In California, we face the uphill battle to undo what a multi-million dollar campaign of fear based disinformation did on November 4th when we took a historic step backward by writing discrimination into the state constitution and eliminating the right of same-sex couples to civil marriage by passing, by a narrow margin, Proposition 8.
[What I'm wondering] is if the 2008 California election has not done for systemic homophobia what Hurricane Katrina did for systemic racism -- exposed it to the harsh light of day in a way that it can no longer be either ignored or denied. And I’m wondering if we can’t claim that reality and mobilize around it.
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Susan, I remember reading somewhere that one of the tipping points for the civil rights movement came when TV news broke into programming to show the police using dogs and fire hoses on protesters in Birmingham. The programming they interrupted was the Nuremberg Trials. Apparently, seeing the treatment of the protesters while hearing about Nazi atrocities was the final straw for many people. Prop 8 may be our program interruption - and hopefully our watershed event.
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