Lack of Civility

I haven't been feeling really well and decided at a coworker's recommendation to try some of that coughing-aching-stuffy head-so-you-can-rest-medicine? Oh my GOD. I have such a freaking hangover. I feel like I am walking around in a Dali painting because everything is so so surreal. I feel like I am coated in thick blankets and am trying to peer out. I think I probably should not be driving...and yet.

While I was driving, I was listening to the news and I heard about California Proposition 8 passing. I could hear the protesters banging on the glass walls at the CNN building in LA. At first, due to my being 'under the influence' (gods, I am such a freaking lightweight), I was sure I heard wrong. I had checked these results yesterday...hadn't I? Granted, I spent most of yesterday in bed. I thought it had failed by a narrow margin, but it had failed nonetheless. I heard a protester, a young man say something to the effect of how now people could look him in the eye and say, "You are less than me." It sent a lamentation of truth surging through my body.

The proponents of this raised buckets of money from every state in the US and around the world, apparently. Why would people in other countries care if couples in California could get married? This is so bizarre to me. That and most of this political backing was done by religious groups. I don't quite understand how they can do this and not mess up their tax exemptions. That and I will never be able to understand the general focus of religion toward homogeny. There is such a trend toward dichotomization. If I am good, and you are different from me, therefore you must be bad. For us or against us. Black or white. There is no room for gray understanding.

I can't even convey how incredibly incredibly downtrodden I feel by this violation of civil rights. I just hope that one day, as a nation, we will look back at this the way we look back at "colored only" restrooms, drinking fountains, and bus seats and think this: "How horrible we were! How stupid we were! Can you even believe that is the way it was?"

I am crossing my fingers for the 3 million absentee ballots that have not been counted. Maybe this really is a dream wrapped up in my foggy mind. Maybe it didn't happen after all.