Win Some …

I generally avoided election coverage last night, only switching over around 10 p.m. I could see no reason to watch wall-to-wall coverage starting two hours before the earliest poll closings. And while it was good to see Obama winning before I headed off to bed, any joy I might have felt was wiped out by the stomach-turning results on Florida's Amendment 2. And while our neighbors were outside whooping it up and celebrating with fireworks at 11, I tried to drift to sleep under a deep-set feeling of sorrow.

I never expected a majority to vote against Amendment 2. I figured at least half the people would vote for it. I did, however, hope that the 60% hurdle was too high to cross. I even thought it might be close to an even split.

I was wrong. And this morning I woke to find that in the final tally, less than a third* of Florida's citizenry turn out to be fair-minded people. The rest were easily swayed by rhetoric, were blinded by hate and fear, or were apathetic. And to undo what was done, it will take 60% voting in the opposite direction — a doubling of support from today. Looking around me, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Hope given by one vote, and taken away by another; change put in doubt through a declaration of second-class citizenry.

Contrary to what the ad campaign was contrived to convey, Amendment 2 did more than define "marriage." That was but the first phrase of a single sentence. This vindictive language also delimited the rights available to anything resembling marriage. To whit:

Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.

So marriage, which was already illegal and unattainable by Florida law, has been officially re-made illegal and unattainable by the Florida Constitution — and it's taken down the possibility of domestic-partner registrations and civil unions (the substitute terminology used elsewhere to appease) with it. It will undoubtedly take taxpayer-expensive court cases to decide what else might constitute a "substantial equivalent." And beyond that, whether those rulings will extend to the policies of corporations, Florida-based or otherwise, in recognizing or defining "equivalents," or granting benefits.

(Amendment 2 didn't, however, define a "family" as four people, though the proponents' campaign icon might have led one to think so.)

I found myself in California a couple of months back, in a state where marriage could have been a real possibility (at the time), 2500 miles from my partner, on our anniversary, faced with the possibility that our mutually-agreed-upon anniversary date could have been forever a wedding anniversary date. And now that I'm with someone where eternity seems like an opportunity and not a sentence, the possibility was soul-warming in a way I never imagined.

The root of my sorrow doesn't lie in whether marriage is or ever will be legal, or not. It's not like it would have been possible in Florida any time soon, in any instance. Nor are we interested in traveling somewhere we don't live to seek out legal recognition that won't be recognized back home. We may, or may not, have a commitment ceremony someday, to celebrate with family and with friends (though friends in the local area are forewarned that if we do this, it will be nowhere near the example recently set by others — would a potluck reception dinner be too gauche?). And to us, it will carry all the meaning to which we assign it; the lack of legal significance merely another reminder of a society and a government that does not respect, nor adequately represent, us.

And that's the core: that yesterday so many people — the equivalent of four floors of my six-floor office building — were, intentionally or not, mean. Mean to me, mean to my family, mean to my friends. Rather than play fair, they took their ball and went home just because we wanted to play, too.

There was an episode of the American Queer as Folk series where the character Michael was faced with the possibility of marrying his boyfriend while in Canada. His comment — that marriage was never something he envisioned as even being a possible part of his life's story — has always stuck with me. This has only been part of the conversation for a mere blip in time. But it's one thing to never have imagined it, to never have had the conversation to begin with. Now, it's like peeking at a present too early and then having the lid snapped shut on your fingers, with a promise to feign surprise at the appropriate moment. It's awfully hard to stuff this one back in the box now.

*Yes, a shade more than 33% voted against Amendment 2. I'm accounting for people who did not vote and therefore to me fall in the "apathetic" category.