Just made it up & over the $5,000 No on 8 fundraising mark somewheres between the last time I looked, and 3pm PST the day before my birthday, the eve of Yom Kippur, and just shy of a month from when we started. Hosanna to all of us!

But given the news about the current polling, I’ll redouble my efforts:

“Foes of gay-marriage ban say poll shows Prop. 8 leading,” Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times, 8 Oct., 2008.

and

“Anti-gay marriage forces lead in cash just weeks before the election,” Veronique de Turenne, Los Angeles Times, 8 Oct., 2008.

But to keep the cheery morale as cheery as possible, I’ll leave the sparkly “we did it” thermometer in place at least for 24hrs, eh?

More thorough & detailed thanks to follow, after I’ve squinched out from underneath the current work deadline that’s hanging over me like a nice plastic Sword of Damascus.

I heard about the PA hate crime, but of course never read about everyday life for people in the wake of it.

Very nice to meet you, too. Thank you for sharing.

I would like to address this part though, please? …

>>>and even some of the other young folks there taking a second look at us wanted to convey, was this: “Hate put our town on the map. But love is going to change it.”

I recently had my own faith in this restored, just this past summer. Are you familiar with the big racial hate crime that happened in eastern PA this past July? A group of white teenage boys beat to death a Mexican immigrant. The town was Shenan doah. (Written as two words so as not to attract odd search engine hits you may not want). That is my husband’s hometown. We live a couple hours away, and we have a daughter adopted from China.

The weekend after the white boys were arrested (three ‘good old boys’ who were stars on the high school football team, riling things up even worse), and right as the whole story was going national on CNN, my husband’s family wanted us to go out to visit the town for a ‘Blini-sale and blockparty’. Given the town’s new reputation as the current capital of white racial crime, I wasn’t exactly anxious to visit with our little Asian angel. We did end up going, reluctantly, and as hubby and I stood in line for blinis at the blockparty, it was, of course, painfully white and painfully ‘separated’. Meanwhile, we left our daughter at the inlaws’ house.

I may have been overreacting in my fear, I don’t know. But you know what happened next? When we returned to the inlaws’ house, my motherinlaw took us all out onto her tightly-packed row-home street, and started her own little blockparty with her new neighbors — a Mexican family. The father of this family taught his daughter and our daughter how to play hopscotch, while the rest of us hung out eating blinis. While the tensions remained high all over that town, anyone who looked down my motherinlaw’s street that afternoon, saw two families, representing three ethnicities, hanging out and enjoying themselves while the kids played hopscotch. I can’t tell you how proud I became of my motherinlaw that day.

(Nice to meet you, sorry for barging in. I’ve been lurking for a while. I found you from lilysea’s blog — whose blog I originally found when we adopted our daughter. Lilysea has been a wonderful learning experience for me in so many ways. I also have an interest in the topic of same-sex families, as our daughter’s legal guardians (should something happen to us) are dear friends who just happen to be a lesbian couple. Again, I apologize for barging in like this.)

A day of long intakes of breath, and long sighs.

Here’s breathingmoss’ post today, Ten Years.

Having grown up in a rural town a few hours from Laramie, events of October 1998 are embedded in my consciousness for a variety of reasons. I posted about it earlier today. I think I’ll update that post now and link back here.

“Hate put our town on the map. But love is going to change it.” Yes. Yes yes yes, indeed.

I swore that day I’d not only teach him tolerance, but pure love. For others, no matter what life they lead, and for himself, same conditions.

Thanks for putting this out there.

Oh, and welcome to California, i.g.

Thank you for sharing this story – it says so much about where we’ve been and also where we can go…

One of the things I did not expect, upon moving to California earlier this year, was how heart-touched I would be by the Prop 8 debate. I have friends who married in Canada, given no other option in Iowa, so it’s not like I haven’t been aware of the issue. But that issue alone is making me so proud to be voting in this state this year. Yes, perhaps if I’d left my voter registration active in Iowa, I could have voted in a swing state. But I’d rather vote here, where I can make a difference on a basic human issue that so deeply affects people I care about.