Lesbian Dad

If ever there was a time to step up, it’s now

I went to a talk at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center last night, sponsored by Our Family Coalition, our amazing local LGBT family organization.  Family Law and Estate attorneys Deborah Wald and Deb Kinney spent an hour and forty minutes helping explain the mysterious inner workings of the law, as it functions for those of us who — for the next fifty-four days, at least — have the dubious distinction of enjoying marital status at the state level, but stranger status at the federal. With registered domestic partner status woven all around that.

I learned a great deal (mostly that I should have paid more attention to the chalkboard and less attention to my spitwads, back in high school civics classes).  But it was the last twenty minutes that stuck with me. Deb Kinney embossed into our skins some facts about Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage proposition Californians will vote on this fall:

  1. No internal polls clarify that Proposition 8 is sure to be defeated; in fact, people have historically are ashamed to admit their bigotry to pollsters; in the privacy of in the voting booth, they’ll reneg and vote bigot. Like, 7-10% of them.
  2. The percentage of undecided voters on this issue — a whopping 20% — are way more than enough for either side to clinch the vote.
  3. The Yes on 8 forces are a “machine.” Meaning, busloads of people are being driven in and deposited in neighborhoods to go door-to-door.
  4. The pro-8 forces are just as aware as we No on 8 folks are, that THIS IS AN HISTORIC ELECTION WITH NATIONAL CONSEQUENCES.  The supreme court didn’t just interpret the California state constitution to protect gay people’s rights to marry.  It set out a template by which no discrimination against anyone, based on sexual orientation, is legally defensible.  Period.  No wonder this election has such wide-reaching impact.  Its success will create the blueprint for a sea change in gay politics nationally. [Read Deborah Wald’s recent post, “Moving to the Front of the Bus,” for a concise and illuminating argument for this.]
  5. It will be won or lost by a fraction of a percentage point.
I am riveted like I’ve never been riveted before.  So I am asking you something, you, YOU!  Reader!  I am asking begging you: help me.  Help us.  Make a difference.  

Goal Thermometer

I have created a donation page at the No on 8 website.  I’ll tell you straight up.  Right now, there are around about 10,000 of you who stop by and read this blog each month.  If only ten percent of you coughed up only $5 each, we could raise $5,000.  
That’s not enough money to buy an ad to counteract the misinformation the other side is going to spread.[Updated 24 Sept 08 to reflect my recent enlightenment!] That’s enough to buy several ads to try to counteract the misinformation the other side is going to spread (fewer in big markets; more in smaller ones throughout the state).  (More about the acute & immediate fundraising need here.)  But it will help produce more posters, pay for more phone bills, get more folks’ feet on the ground on election day.   Whatever.
People, help.  Help.  That’s all I want to say.  Especially you from out of state.  
A donation of $5 is way, WAY less than a movie.   It’s two coffees and a buncha donuts.  Or a single latté and maybe a croissant, depending on your bourgeois-o-meter.
A donation of $10 is a frickin’ movie.
A donation of $20 is a frickin’ movie plus some pizza and beer.
My children — and yours; hell ALL OF US — living in a world where there is no longer any legally sanctioned discrimination against LGBT families?  Which the defeat of prop 8 this fall would speed along at an amazing rate, maybe faster than any other single event in the LGBT civil rights movement thusfar?  (Which it would; you watch.)  That?  That’s priceless. 
Now please show me that it’s worth it to hope so publicly that love is capable of conquering, if not all, then this hatred, right here, right now.
  

fight [next in this marraige equality series: Marriage equality and my dad]


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