are.

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