Sunday, October 19, 2008

prop 8

ok,so last month we had one event we had to go to. It was one that we were not going to miss. We were short on money,so we left on Friday and drove to los angeles. We stayed the night with Erika's mom in the valley and we went towards the hollywood hills early afternoon. We went to an elegant house,were greeted by the warmth that one only gets with old theatre friends...a warmth acquired by intense life,mostly lived when you were younger,the warmth felt when you have created art and lived life,profoundly.
My Mark,as I call him,dressed in a white tux and his soon to be spouse, other Mark,dressed the same, stood greeting the small wedding party. I have known Mark for 23 years. I have written two plays with him.I have stayed with him. We get mad at each other,we always laugh a lot. His pristine nature combined with my...uh,non pristine nature has deemed us to be called the Odd Couple of Musical Theatre. Here is a guy I know very well. And his happiness has always been utmost important to me.
The marriage of Mark and Mark went off without a hitch...well, the minister was late, and Mark came up to Miles and asked him if he could do the ceremony. Miles is an 11 year old ordained minister of the universal life church. He got ordained to dress like Elvis and renew our vows...hasn't happened yet,but on our twentieth anniversary,it will. Finally the minister showed up. And the beauty began. I turned to Miles at one moment and said "History. You are witnessing history".
Ok, jump cut to two weeks before elections,watching some product of some ad agency running rampant across my screen. Proposition 8 will ban gay marriages...that's what it will do. And as an ad agency, someone had to figure out what is the thing that will prohibit people from voting no on it. Well,here is the hook. The ads for proposition 8 say that voted down, it will be legal to have gay marriages and then the schools will have to teach children it is ok. ....
That's all they got. And the truth is,as far as I see it, that's all there is. It's a moral issue,plain and simple. The ads talk about special interest groups trying to push this forward to benefit them. And children will be exposed to gay marriages.
and prop 8,well the polls say it will win.

This sickens me.

I am very angry at this idea. I mean,my country has decided on the concept that war is ok...but marriage between people who love each other...not so much. Even Obama and Biden seem to be against the concept of this union being called a marriage.

this sickens me.

enough said

One time I was teaching the book Johnny Got His Gun. to freshmen. The major thrust of the end of part one is the idea of fighting for liberty. Liberty...what is it? Who is to say our liberty is more important than the guy in germany or nigeria or wherever. How can you fight for something that you don't know what it really is...it's a concept. I really got into it. So much so that three years later, when they graduated some of them yelled "Liberty" out as loud as they could. Marriage has a definition as far as some people think. But what is that definition based on. And what changes in the world as far as changing that definition. Well, the only thing that I can tell that changes is more love gets recognized in the world...not some kind of perverted thing, but actually love, love that comes from hard work and committment...I have learned that most things are run dictated by fear or love. So, our society is fighting for liberty for people half way across the globe, while denying liberty for those next door. I think if I had a world, I would want it to be filled with another loose term...love. And if we deny that, what to we teach our children, that our love is good, but your aunt's is bad....remember that wonderful ceremony we loved, well it isn't legal. Why not? Because marriage is defined this way.

I know this isn't my typical writing today...but I am frankly extremely dissapointed with our state and civilization right now.




3 comments:

kudzu said...

I've been thinking a lot about this Prop 8 weirdness/cruelty, too. A few weeks ago I got an engagement announcement from two women friends and it made me very happy for them. A week or so before that, I had photos from a friend's wedding at City Hall in San Francisco. He wrote that he and Jim had decided to marry there a second time (the first was on that romantic Valentine's Day when the whole world watched San Francisco's weddings) and that they were hoping this would be the last ceremony. "I am," Tom wrote, "beginning to feel like ZsaZsa!" Tom and I have known each other since we were thirteen and he and Jim have been together for more than twenty years.....There is so much riding on this vote and it seems impossible to me that it is even on the ballot at all. But for my friends, and for my grandson -- who hopes he can have the natural privilege of marrying someday -- and for everyone else involved in a very human pursuit of happiness, I am urging everyone to go to the polls and do the right thing.

Ben said...

I'm confident that Obama/Biden really support marriage for all, but they need to go to the middleground for all those fucks out there who are liberal, but don't want people to have the same rights as anyone else.

I'm ready to leave the country, though.

Unknown said...

it sickens me too. living on a college campus in san francisco and here in marin I'm experienceing something of the buble effect. So that when I hear that 8 is expected to pass I start thinking "How can that be? Why don't people get that it's such terrible discrimination?". which just leads to me getting really angry


if McCain wins and Prop 8 passes ... i wil have so little faith left in this amazing nation