on hate and love

Can you hear that? Across the state, from south to north, they are cheering. Joyous tears stream down their faces, just like my own tears of "yes, we can" flowed on election night as I danced in the streets of downtown Oakland. They are the church-goers, the families of young men fighting in Iraq, the white people and the people of color, the concerned citizens of this state heaving sighs of relief because marriage has been codified as the province of the heterosexual.

They assure us that this amendment won't deprive anyone of any rights, but will simply affirm a longstanding definition. They say this is about love, not hate. But we know and feel otherwise. This constitutional amendment is a sharp blow to our hearts, our guts. It confirms our suspicions: all across our state and our nation, there are those who reject and fear homosexual relationships, who triumph in having defended the institution of marriage against incursion by an advancing army of sexual deviants.

And as the doors of this institution are slammed in our faces, as we hear the locks turning and the chains rattling, there is a profound sadness that arises -- a gaping and terrible vacuum where there was once energy, movement. Gays exist, they admit, but gayness must not be talked about, taught in our schools, seen in our churches, acknowledged as a protectable category by our government, or granted the same benefits and privileges as is heterosexuality with regard to state-issued marriage licenses. God says gayness is a sin, they say, and even if we can't really stop you from having all of that weird sex and perverse love, we can sure as hell make sure you're not receiving the same treatment as are we, the child-bearers, the keepers of what is sacred in our society.

This is a deeply painful message to receive. I grieve the receiving of this message as it enters my very body, this body of mine which aspires only to love and be loved. I don't feel any acceptance in their exclusion, as they claim; I feel only their fear, only their attempt at disciplining me out of my messy, dangerous desires. I feel only a sweeping of my heart under a heavy rug, so that it doesn't disturb a pretty picture.

What I want to say, though, as I move through my grief, is that it's this pretty picture with which we must contend. Any observer of nature knows that the world is a teeming, chaotic place, but a place which always manages to self-regulate in surprisingly elegant ways. And yet people, perhaps out of our fear, perhaps out of our quirky wisdom, continually attempt to impose order and organization on this wild web of interdependence. To erase the curves and draw thick lines instead. To dam the river and straighten out its banks. God wrote a book, it is said, which ought to be the instruction manual for the entire world. One book, one way, one paternalistic social structure for everyone, no matter how many people it sickens and kills from smallpox or heartbreak.

This is what we're up against. The book says that gay sex is transgressive, and that transgressors burn in hell. As such, I think we were fatally misguided in our attempt to conduct this ballot initiative fight solely according to reason and a civil rights framework. In the contest between secularly-granted rights and God's word, the believers won't be swayed by suggestions of discrimination under the law. This is about God's plan for the way all humans must live -- and rights either flow from God's word, they say, or aren't real.

And we're up against this with a massive handicap: internalized homophobia. After generations of shielding yourself against the violent screams of "you're not supposed to exist," can you muster the will to fight against God and his book? Can you even fight against such a deeply-held belief about love and its barbed-wire parameters, especially if your collective strength has been continuously, insidiously sapped? Can you rally your spirits to say, "here I am, and my existence is just as real and beautiful as yours," when you've been so "other"-ed, so alienated, so villainized?

It's a challenging task, and it's exactly the task we must undertake. In order for us to stand upon solid ground, to align ourselves with the inviolability of our constitutional right to equal treatment, we have to somehow meet this God-driven negation of our existence with a God-inspired knowing that we are here, that we do exist, and that homosexuality is neither a sin nor a lifestyle choice. There must be a shared moral vision of equality among us -- in addition to a shared legal vision -- in order for us to achieve that equality. We must have more to rely upon than our tender hearts and our political acuity and our spandex short-shorts that we wear once a year at the Pride parade. We must wholly love and believe in ourselves as individuals and as a group before we can convince other people to love and believe in us, especially people who are so angrily invested in God's decree against us. Whether we believe in God or not, we must be aware that there is love for us -- even us -- that is infinite and unconditional.

So please, begin within. Love yourself. Respect yourself. Hold fast to your inherent human dignity and equality, even as you feel the reverberations of this dizzying electoral slap in the face. Feel your innate belonging, and from that place, step forward to speak your truth.