Waiting for the World to Change

On Saturday, Steve and I, along with 14,000 or so other disgruntled folks, collected near City Hall in downtown L.A. to protest the passage of Proposition 8. (Included in this blog are signs from rallys all over the nation: Seattle, Washington, D.C., New York and here in L.A. Some of them are pretty funny, if you ask me.)

Wisely, we chose to take the Gold Line into town rather than driving in. We got at the rally location about 10:20, 10 minutes before the rally was to begin. Almost immediately, we ran into Lesley, a coworker who has been gently encouraging me to get involved in the demonstrations which have been taking place almost daily since November 4.

We had a pretty good place right near the stage up against the barricade. Not only did we get good views of the speakers, but a couple of them came right through the crowd in front of us, including out esteemed chief of police, William Bratton. The best speaker, however, was Mayor Villaregosa, a person who has been behind the gay community from the very first. Here's our first Hispanic president, in my mind.

It felt really good to be out there yelling with thousands of other people, knowing that hundreds of rallies like this were being held at the very same time all over the country and in foreign cities as well. But in a lot of ways, it was like preaching to the choir. The minds we needed to change had already voted, and the next and nearest hope was the overturning of the proposition by the state Supreme Court.

So after the high of people together to make action happen, I feel as though I'm sitting around, watching and waiting to see what will happen next.

On Sunday, CBS had an hourlong interview with Barack and Michelle Obama and I had a chance to feel good all over again about his win over McCain. But there, too, we're sitting around waiting for him to take office, for the real change to begin.

And that's what it's boiling down to for me now, waiting. Waiting for the Supreme Court to make a move. Waiting to see what direction needs to be taken. Waiting to see if our marriage, only a few months old now, is going to be wiped out. Waiting to see if we're going to be robbed of that very special moment when we felt a respect and dignity anointing out joining together. That's really what the proponents of 8 want to rob us of; being able to feel like complete people whose love is honored and cherished as much as anyone else's.