Thank you for reading, and lordy I hope we both have something better to look forward to, for our families, current and future.

Your writing always strikes me, each time that I open up my browser and find myself in your little world that is so big. Your writing has always hit close to home, from the perspective of a (hopefully-someday) lesbian dad myself.

But, this entry struck me like the others haven’t and it brought the reality of our completely separate (although similar in theory) home lives together.

I am twenty-two years old and I live in Arkansas. My partner and I have been (il)legally married for four years on the nineteenth of this month.

I read your entries for a glimpse of what (I hope) my life might be like someday.

All of that aside, election day hit us both the same.
You, with Proposition 8. Me, with that stupid Proposed Initiative Act No. 1.
It was hard to feel happy, after being shot in the chest like that. It still is.

Thank you for being here.
You give me something to look forward to, in my daily blog reading but also in my future.

I’m on the East Coast, so stayed up late Tuesday to watch the election results and Obama’s acceptance speech. It was so exciting! For the last 8 years I’ve felt so lonely as the president took MY country in all sorts of disturbing directions and (until recently) not many other folks seemed to mind. It felt wonderful to see the throngs of cheering folks in Grant Park who looked like me and my friends. And such a difference from being in the small groups of beleagured anti-war protesters trooping through Washington DC at various points a few years ago.

And then I woke up on Wed morning. My partner had already gone to work. I kept changing the channel on TV and listening to NPR, trying to find out what happened on Proposition 8. None of them mentioned anything about it. I got to work and, after some poking around online, found that it looked likely that prop 8 would pass. And that lots of Obama supporters in CA had voted for it. And suddenly I felt lonely again. Everyone else won on Tuesday–African-Americans, pro-choice folks, even the chickens! But I and my family still got left out. It is hard to simultaneously hold my joy at the great strides this country is making and my pain at how far we have yet to go.

Thanks so much for all of your hard work. We really are making progress in changing hearts and minds. And someday we will be the ones being photographed with tears of joy in our eyes.

Thank you for capturing so much of how it felt for me too: the amazement and gratitude I felt seeing so many, from such wide walks of life, showing up at dawn to work with us at the polling places; the desperate need to be doing *something* throughout that day while slowly absorbing the despairing notion that time had already run out; and the surreal timing of the California state results crawling across the bottom of the page just as Obama began to speak to that historic crowd at Grants Park.

I want to close with something cheery but it is not in me yet – hang in there and take care of yourself for as long as it takes.