Let's be very, very clear.

Prop 8 is shitty, unfair and wrong.  The CA supreme court's decision is wrong and terrifying, but for very different reasons.  My feelings about gay marriage are complex, personal, political, emotional, rational, simultaneously instinctive and deeply part of all I know logically about what I think should be.

Let me say that in a more dilute manner:  equal rights for my people and our families is a no-brainer to me.  I cannot fathom, why on earth, with the copious hate, violence, need, and injustice in the world, some people would focus their energies on denying the recognition of some kinds of love.  This just blows my mind and I simply lack the capacities to comprehend it.

Meanwhile, I do believe that, as MLK said, the arc of history is always toward justice.  I believe in the sovereignty of law, I believe our constitution has lasted for reasons pertaining to its flexibility, and effective design.  I believe that love conquers hate, cliche as it sounds.  I believe in self-determinism, and that what you call a family, and what I call a family, don't need to be the same, but that the law needs to make room for all ways we mean that word.

Now, a disclaimer:  I'm no fan of marriage.  My family broke up too late but in a nasty, ugly way.  I do not believe marriage made us a family nor that a divorce unbound what made us strong.  In my perfect world, there would be no marriage or civil unions, people who wanted legal recognition of their relationships would hire a lawyer to construct such an agreement (if only there was a way to make this universally accessible regardless of economic privilege).  But let's be honest, we are really far from that, like, eons from it.  So let's get back to reality, shall we?

My feelings about LGBTQ family rights are relatively unrelated to my feelings about the CA supreme court's decision.  Here's the Prop 8 concern that is eating away at me:  never before have the courts validated the idea that fundamental civil rights of a minority should be voted in or out of existence by the majority.  As my brilliant friend said to me in an email today, if slavery were put to a vote and we were (as the white, privileged people we are) slave owners, would we have voted for abolition?  Probably not, it wouldn't have been in our self-interest.  But it wouldn't make it right just because it passed a vote, obviously! 

I am still not entirely clear why the challenge to Prop 8 is being pursued ex post facto, and how much that is a part of the 6 affirming decisions handed down today.  That aside, I feel strongly that from a legal, diction, and logical stance, there was simply no right choice on this matter.  Is it an amendment or a revision?  Well, that depends on whether you are looking at the scope of constitution-editing, or the impact of those edits, and who on earth can objectively say which lens is proper?  No one can.  But here's the thing: all legal cases are precedent.  This one says, resoundingly, that a group of citizens in the majority can put the civil rights of the minority on a ballot, appeal to the masses, and repeal the rights of the less privileged with a simple majority.  I am terrified, not so much about the fate of LGBTQ family rights as I know that soon the tide will turn, but that our highest courts are setting precedent that the agents of oppression can wield legal power to further oppress their targets.  It is resoundingly clear that our courts exist to interpret the law, and the law exists to protect the weak, and today, the courts interpreted the law in a very hard instance without considering the impact it has on the power of people with privilege to oppress people without it.  We never would have ended segregation, slavery, or voter inequality through ballot measures, and the courts should know better than to enact ballots propositions as a means to decide issues of social justice and civil rights.