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.

Continue reading ‘Holy cr@p!*’

This just over the transom, from Kate Kendall (NCLR Exec. Director), closely followed (in more or less the same language) by Geoff Kors (Equality California Exec. Director):

On Tuesday, the other side reported donations of $2.2 million, dwarfing the $255,650 we reported, and called on their donors to contribute another $3 million.  

With this enormous sum of money they are buying every available ad space on TV in California to blast even more of their hateful lies and prevent our messages from being seen. 

Unless we raise $3 million in the next three days we will likely lose.

Kate added:

A campaign donor recently told me that their gift was five times more than they had ever given and suggested that everyone do the same.  I am pledging to raise $100,000 each day, and Sandy and I are draining the household emergency fund to make the largest contribution we’ve ever given to a political campaign.  

And I’m asking you to increase your gift at whatever amount you can, so that we can match the other side on the air.

So.  It’s back to the family budget talk for the beloved and me, to figure out what ELSE we can do without.  More than separate-but-unequal status for our family.

Continue reading ‘Urgent appeal from No on 8*’

[This post is one among scores hundreds of entries in Write to Marry Day, a blog carnival to support same-sex marriage and rally opposition to Prop 8, organized by Mike Rogers of PageOneQ and Dana Rudolph of Mombian.]

With the dutiful, if futile, determination of Sisyphus, I keep trying to find some words – the words – that will make a difference in the battle against California’s Proposition 8. The same series of thoughts have dogged me for weeks: if only I could string together the right reasoning, the sparkling jewels of argument, the compelling details of personal narrative. Real imagery of real people, good people, kind people, who deserve the preservation of this right. Lofty, heart-swelling reminders of what a Constitution is for, and a Supreme Court, and a Bill of Rights. The protection of individual and minority rights. The sanctity of church/state separation, for the love of both.  The stuff democracies are made of.  

If only I could convey these, I think, in the right tone.  If only they could somehow be put in front of the right people.  Enough of them.  Hell, even a handful.  Since all along we’ve known this will be won or lost by something like a handful of votes.

Compelling arguments for the retention of same-sex marriage abound, of course. Any whistle-stop tour of these should begin with the very finding of the California Supreme Court  that Proposition 8 seeks to override:

Continue reading ‘Listen, better angel’

And ample illustration of why I (along with any other sane person in this state) might need regular, high doses of Mary Oliver, my children, and everything else that is holy, over the next week.  

This incident, captured by a woman at an intersection I’ve walked through countless times, since I was a girl:

The Face of Proposition 8 from Theremina on Vimeo.

An account of it is at the post’s page on Vimeo linked above, and at Lavendar Newswire here: “Yes On 8 Supporter Physically Attacks Observer; “Christians” Drop F-Bomb, Anti-Gay Slurs.” (26 Oct, 2008)

Highlights, especially helpful since a Yes on 8 enthusiast grabbed the camera phone and disabled it off mid-clip:

That’s when she attacked, clawing, grabbing and then shoving. I didn’t fight back; she was much bigger than me. Calling me a “nasty fucker” and threatening to kick my ass, she pried my phone out of my hand and tried to break it in half while her friends egged her on.

Please note that I never touched or threatened her in any way (unless you want to consider my pulling the edge of her sign out of eye-poking territory a threatening gesture).

…I stood there for another minute or two, checking the phone’s applications for damage. One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered “fuck you, dyke.”

Please also read this: “More Anti-Gay Violence from Yes n 8, This Time from Mormon Crowd. Time to Turn Out to Support, Protect Your Brothers & Sisters!”, posted earlier today (28 Oct, 2008):

My wife appeared with an “Ex-Mormon 4 Equality” sign and that fueled a personal attack that was verbal and in-your-face, literally 2-3 inches from her. It included prolonged screaming, taunting, name-calling and anti-gay hate speech including things like “you need to be f’d by a man.” That was one thing, but when they actually circled around her and began closing in physically (grabbing at her), she called for the police officer nearby.

…We spoke tonight with a woman who was in Hawaii during the election that determined their laws on same-sex marriage, and she relayed that the homophobia really escalated after same-sex marriage was defeated.

Evidentally, people didn’t feel so bad about keeping their comments to themselves anymore. Let’s not allow this to happen in CA.

And then More from the Oakland Front Lines (Mormons Gone Amok), later the same morning.

they really didn’t even understand the measure very well, they just Hated gay people. They would yell things like “Yes on 8 No HIV” “Yes on 8 I love women.”

So to top it all off, the police were there keeping order because most of the Yes on 8 people were young men and boys who were very very riled up. When the police left they started to approach us and it felt a little scary so I called 911 and asked them to come back. They reluctantly said ok and stated, “Ya no, we can’t baby-sit you all the time.” 

 

The long shadow of the Baba, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

It was a few weeks ago, and we were walking back from a delightful visit to the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, the tremendous new aquarium/planetarium/natural history museum/indoor rainforest, eight years in the making.  Our visit there was a deliberate gesture of familial morale boosting in the face of the unrelenting Anschluss of hate that has been the Proposition 8 campaign.  Exaggerating.  Only just a bit.

All day at the aquarium, I thought, wistfully: Perhaps we’re doing Good Works for the campaign just being here, amidst the teeming masses at the aquarium.  A visible for instance, making the abstractions of the proposition concrete. 

En route back to the car, the little peanut was asleep in the stroller.  We had no cover for him from the megawatt glare of the sun, so for the entire 15-minute walk back to the car, I not only pushed him, but variously maneuvered myself so as to  shade him.  This is something that I — like many parents — always do, without a thought.  

Except on this day.  With so much on the line,  I couldn’t help but wonder, as each family passed us: Are they noticing this?  Can they really see how much and how well we love our children?  Will a memory of this ordinary moment of parental care come back to them, in that extraodinary moment in the voting booth when they contemplate writing our family out of the state’s constitution?

________________________________________________________

Show California and the nation that we will not tolerate unfairness and inequality.

No on 8 has just rolled out an online GET OUT THE VOTE / visibility sign up.  From October 30 through election day, during the morning and evening commutes, and all day election day. Form a team, or join one.

We are so, so ready to win this.

For the fun of it, I had to do a side-by-side “before” and “after” shot.  

Yay people!  We cracked 10 G’s!  For morale-boosting purposes, I think we should leave that nice brilliant “we did it!” thing up there for the weekend.  But I just might be tempted to “mush” us on further next week.  Just saying.

[By the way: another long list of (first) names, hometowns, and gigs will be forthcoming next week, including those who got us to our first goal of $5,000, and those who brought us to our second of $10,000.  But I have a sweetie's 40th birthday to celebrate this weekend, so it'll take a few days.]

A few additional notes (okay, more than a few): First off, my sister, who, in cahoots with her Norski spouse and my Pops, essentially contributed 10% of this goal this time around (yep: they went back and donated again, this time shelling out a cool thousand dollars), came up with a great idea for those of us digging extra, extra deep:  Holiday cards printed with either “WE WON!” or “WE TRIED!” on them!  Since that’s pretty much all she’s going to be able to afford to send around this year.

I think it’s a smashing idea.  As soon as I’ve dusted myself off after this much-unwanted roller coaster ride, I just might try to bust out a line in time for holiday gift card giving.

I’m also glad it was her that broke the quadruple-digit donation barrier. Because on my No on 8 catch-all page,  while admiring the inventiveness of the lesbian cabal in the very effective 8against8 campaign, I quipped that for “Quadruple digit donors, I’ll legally change my kids’ names to whatever you want.”  Fortunately for me, I can suggest to my sister that she already shares the same last name as my kids.  She might be okay with that.

Another note is: we absolutely mustn’t let up.  A recently released poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found slightly more in opposition to the proposition (52%) than in favor of it (44%).   

But the landscape looks different through other lenses.  Two other polls put the “Yes” vote on Proposition 8 in the lead:

A poll by Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., conducted this month for the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic group that has put more than $1.2 million into the effort to pass the measure, showed Prop. 8 ahead 52 to 43 percent. A SurveyUSA poll done last week for a group of California TV stations had Prop. 8 with a narrow lead of 48 to 45 percent.

Regardless of the difference in method or reputation between the various polls, the upshot is that the electorate is enormously conflicted over this, and remains still fairly evenly divided, especially when you consider the “gay Bradley” effect, or whatever you want to call it.  No, I’m not saying former L.A. mayor Tom Bradley was gay.  No.  Just, you know, the social stigma of admitting to your bigotry over the phone keeps our polling numbers as unpredictable as those for candidates of color, to the tune of 7-10%, as we have found in all the past anti-gay marriage ballot measures over recent years.  

Continue reading ‘Go team!’

There are still braids to be braided, after all, culture war or no.

(If you’ve got a hankering for some covers of the Sonny & Cher classic, “The Beat Goes On,” check out the cavalcade of Laugh-In coreography  in the Italian singer Mina’s version, circa 1968. This one, from All Seeing I, in 1998, did fun things with the music. But it will be the get-that-thing-off-my-hand dance move in the Mina version that will be staying with me.)