Gays in the age of Obama
For many, the jubilation over the new president is greater than the sorrow over Proposition 8.
Topics: California, Gay Marriage, Barack Obama, LGBT
This is the image I’ll always remember from Election Night 2008.
A gay man standing outside the grand ballroom of the St. Francis Westin Hotel in San Francisco. He had one finger to his ear to block out the hubbub inside, and an iPhone clamped to the other. “Honey,” he was yelling into the phone, “I cried — when Obama spoke, I cried.”
Inside the ballroom it was bittersweet. Barack Obama was the president-elect. But same-sex marriage was being overturned by California voters. Proposition 8 was winning by a slim margin, but winning. In Arkansas, an adoption ban passed. In Arizona and Florida bans on same-sex marriage passed easily.
All this on a night when Obama swept the country in a landslide on a promise of change. On a night when pro-choice groups racked up victories. Even chickens had something to rejoice about in California.
In the end it seemed the gays were the scapegoats, the ones left behind at the back of the bus.
Had we asked for too much, too soon, from a country that was not ready to give us the full measure of our dignity?
It didn’t seem that way in the ballroom of the St. Francis. In the heart of San Francisco’s gay neighborhood, the Castro, it was New Year’s Eve come a few months too early. But not any New Year’s Eve -– a once-in-a-lifetime turn of the century.
“It was insane,” texted a friend. He said the streets had turned into a giant party. People were hugging, kissing, shaking the hands of strangers. Even in the ballroom of the St. Francis, where the most committed same-sex marriage activists had gathered, the emphasis was on the sweet in the bittersweet.
I think for one very precious moment we were larger than ourselves. In a country beset by identity politics, we’d soon be analyzing the Latino vote and the Asian vote. Did the black vote tip the balance on same-sex marriage? What about the youth vote? All that would come later, in the dissection and redissection of the polls. But for one emotional, uncynical moment we were reveling in something that was bigger than all of our labels.
It’s not a post-racial America by any means. But it was a moment when many of us could look at each other and after a long time say not “the president of the USA” but “our president.” That feeling, however ephemeral it might be, is more powerful than any ban on any marriage ceremony anywhere.
Sandip Roy is an editor with New America Media and host of its radio show "UpFront" on KALW (91.7 FM) in San Francisco. More Sandip Roy.



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