Blog Action Day

What is Blog Action day?

In 2008, the Blog Action Day theme is Poverty. Bloggers are free to interpret this as they see fit. We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.

Many years ago I heard a story that, for the very first time ever, made me uncomfortable to be living in Davis. Whether the story is true or not, I don't know. But it concerned a pregnant woman and her small child who showed up at the community meals. They asked about where they could go to spend the cold night, because they were homeless.

At that time there was no facility in town that was available to women and children (there still isn't) and so the pregnant woman and her child were put on a Greyhound bus for San Francisco. I was trying to imagine what she would do when she arrived in San Francisco, with her child, at night, not knowing where to go.

But she was out of Davis.

As I say, the story could possibly have been not true, but it was one of the reasons why I started volunteering at Davis's homeless shelter a few years later. I felt the need to feel like I was contributing something, even if it was only typing services one day a week.

It was a real eye-opener. The homeless shelter is down by the rainroad tracks. You don't "see" homeless people around this town, at least not then. But I met a whole different class of people, many had just been released from the county jail, many were drug addicts trying to get their lives together, many were just guys who were down on their luck and were trying to get back on their feet.

I remember working with one guy on learning how to use the computer. He had been on and off the wagon for years and this was his last chance, he told me. If he fell off the wagon again, he wouldn't be back. I really liked him and was so proud of the progress he made on the computer. Then one morning he wasn't there and I never saw him again. I always felt so sad about that.

It was bad management that made me quit that job. I was reinventing the wheel every time I went in and I just got tired of doing it, but it was an eye opener for the year that I volunteered there.

You see homeless people around Davis now. They all have signs and they stand at the entrances of mall parking lots. I never know what to do. I hate giving them money, but I never mind buying them a meal. One day at a truck stop we saw a mother and her small child standing in the rain with a sign begging for money so the little girl could eat. We went to Denny's, which was across the street, and bought a gift certificate for the mother, so she could take her daughter in out of the cold and give her a meal. As we drove off, I saw her put the certificate in her pocket and continue asking others for money for a meal for her daughter. I can't imagine how terrible it must be to feel that desperate.

I remember one Christmas when I went into the supermarket and bought a full Chinese dinner for two guys who were sitting outside, being ignored by everyone wha walked into the store. Then I did my shopping and when I went outside again, they were sitting there eating dinner and thanked me profusely for the best meal they'd had in days.

I remember being in Tijuana one afternoon, with all the family. We were actually leaving Mexico and walking back across the border. We had been followed by little kids begging for money all the way. But I was completely out of money. I didn't have a cent left--I hadn't brought much with me to begin with. At one point I turned around and saw the kids talking to this little kid and I took a photo. The mother came over to me and demanded money. I had taken her child's photo; she should be paid. I felt awful that I didn't even have a penny to give her.

All around us we see people in such need. Most of us don't have the wherewithall or the opportunity to do something "big," but sometimes something "little" can make a big difference in someone's day. We can't personally wipe out world poverty, but we can be aware of it around us and, when we have the opportunity, do something to help out, even if it doesn't feel like much at the time.

In 2000, I wrote this, as part of a longer entry

On the way home today, I ran into Tony and his friend. They were sitting outside the supermarket and they asked if I’d take their picture. Walt talks with street people all the time, but I have always been more reserved. But I remembered watching the interactions that Peggy (who claims not to like meeting new people) would have with total strangers everywhere we went, and so I stopped to talk with them. Tony smelled of alcohol and cigarettes and he told me he spends his day on the bench outside the supermarket. He was so excited that I took his picture and asked if I’d make a copy for him. We talked about the homeless shelter (where I used to work and he goes to have a shower every day). And it was nice. I thought, when I left, how pleasant that had been...and how easy it was to open up to someone rather than to remain closed.

For those who are looking for a more direct way to help someone trying to pull themselves up out of poverty, might I recommend that you check into Kiva. I learned about Kiva from a TV broadcast by Al Gore.

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world. You make small loans, usually only $25 and your money joins with other lenders until the amount requested is reached.

The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

I've made four Kiva loans. One has already been repaid and I used the funds to make a second loan.

It seems likc such a small thing to do, but when you realize how you are changing people's lives, $25 at a time, it seems such a small thing to do to make a big difference.

These are my current Kiva Partners: Rubaba runs a general store in Azerbaijan.

Firmine runs a store in Benin; Martha rents videotapes and DVDs in Bolivia.
All have children they are trying to feed and school. All are now paying back their loans.

The (Other) Wedding

"It's the blushing Party A," laughed one wedding guest as he greeted Craig and congratulated him after the wedding.

It was an event eight years in the making -- not 34 years, like Ellen and Shelly, but no less loving. Thanks to the Supreme Court decision earlier this year, our friends Roy and Craig were finally able to marry.

It was a lovely ceremony, held on the grounds of the State Capitol

At 4 p.m. precisely ('cause Roy and Craig are show biz kinda people and the show must start on time), the minister for Roy's mother's church walked out, followed by Parties A and B and the photographer.

The ceremony was beautiful, intimate, and meaningful. They elected to have no music, since Roy is a music director and would have felt the need to be in charge, and they just wanted to concentrate on the ceremony itself.

At the end, when everyone raised their hands in blessing on the couple, I was probably the only one who did not, only because I had a camera in each hand, since I was taking both video and still pictures!

And when it was all over, they were legally married, under the laws of the State of California. Craig says "this is forever," but I've heard two different opinions--that the marriages which have been performed since June will remain in effect forever, and the other opinion, that they would be invalidaded if Prop 8 passes. Ellen says she thinks it will have to go to the courts--again. I had an attorney (the father of a gay daughter who was recently married) tell me that the current marriages will not be affected, by Prop 8 and five minutes later I had a county supervisor tell me that the marriages will be invalidated.

I just hope Craig is right and that even if that hateful proposition passes, the current marriages are marriages until death do they all part! (But, of course, the issue isn't really the current marriages--it's all those marriages to come...)

Following the ceremony there was a lovely reception at Il Fornaio, a few blocks from the capitol, and a gorgeous (and delicious) cake that had been transported up from Santa Barbara that morning.

Some of our favorite people in Davis (and the surrounding area!) were at the reception, and it was very nice to be all together on that happy occasion. It was just a beautiful, beautiful day and we felt so fortunate to be able to share in Craig and Roy's happiness, and once again thankful that the California Supreme Court did the right thing and acknowledged that equality is for everyone, not just for straight people.

Oh Say Can I See?

I finished my book today. It's "Hannah's Dream," by Diane Hammond and I recommend it highly. You can check my review here. If you enjoyed "Water for Elephants," you'll love this book.

It wasn't easy finishing the book and it was quite a struggle the last few chapters. Because, you see, today is not a "good vision day."

I woke up about a month ago and turned on the TV, like I do every morning. Walt was out of town that day. When I looked at the screen, I realized that I couldn't read the printed words. When I came into the computer, I had to make the print on the screen bigger than normal in order to read it.

My biggest fear all my life has been going blind. I've only had usable vision in one eye forever, because of astigmatism. I can see out of my "bad" eye, but the difference in vision is so great that I'm aware that I don't use it for vision at all. If I close my "good" eye, I can see what is around me, but I can't focus on anything. Glasses don't correct this. I once read that if you can't accurately describe astigmatism, you have it. (Anybody with astigmatism probably knows what I'm talking about, and anybody who doesn't have it will think I'm crazy.) So the thought of something happening to my "good" eye is terrifying.

I was diagnosed several years ago with baby cataracts. (I'm sure he didn't call them "baby cataracts," but they weren't "ripe" enough to be removed.) I get my vision checked regularly and had my last dilated eye exam almost exactly a year ago. The doctor told me the cataracts were OK and I might be lucky and never actually have to have them removed.

But things have changed over the past year. For one thing, when I was driving home on a winding road in the dark several months ago, I realized that I couldn't see the road at all. The lights from the oncoming cars so completely filled my vision that the road completely disappeared. I could only stay on the road by looking off to the right at the very edge of the road. If I hadn't had someone else in the car (to whom I dared not confess that I was driving essentially blind a good portion of the time!), I might have considered stopping at the first motel and spending the night.

I was OK on the highway at night, though. Staying in the right lane (where I usually drive anyway) meant no lights shining in my face and I didn't even notice anything wrong with my vision. But I realized that I could no longer drive the road from my mother's home after dark because a long stretch of it is a 2-lane road, always busy in both directions.

Also for some time I'd been noticing that things I was reading seemed to have been printed in grey typeface rather than black, and that letters on the computer seemed greyer than I remembered them.

I always, now, wear my sunglasses when I go outside (and am thrilled that I thought to buy my first prescription sunglasses last year!), but when I drove to the PhotoShop conference the other day, I drove into the sun both going and coming from the seminar and by the time I got home, I had realized that I am no longer safe to drive on the freeway in the day. When we drove up to Jeri's for our Pinata Day this week, Char drove and I could not read the road signs, even the huge overhead ones, until I was right under them., but when Walt and I drove into Sacramento to a show last night, I could read them just fine, because it was dark, not light.

The quality of vision varies. Some days I hardly notice it. Other days I have to practically put my nose to the computer screen to read e-mail. It's one reason why the background this month is a nice grey--it offers no glare and I can work on this journal entry page just fine.

But I was almost at the end of my book and I couldn't put it down, so I sat under a light and laughed as I remembered my mother chiding me, as a child, for always having my nose in a book. Today I definitely had my nose in a book--it was the only way I could read it.

Funny, though...I discovered that if I held the book up higher and looked down at the print it was like I was seeing around the bottom of the cataract because all of a sudden a few words were in black, not grey print.

My ophthalmologist was out of town and not taking appointments and this obviously is not a life-threatening condition, so I was finally able to get an appointment with him for the end of this month and I am hoping that we can get things set up for cataract removal as soon as possible.

I'm also hoping that my self-diagnosis of cataracts is correct. There is always the prospect of something more serious, but I'm not even going to allow my head to go there until after I've seen the doctor.

But I don't think I'll start trying to read another book just yet.

Fred and Chuck and Craig and Roy

The first part of this is a guest entry from my friend Char, an avid UC Berkeley alum whose cell phone plays the Cal Fight Song and whose favorite greeting is "Go Bears!" Mike is her husband.

FRED AND CHUCK

This is in the same spirit as Ned’s guest entry last week. It is also supportive of NO on Proposition 8, though quite a bit shorter than Ned’s.

Recently we attended a reunion of the Cal Band. Mike was a member and was lucky enough to be there when they were invited to travel to Brussels for the World’s Fair 50 years ago. This same group also marched in the Rose Parade. All this was many, many years ago. Fred was also in the band then, and we know him and his partner Chuck pretty well, especially since they have been in the same row with us at the football games for several years. They also joined in the return trip to Brussels earlier this year.

Anyhow, at the reunion dinner each fellow talks a little about his life. There is a lot of joking and teasing, but basically these guys have known each other for over 50 years and they like each other. This year Fred introduced Chuck as his partner, as he has many times, but this time it was different. They got married in June. They have been together for 42 years. This announcement was greeted with cheers and many, many good wishes. A genuine outpouring of happiness for them.

I found this attitude somewhat surprising in this group which rarely misses a chance to joke around with each other. It is also an overwhelmingly heterosexual group, and quite a few of the lads have been through multiple marriages. Still, they cheered Fred and Chuck, and it did seem to be genuine. There is hope for us yet.

Fred - Chuck

CRAIG AND ROY

Tomorrow we are going to a wedding on the grounds of the Capitol Building in Sacramento. The invitation reads:

We joyfully invite you to our wedding celebration
On this day we will marry
the one we laugh with, live for, dream with, love

Please join

Roy ......
and
Craig ......

(Leaving their last names out, just to preserve their privacy, though I suspect they won't care). These guys have not been together as long as Fred and Chuck because they are much younger, but they have been together for a very long time. Roy is the music director at a big church in California and before that was the music director for a small local Catholic church near Davis. Craig is a well known performer (if you are in the right circles) and an incredible talent. Well--they both are incredible talents.

Best of all, they are wonderful guys and their love for each other just pours out of them when you see them together. Thanks to the recognition by the California Supreme Court, they will be able to marry tomorrow. Right in Ahhnold's front yard.

But election day is coming, and the latest polls show that Proposition 8 is starting to look like it might actually pass. Whether this would strip Fred and Chuck, and Craig and Roy (and Ellen and Shelly) of their long-desired, and newly won legal marriages may be up to the courts to decide, Ellen tells me.

At the same time, the Supreme Court of Connecticut, hearing the same sort of issue, ruled that a ban against same sex marriage is illegal in that state too. You can't yet get married in Connecticut, but it appears that things are heading in that direction. To the best of my knowledge, the state of Masssachusetts has not yet fallen apart because gay couples are permitted to marry there, nor has God smitten anyone.

This is such an important issue, though in the scope of the various wars we are engaged in and the world wide economic collapse, I suppose it seems like such a little issue, but straight people all over California are going to decide the fate of gay people. Straight people are going to decide whether two people in love should be denied the right to marry, just because they are of the same gender.

This is not fair. It's not "equality." I sincerely hope that there are enough intelligent people who understand that "almost" is not "equal" who will stop this hate-filled proposition from passing and allow these people who love each other to make a legal commitment to one another.

Not a Good Week

I suspect that John McCain is wishing he were just about anywhere else right now. This has not been his best week.

I also have to admit that I almost feel sorry for him.

The disintegration of the McCain campign over the past couple of weeks, with the escalation of ugly, ugly, ugly smear tactics against Obama has turned my stomach. Watching Palin standing at a rally enciting supporters to shout "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" make my blood run cold. In all honesty, it makes me fear for his life if he should be elected.

I've voted in every election since I was old enough to vote and I've never seen a campaign as ugly. While Obama is running negative ads too, they seem to be only in response to a McCain ad, and they refer more to McCain's record and his stated policies than to question his patriotism, to hint that he might be a terrorist, to denigrate his ethnicity.

The disappointing thing about the McCain campaign was that when he ran for president the first time, I actually liked the guy. I probably would not have voted for him, but he was a man I felt I could feel comfortable with, should he be elected.

But as I see all the shit that is coming out of his campaign, all I can assume is that he wants this job so badly that he has been willing to sell his soul to the devil in order to get it.

Even Cindy McCain is on the attack, standing on the stage with scary hate written all over her face as she accused Obama of refusing to send money to help her son in Iraq. She never mentioned why Obama voted against a funding bill, or mentioned that her own husband also voted against one of the funding bills because it included a timeline for withdrawal. The attack on Obama out of the blue just sounded mean-spirited....and the dark look of hatred on her face will live in my memory for a long time.

The backlash from all this negativity is surprising.

McCain is being criticised even by conservative columnists and talking heads.

Even some on Fox News are complaining. Susan Estrich writes: It’s bad enough that 100 percent of the ads McCain is running are negative. That’s a sign of a campaign in free fall, with nothing affirmative to say and nothing positive to offer; a campaign that can’t win with the support it has now, that needs to find some way to move voters out of the other guy’s camp.

What’s worse is the content of the negative ads. They aren’t about policy and issues. They aren’t about what’s wrong with Obama’s economic plans, much less what’s right about McCain’s. They aren’t about why Barack Obama would be a bad president, much less why McCain would be a good one.

They’re screaming bloody murder that Barack Obama left a phone message two years ago for a guy who engaged in radical activity when Barack Obama was 8 years old and living in Indonesia. Ayers, who is a neighbor of Obama’s, even had some kind of meet-and-greet for him 13 years ago, when Obama was running for state Senate, making him one of about a million people who’ve opened their homes and their checkbooks to the guy.

Another article that I heard quoted today (I can't remember who it was or where I saw it quoted) actually said something on the order of if something happened to Obama, his blood would be on McCain's hands. It wasn't quite that graphic, something about the inciting of radicals being the thing that can lead to assassination.

I saw a line of people coming to a McCain rally interviewed about Obama and they each said he was an Arab, or a Muslim, or a terrorist or a traitor, that he should be killed, should be strung up, should be thrown out of the country. Scary, scary stuff--all incited by this atmosphere of negativity that the McCain camp has created and for which Sarah Palin has been the cheerleader.

The anti-Obama stuff shouted at one McCain rally got so bad that McCain himself actually had to stop and explain to the audience that his opponent was a good man with whom he had disagreements, but that they should continue to treat each other with respect. That Obama was not someone they should fear should he be elected. The crowd booed McCain!

In that moment, I wondered if he suddenly realized, as did Joe Boyd, in the production of Damn Yankees I reviewed last weekend, that winning wasn't worth the price he was having to pay. I sincerely hope that somewhere in whatever is left of McCain's heart there is a shred of the good, decent man I once could have accepted as President, and that he can live with himself when this election is over, no matter who wins.

But in the middle of all of this, I have to be just a tad gleeful to discover that the moral compass of the Republic Party, the Sainted Sarah Palin was just found guilty of misuse of her powers as governor in trying to have her brother-in-law fired. It is not a criminal offense, but it was a betrayal of the public trust when she and her husband decided to put the squeeze on Public Safety Officer Walter Monegan.

It couldn't happen to a nicer lady.

Pinata Day

I guess if my overnights with Peach, Kathy and my mother are "Cousins Days," then the overnights with Jeri D., Char, Pat, and Audrey, my friends from our college days' "Pinata group," should be "Pinata Days," now that it seems we are settling into our own rhythm and will be having them more or less quarterly. (Audrey missed this time around because she and her husband are on a cruise.)

We can't have them monthly, like Cousins Day, because Jeri spends a good deal of her time in Arizona, driving her RV from here to and and back again on a revolving schedule. But she's in town periodically. Her next time here will be December, so we should plan a Pinata Day in December and then I think she said not again until April.

Pinata Day is assuming its own tone, just like Cousins Day has. In some ways similar, in some ways not.

Char and Pat took charge of bringing the most important elements of the overnight.

Jeri had an appointment in the afternoon, so we all arrived early, had lunch and settled ourselves in to chat while Jeri was gone for an hour or so. When she cam back, the game of 65 started.

Char had recently tried playing with her (adult) children, who were convinced she was cheating and making up rules as they went along, so she wanted to be sure to refresh her memory of how the game was played.

The last time we played, I won all the games. Truly, this is not a game of skill. It's much more a game of chance, the luck of the draw, as it were, and if history were going to prove correct, then this was the time when I would do terribly. In fact, my cards started out to prove that axiom, but as it turned out, we played two games and I won both of them.

The sting of the loss was softened somewhat for everyone else when Char broke out the Melange Reserve from the Vincent Arroyo winery. We had all visited that winery and chatted with Vince, and his wine was very smooth. Even I, who don't usually drink wine, had seconds.

Then after I trounced them in the first game, I set out the appetizers I had brought, pretty much the same stuff I made for the Neighborhood open house. Pat made something that was called either an Earthquake or a Mudslide. I don't remember. But it was like a chocolate hazelnut milkshake with a kick and went down entirely too easly.

I trounced them the second game too and by then people were out of small change, so we called a halt to the card playing (that would never happen on Cousins Day!) and Char served her pesto pasta dinner, accompanied by Jeri's salad.

Then we retired to the living room to watch Saturday Night Live's Thursday edition. During the news, I had the feeling that "something" was off on the show, but I didn't say anything.

We went back to the table for an apple crisp dessert Pat had made and then just sat around chatting until midnight. As with Cousins day, the talk was trivial, profound, funny, sad, and we ran the gamut of emotions. Some had more of Vincent Arroyo's wine, but I didn't.

It was about midnight when we all headed off to sleep, and in the morning, after a sumptuous breakfast, cooked by Jeri, we played another game of 65. This time I was almost relieved when Pat won, not only almost every hand, but the game itself.

We started reminiscing about games we had played when we were all younger and our kids were small. I mentioned Keith Olberman's mention of the game of Risk and how you always set out to conquer the world from Madagascar (which was always a joke among our group and so funny to hear Olberman say that too). Jeri managed to unearth her old Risk set and opened it up and when I looked at the map on the board, I realized that I had been right about Saturday Night Live. I told the others what I had noticed. Nobody else had noticed it. Do you...?

I probably wouldn't have thought anything about it if I'm not acutely aware, these days, about where Australia is. On this map, Australia is right next to Spain. The others didn't see it at first, but then it all popped into focus for them. It also appears that the U.S. is on the map twice.

After that I felt better...my eyes hadn't been playing tricks on me at all...the Saturday Night Live people had been.

Our time was growing short and it was time to leave, so we packed up all our leftovers and loaded up Char's car and then all hugged Jeri goodbye and we backed out of the driveway, with "Shirley" (Char's GPS system) giving us erroneous directions to get us back to the freeway.

I find the older I get the more I really seem to need these gatherings that we've started to have. I have loved these women for the better part of 50 years and I'm so glad that we have followed the "cousins day" model and are beginning to realize how special we all are to each other and how important these get togethers are. I think the death of Michele, right before we got together for the first time, helped us realize that we never know how much longer we will have to enjoy these get togethers, and we need to savor them while we still can.

Fear and Paperwork

A guest entry by Ned

Fear and paperwork. The two things that rule our society more than anything else. Not necessarily in that order, but still… there are no two things that people are more obsessed with. Fear and paperwork. Fear leads to paperwork, and paperwork nurtures our fears… which generally leads to more paperwork. It’s crazy.

The day my wife and I purchased our home, the lenders, mortgage brokers, notaries and such sat us in a room in front of a huge stack of paperwork. "Sign here," they said. When I picked up that first piece of paper and began to read it they said, "If you want to read everything before you sign it, that’s your prerogative. But let me tell you now, if you don’t sign it you don’t get the house."

Out of fear of continuing to rent for the rest of my life, I stopped reading and started signing. Six years later, I still don’t know what I signed. But I "own" a house, so whatever.

In one of the ultimate acts of fear in my lifetime, a handful of scaredy-cats flew a couple of planes in to the World Trade Center. And when those towers came toppling to the ground, all that remained in the sky were millions of pieces of paper - all with words on them that were apparently important enough to print out and keep on hand – drifting through the air like snowflakes being carried away in the breeze.

The resulting fear has led to so much paperwork it’s mindboggling. And the paperwork has done nothing but create more and more fear to the point that our nation seems to have gone insane. We’ve allowed our leaders to create paperwork that limits our freedoms. We’ve allowed them to create paperwork that has bankrupted the nation. We’ve even allowed them to create paperwork that authorizes unspeakable acts of violence none of us would ever consider doing ourselves. All in the name of giving us a false sense of safety from things we have little or, in most cases, zero control over.

It’s crazy. And it certainly doesn’t look like the world I signed on to when I was born in to it.

Currently, a relatively small group of well-meaning people have placed a piece of fear legislation for our consideration on the ballot this upcoming election. I’m talking about Proposition 8. That’s the one where they want to put an amendment in the California Constitution that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. In other words, they want to create paperwork that excludes some human beings because they fear what might happen if they don’t. And they want it to be the law of the land.

If you are like me, you are so sick of hearing about this subject you’ve considered several ways to take your own life. But here I am, alive and frustrated… being forced to consider it because people are so unable to lighten up, and I fear what the paperwork will do to my loved ones if I actually did take my own life.

I’ve heard all the arguments on both sides ad-nauseam and I know in my gut that this proposition is a bad idea. It does nothing but put up more walls. It divides us as human beings. It nurtures fear and it ignores love.

Frankly, I have an impossible time understanding how people who claim to be devoted to God don’t see it. God is supposed to be of unconditional love. God is infinite. God is inclusive. Proposition 8 is the opposite of all these things. It is unloving, it is limiting, and it is exclusive.

Supporters are so blinded by their fear of the unknown that they throw love out the door in favor trying to control things they really have no control over. Because what most of these people want more than anything is for gay to go away. They want it to not exist. Sure, these days they may articulate it differently… their rhetoric has changed with the flow of the tides. But very fact that places like Exodus International continue to exist is a testament to it. And since they know in their heart of hearts that gay isn’t going away, they do the only thing they can think of: control the paperwork.

Supporters will argue that the conscience of California spoke when a small percentage of Californians passed Proposition 22 so many years ago. But from where I sit, that’s irrelevant because it’s not the case. I know this for a fact because I didn’t vote for or against Proposition 22. I abstained. My conscience was not represented one way or the other. And yes, I do realize it was my own choice, but it doesn't change the fact that I am a born-and-raised Californian, and I grow tired of this small percentage of the state claiming to represent all of us.

When Proposition 22 reared its ugly head I had people from all sides trying to get me on board. But when I stepped back and looked at it objectively, I realized it changed nothing. The day before Prop 22 passed, the state was not issuing marriage licenses to gay people. The day after it passed, the state was not issuing marriage licenses to gay people. Nothing changed. Prop 22 was little more than a symbolic gesture to give a little affirmation to people who fear homosexuality. It felt childish to me. It felt like I was watching a bunch of first graders banding together to pick on the kid with glasses. All Prop 22 did was to give a small percentage of Californians comfort in knowing they aren’t the only bullies in class.

I had more than enough of that back when I was in elementary school so I chose not to participate. I abstained. But I am very confident that if everyone in California had gone to the voting booth and filled out their paperwork to reflect their honest feelings about gay marriage, Prop 22 would have been defeated by a huge margin. But it didn’t matter anyway because nothing changed. And there was no reason to believe that defeating it would have changed anything. I didn't see any point in giving this exercise in futility any of my energy.

But now something has changed. The Supreme Court has ruled that excluding a minority of society from certain rights and benefits simply because they are sexually hardwired differently is unconstitutional. And they are correct about it. It says so right there in the paperwork.

The people who fear homosexuality don’t like that one bit. So they find themselves with two choices: face their fears or change the paperwork. It saddens me greatly that they have chosen the latter. Not only because now I have to get off my butt and vote, but because I expect more from them.
The Yes on 8 campaign has recently begun running a media blitz on TV with a misleading ad full of inaccuracies designed to strike at the heart of people’s fears. Never mind the fact that the information is dishonest, what’s important is to make you afraid of gay marriage.

The ad begins with the image of Gavin Newsom, the Mayor of San Francisco, standing in front of a crowd celebrating equality for all. He opens his hands and shouts "this door is wide open." The implication being, of course, that gay marriage opens the door for all sorts of crazy things you should be afraid of. I’ve heard the argument so many times I want to explode: Gay marriage opens the door for incest marriage, pedophile marriage, bigamy, and even the possibility of people being able to marry their dog.

I feel it’s important to point out that the rationale is crazy. Because if the rationale is that gay marriage opens that door, then the FACT is that straight marriage started it. If it weren’t for straight marriage, we wouldn’t be talking about gay marriage. So if the door truly is open for bestiality marriage, then it’s straight marriage’s fault, not gay marriage’s fault.

If you’re sitting there thinking that my rationale is ridiculous, you’re correct. Because this whole thing is ridiculous. The economy is collapsing, our young men and women in uniform are dying left and right fighting an un-winnable war, our prisons are bursting at the seams for no reason other than to beef up the coffers of the prison-industrial complex, millions of families can’t afford healthcare, many can't even afford food, and we’re arguing over whether or not two people of the same sex have the right to say "I do" and fill out a form that allows them the security of knowing that the law can’t cheat them out of the promises and commitments they have made to each other.

I’d go on about the inaccuracies and untruths of the rest of the Yes on 8 advertisement, but it’s not really the point. The point is about giving in to fear, rather than embracing love… which is exactly what the Yes on 8 campaign would have us do.

A recent article in the Bee profiled a Sacramento minister who was wrestling with a sermon he was preparing to give. He knew it was a sensitive subject, but felt it important to talk to his congregation from the pulpit about how supporting Prop 8 does not mean we can’t have love in our hearts for all people, regardless of sexual orientation. But I’m not really buying what he’s selling. I believe the reason he found it difficult to prepare is because he unconsciously knows deep in his heart that it’s an impossible position to take. How can one represent a God of unconditional love by taking a position that requires conditions? It’s a form of emotional abuse: "You are not good enough as you are. You are not worthy. But I love you."

I do not see how that is a loving message at all. It does nothing more than give lip service to the idea of love. It is not an act of love. If it were your spouse saying these things to you, you would either remove yourself from their life, or you would be a person with very low self-esteem.

I’m not here to try to convince anyone to change their beliefs. I realize all too well that it’s a losing battle. However, my problem begins and ends when somebody tries to legislate their beliefs in such a way that excludes all human beings from sharing equally. Proposition 8 is not about equality. It’s not about love. It’s the opposite of equality, it’s the opposite of love, and it’s the opposite of everything I was taught that the United States of America represents.

Fear and paperwork. It’s ruling our lives and I am a person who strongly wishes that human beings could overcome it. Gay marriage is only one example. Ever since that tragic event on the morning of September 11, 2001 our nation has embraced fear as never before. And all we seem to be able to do about it is build more walls to keep love out. It’s very, very sad, and my own fear is what the future holds if we stay on this course.

Make no mistake about it. If Prop 8 passes, fear wins again… and love loses. And that is the opposite of God wants for us.

Peace, love and all that mother jazz…

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Tomorrow's entry will be late...no it's not Cousins Day, but it's Pinata Women day. Char is picking me up in the morning and we're spending the night at Jeri's house.