A Few of Your Favorite Gays React to Prop 8

Dorothy Allison:  My heart is breaking. The way the pro-8 spokespeople concentrated on how gay marriage could be a threat to kids... that was the big thing. They propagandized the loving theme of King by turning it into a fearful message to parents.

Ellen DeGeneres: This morning, when it was clear that Proposition 8 had passed in California, I can’t explain the feeling I had. I was saddened beyond belief. Here we just had a giant step toward equality and then on the very next day, we took a giant step away. I believe one day a “ban on gay marriage” will sound totally ridiculous. In the meantime, I will continue to speak out for equality for all of us.

Melissa Etheridge: Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean, roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.

John Rechy: Of course it helped Prop. 8 to use a harmless children’s book (King & King) about gay marriage in its campaign of minority intolerance. My fear now is that all of gay literature will be more closely scrutinized, and that free speech will become even more endangered. [Rechy and his partner of more than 30 years were recently married.]

George Takei: What an amazing night it was - the culmination of a turbulent struggle against a disgraceful history of slavery, prejudice and racial conflict. The road ahead is long, the road will be steep, he said. Our struggles for equality for another minority, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender, will be no different. There will be setbacks, disappointments and sacrifices to be made. Barack Obama spoke of the "renewed promise" of America. It happened last night with the presidency. And equality and justice will happen for us as well. We will make it happen. Yes we can.

Katherine V. Forrest: "Yesterday was just a very difficult day.  Such gladness over Obama and all he symbolizes, watching the national euphoria.  And yet the sharp slap in the face that none of it includes us.  Yet again the line is drawn through us, we're left to peer in the window.  This time it seems a much worse feeling, at least for me, because I'd let down my guard and stopped steeling myself, for the first time I'd let myself hope. 

 

"We will win this of course.  We actually won it in 2003 with the most important civil rights decision of my lifetime, the Supreme Court's 6-3 Lawrence vs Texas decision that struck down sodomy laws under the equal protection clause.  I've always known that the continuing hodge podge of discriminatory state laws and the opposition by the single most legitimizing agent for the prejudice against us -- the churches -- would eventually land us back at the Court.  Where we will then be accorded--under the same clause--the final and definitive decision that will end the practice of putting our lives on a ballot for a majority to decide.

 

"I'm getting over the personal stuff, I feel a little better today and have more perspective.  In order to get this thing passed in California, they had to argue that we already had rights as Domestic Partners.  How big a concession is THAT, given where we were a decade ago?  The fact is, except for our losses, the right wing got their heads handed to them on Tuesday.  Gay people were voted into office all across the country.  All the abortion crap got voted down, it's no longer a viable political issue, it's dead dead dead, folks.  Assisted suicide was passed in Washington State, stem cell research will happen, the Supreme Court appointments are ours for hopefully the next eight years. Their right wing VP candidate became a figure of national scorn, the religious right as a political power has been left where it belongs, on the margins.. 

 

"So good things are happening.  We are the great unfinished business of this nation, and it will indeed get finished.  I trust it will hurry along because I ain't gettin' any younger.  Now that I've lived to see a black president, I want to see it all.  As a friend of ours in Australia emailed yesterday, "Whilst a black President is certainly a good thing, let me know when the President is a black lesbian...."

 

Here's to the bright future."

TR Knight: "I find it difficult to put the sadness I feel into words.

"I know that gay people will one day gain all the rights due us as American citizens. I know that the people who stand in our way today will be the people the majority will later mock as foolish and bigoted. I was speaking to an African-American friend tonight. She told me, “It takes so long. But people will come around. You have to continue to fight. It just takes a very long time.”

"I hope I can muster the patience and keep my anger focused so I can continue to fight. Fight clean. Fight with just the truth. And never let myself spew the kind of hate I encountered on that Tuesday in November as we peacefully fought for our civil rights."