I love you people!

I was in the midst of “Urgent appeal, part deux,” a rambling rant which may not see the light of internet, because IN CAME THIS BREAKING NEWS!

Look what you just did!  You just blew past our pulled out of my arse third fundraising goal, and poured in more than $3,216 in less than 24 hours!  We get to see the “we did it!” happy graphic again! (For at least 24 hours, really.  I mean it this time.  But then I may be inspired/egged to up it just an eensy bit, one more time. For the last time. Really.)

Why did we did it?  Because a ton of people are coming together and helping us to did it.  Over a half dozen other bloggers have graciously borrowed the code for the thermometer and parked it on their blogs, either in a sidebar or a post:

• Whisky in My Sippy Cup,
• Looky, Daddy!,
• BlogHer (Melisssa Ford’s post a week ago)
• Happinest,
• Four Plus Four Equals Ten,
• the weirdgirl,
• Gone Feral,
• Crunchy Granola, and 
• crankreport.  And
• Immoral Matriarch (!!)  And now,
• Plane Jane Mom

(You want to post this fundraising jobbie on your blog?  Write me!  It’s yours!)  I’m absolutely certain I’ve forgotten some more LD Love Train Brigadistas, and will gleefully add them to this list, plus the other in-process one I have going on over at my No on 8 page.

*[See?  List already amended!  I forgot the @ss-kicking Maria the Immoral Matriarch! Whose cathartic "I'll show you a Socialist, you fucking idiots" ought to clean out any toxins you might still find lingering in your system.  She is a national treasure.]

Yet more have linked to it in blog posts, and as Goddess is my witness, I will note and thank all of THEM properly, too.  Along with the first names, the home towns, and the various occupations of those of you who have contributed to this much, much larger battle via this extremely appreciative entry point.  (All info disaggregated, of course, so that you don’t find a clot of picketing wingnuts in front of your house chanting “No on love! No on love!” or what have you.)  

All that, as soon as my fingers can catch up with real time events that are exploding all around me.  

The other reason why we did it is simply that the magnitude of this whole battle is getting bigger and bigger, and clearer and clearer, by the minute.  Picture the opening scene of Star Wars, where over the course of a good long twelve seconds (an eternity in movie land!), we eventually get the full measure of the Star Destroyer, or whatever it is, that’s attacking our intrepid heroes.  Like, at first, we’re all: Ooo!  That’s scary!  Then we’re all: Shit.  O shit.  Then we fall silent.

The martial lingo is certainly appropriate.  Which leads us to the second sense of the term, “holy cr@p.”  By now, I’ve got to think absolutely everyone who reads the news knows that the battle over gay marriage in California has been declared the “Armageddon” of the culture wars (by Charles Colson), more important than the presidential election (by Tony Perkins).  An upcoming rally scheduled for November 1st in San Diego has been described (by Lou Engle) as a “blitzkrieg moment.”  

A blitzkrieg moment.  

Allow me to remind you what “blitzkrieg” means (per Wikipedia):

…an initial bombardment followed by the employment of motorized mobile forces attacking with speed and surprise to prevent an enemy from implementing a coherent defense… (t)he strategy was particularly effective to the German invasions of Western Europe and initial operations in the Soviet Union.

I’m sure you don’t think I’m exaggerating.  But if you are, or if you just have a morbid curiosity for more detail, take a deep breath, and then read “Right Gears Up to Fight ‘Armageddon of the Culture War’” on People for’s Right Wing Watch back at the beginning of August, and for further elaboration, Karen Ocamb’s piece, two weeks ago, in AlterNet “Conservatives Push Hard for Gay Marriage Ban”.  Or more recently, Laurie Goodstein’s  “A Line in the Sand for Same-Sex Marriage Foes,” New York Times, 26 October 2008.

I’m not exactly sure what pacifists do when war is declared on them.  I am not a happy user of the language of war, or its symbolism, or anything related to it, right down to but most certainly including its actual weaponry.  But I do know that a lot of people are banding together here, in the name of love.  A lot.

From the time of this post, we have five more days to either stand up, or keep standing.  We can do it.