Today was an interesting day. Steve & I went down to the Join the Impact rally this afternoon. Some 25,000 marchers participated in the San Diego portion of a nationwide protest against the passage of Proposition 8. Early reports indicate that nearly 1,000,000 people participated in similar rallies in 300 cities nationwide.
Lots of speakers, lots of cheerful people in the audience, all determined to reverse the changes made to the California constitution on Nov. 4th.
Gloria Allred to spoke to finish off the day. Ms. Allred was one of the attorneys who argued before the California Supreme Court for the overturn of Proposition 22. We even got our picture taken with her. Unfortunately, all my pics & videos from earlier in the day got eaten by my camera. Call it technical difficulties (or, more likely, operator error).
Most of the speakers today focused on moving forward in a peaceful, non-violent way, asking the protesters to change the tone of the protests: stop the finger pointing, race-baiting and anti-religious demonization. We're asked, instead, to focus on the larger issue: re-establishing equal marriage rights for all Californians and, eventually, making sure that those rights are available for all Americans. I tend to agree with that POV, but I must say that I'm pretty much over the Shakespearean protestations of innocence being put out by the LDS and Catholic churches. If you play in the political arena, you can expect people to disagree with you. And if you try to take away people's rights, you can expect a fairly strong reaction. The church ladies know this, and I think they protest too much.
The day ended on a bizarre note. Steve & I took his mom out to our favorite cheap spaghetti place tonight (and proceeded to have penne, lasagna & rigatoni instead). On the way back to the car, we witnessed a drive-by hate crime. Three young white guys--in a late model BMW 3 series sedan--pulled up and egged a black man, right in front of us, yelling something along the lines of "Take that you f***ing n****r". They then sped off. All this poor guy was doing was taking a break from his bike ride home his second job by sitting at a bus stop. And along came three spoiled young scions of the East County aristocracy, may they wrap their car around a telephone pole. The sheriff came, in only 25 minutes. If only my piss poor vision wasn't, I'd have been able to get the license plate number, and there might be a different end to this story. The little bastards might think they've gotten away with it, but I'm watching--even if they didn't make the news today.
Bad news, Jim, although not suprising.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/19/191917/42/39/675251
I doubt they'll manage it, but they're trying. I'm willing to bet that being honest about their intent to do this would have cost them the win.