From IT in the comments at The Friends of Jake:
IT said...
I cried today. Stupid. I was at my dentist's (he's a friend and came to our wedding) and he cheerfully said, "How's married life treating you?" and I replied, waaay too seriously, "good for as long as it lasts," and then he wanted to know about the court case, and if we'd heard whether our marriage would last, and when we would KNOW, and how we are doing, etc etc and I had to go through it all again.
I walked out to the car afterwards and got in and cried tears of anger and frustration--not at my dear dentist, but at feeling I'm living betwixt and between, unresolved, at being A Thing whose fate is decided by courts and how the PropH8 people took my euphoric feeling that finally I was a Real Married Person with a real place in society, like everyone else, and they threw me back into the gutter and kicked me back into being an unwanted outsider.
And then I dried my eyes and went to work and tried, yet again, to get past it.
I don't know what to say, except to note that the marriages of 18,000 couples, 36,000 human beings, may be annulled by the passage of Prop 8 in California.
H/T to Arkansas Hillbilly, who posted these poignant words, too, and followed them with lovely commentary.
my euphoric feeling that finally I was a Real Married Person with a real place in society, like everyone else, and they threw me back into the gutter and kicked me back into being an unwanted outsider.And then I dried my eyes and went to work and tried, yet again, to get past it." IT
ReplyDeleteBut, that´s what we do, that´s the courageous part...that´s the self-esteem part, the character building part...the even if they murder your partner part! There is no getting past that we must continue to stand against bigotry, fear and hate...no matter how we hurt or are abused (really abused and not crying wolf).
This is REAL and it´s hard.
Truth feels so right.
I don´t know why avoided it for so long...just plain old fear and self-loathing.
It will never matter again to me what ¨they say¨ but it does matter if they abuse me and people like me.
Love and thanks for posting this.
Leonardo
Excuse me...I reread this (not murder your partner, IT! It was my partner who was murdered...sorry to alarm).
ReplyDeleteYa know, I think I'm going to post this too.
ReplyDeleteYou are some real friends! Honest and caring.
ReplyDeleteIT's words made me cry. Folks need to know the effects of what they do.
ReplyDelete:-( Sad for IT and everyone else who's marriages are threatened. How did we turn into such a fearful society?
ReplyDeleteThis really brought the human predicament of the situation home to me. How horrible to live in such limbo.
ReplyDeleteMy rage at the folks who engineered this is substantial. These are the times I want to believe in eternal hellfire so I can wish them there. Grrrrr.
ReplyDeleteI can only hope that IT and BP know with every fiber of their being that they ARE married no matter what the state says.
It is, of course, high time (and beyond) for the state to acknowledge that reality. Until it does, our lip-service to equality under the law is all sham.
When I read IT's post on FOJ, I cried for her too. That's why I put it up on my site. I've heard the screaming and shouting about immorality from the fundangelical right for so long, I thought maybe it's time to introduce them to the people that are affected by all of this. It's easier to hate and discriminate against an abstract concept, harder when it's people.
ReplyDeleteHillbilly, yes. This is about real people. Thanks for posting, because I may not have seen it way down in the comments at FOJ.
ReplyDelete