Yes we can...can we?

I had a dream last night. I was being kept prisoner in my home and my street had turned into a concentration camp. I tried to escape to marry K, and as soon as I made it outside the gate, I was shot and killed.

I woke up to find yes on 8 back home in CA had a considerable margin; I still had hope because only 6% had reported. Right now we're at 91% and it doesn't look good. It looks like No on 8 is no more and it will pass.

I will never be able to understand the pain and suffering that took place in concentration camps - I will always be ignorant in that light. But as for the discrimination practiced in that time, just as it was practiced ages before with slavery and women's voting, and ages after with the civil rights movement, I'm beginning to think I know what it feels like.

Maybe I'm naive and I have no idea what those who were suppressed underwent. All I know is I'm living in an age now where I thought we were taking a step forward and now this probable yes on 8 is like taking 2 steps back.

Speaking with my Mom the other night, she told me she didn't care about the "choices" I've made. I asked her, in tears, if she really thought her only daughter had "chosen" to live like this? She responded that she had exposed me to a lot in life and because of what I'd seen and experienced, this is what I'd chosen; she didn't have a problem with it but she still felt the life I am living is a choice.

I just don't get it. We are in the 21st century. An African American was just elected president. Women are leading countries around the world. Interracial marriage barely gets a second look anymore. Why is it then in an time when so many things that were once backwards are now facing forwards, something so important is still so twisted?

Hope prevails though. Obama is in office; after 8 years of misery we are finally seeing the dawn of a new era. I think if we all believe that 'yes we can', then maybe, hopefully, in my lifetime, I'll be able to marry the one I love without having to give up something else (my home, my citizenship). Hopefully, our country will stop being so afraid.

me

Positive thought of the day:
Yes...we did