Tag Archives for prop8

The 53.7% Factor: Conversations on a Long Train Ride to a (Gay) Wedding

When I tell you I live in San Francisco, you may think being gay here is just a done deal.  And most of the time, you might be right: I don’t worry about who I am or whether I am or seem “out” to anyone else. My wonderful wife and child and I can simply exist.

Then I remember the irony of the train ride on the evening of Tuesday, November 4, 2008. A group of us took the F-Market train from the No On Prop 8 headquarters down to the democratic campaign headquarters at the St. Francis hotel, all decked out in our No On Prop 8 shirts, carrying No On Prop 8 signs and generally excited though uncertain about what was to be a long roller-coaster night of heartbreak ahead.

We were taunted on the train.  A group of kids were seething slurs at us, and the slurs were not at all pretty.  We were, basically, publicly humiliated.

It’s true so much has changed even just since then. Five years later we’ve not yet seen the repeal of Prop 8, but other states have managed to overcome the barrier to popular vote for the rights of gays and lesbians to marry.  We feel the tide turning.  But we still have a long ride ahead.

Last week we took the Amtrak Coast Starlight up to Seattle and back for Loret and Aimee’s beautiful wedding on Saturday, April 6.  The thing about these long rides on Amtrak trains is that you’re not just traveling – you’re dining, watching movies, squeezing through tight corridors, and generally hanging out with a bunch of people you don’t know.  For an entire day.

When you go into the dining car for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, unless you’re a party of four already, you’re placed together with others who fill the table.  Each time, you try to have conversations.

“Where did you get on the train?”
“Where are you headed?”
“Oh you’re going to a wedding – how wonderful!”
“Is your daughter going to be in the wedding?”
“Who’s getting married?”

Conversations with strangers are wonderful – even when one is badly slept and unshowered on a rocking train.  Conversations about our gay families though – even in 2013 – are still risky.  Here’s what it’s like:

“Who’s getting married?”

All in a split second, you consider the 2012 election result that approved same-sex marriage in the state to which the train is heading, stick the fact in your back pocket that 53.7% approved the marriage you’re going to witness, and by proxy your own marriage, and come up with the figure that roughly 1 in every two you meet, were they Washington voters and did they vote in this particular election, are going to be thusly supportive of the conversation you’re about to consider having.

And you try to evaluate: which one is this?

Not everybody gets this opportunity to have their relationship status a subject of national debate.  Usually this is considered a good thing – a matter of privacy – but we’re global citizens, sharing the same world, the same country, the same dining car table – and marriage is nothing if not about a societal conversation and recognition.

I don’t always succeed in taking the opportunity to represent who I am, even in the face of a 53.7% chance of being met with frank approval.

On the train, I failed at the first meal, with the couple from Imperial County in California.  Somewhere my mind made a judgment from within the context of the 2008 Prop 8 verdict of their home county, and I answered the dining questions vaguely, for which I felt like a deceptive and bad global traveler.

The rest of the conversations would go differently.  With the mom and her kid, who seemed almost mirror images of my daughter and me and were returning to their home city near Seattle — with them we talked freely, and I thanked them for approving R74 – even though I had no idea how they actually voted.  They reacted supportively – almost like this wedding thing is just a given.

Then there’s an entire other end of the spectrum.  My wife Leanne was practically jumped upon by a self-professed conservative Republican who wanted to apologize for his party and wish us well whatever the hell we wanted to do. Eventually for Leanne it became a matter of choice NOT to keep talking to this fine fellow — she had other things to do on the train, after all.

What a difference indeed the five years – the ten years – the knowing of one out of every two – makes. I should represent like every other person who is alive today can, but I get this extra chance – to represent in the face of a flying social issue.  I do try, and not always very well.

The flip-side of the 53.7% factor is the 46.3% factor.  For this good reason and many better ones, conversations on our journey, still risky, are more and more important, rewarding, and hopeful — every day.

Dear Charles Cooper: We could be friends

Dear Charles Cooper;

I think I started to like you when Leanne pointed out your cuff links at yesterday’s trial.   To watch the trial, I was sitting in the overflow room behind a personal hero of mine, Kate Kendell, executive director at National Center for Lesbian Rights, and I know she has been known to sport some pretty excellent cuff links as well. I, too, like cuff links. It’s really silly, I know, but I get excited when I think: This is something we all have in common!

Sitting behind Kate Kendell and Melanie Rowan of NCLR

Sitting behind Kate Kendell and Melanie Rowan of NCLR

When we left the overflow room shortly after the hearing ended at noon, we walked up the hallway to the real trial room to just peek inside.  At that exact moment you were walking out of the room. You looked tired – you had obviously been working hard.  We ran away to sort of hide – then we were concerned we might be in the same elevator as you on the way down.  You instead went to the Men’s room first so we were spared that situation.

My view of Charles Cooper on the video from the overflow room

My view of Charles Cooper on the video from the overflow room - terrible phone picture I know

Afterward I felt guilty:  running away is silly.  I wonder what it would be like to talk with you.   I would have tried to shake your hand and I would have asked about your cuff links and probably found some nice things to say.  Maybe we’d later have a drink together.  I could show you San Francisco from some of my favorite views. You’d meet our beautiful daughter…

I’ve dreamed this sort of thing before.  I just wanted to dream it out loud a little longer.  For the sake of my daughter’s future — our future. It could happen.

Thank you,

-m

PS: Here are the rulings from the trial, out today (the following day). You lost on both counts. How I wish I could help you know it’s going to be OK.

This Week in Video and Politics

I’ve been working on an internal video sharing platform at work for over a year, and now everything from music to politics to diversity to news to family and more directly seems to relate to video sharing platforms.

This week, two videos in particular have caught my interest at the intersection of Video and Politics. Let’s start with Charlie Crist:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4k13LmlcUE%5D

A colleague passed along the news story behind this to me: Crist, Byrne settle lawsuit over campaign song.

We know a bit about the potential issues of music copyright infringement through our work on our video project, so it’s surprising that this video was ever made. Charlie Crist should have known better when he used the Talking Heads’ song Road To Nowhere in his campaign ad, but in the realities of political campaigning he (or likely his campaign) could well have realized a “cease and desist” order might not have even taken effect until the campaign was long over.  Seems anything goes in the fast lawless heat of political campaigns.

On the other hand, Prop 8 proponents are targeting Judge Vaughn Walker over his public use of videotapes from the trial in the long long journey of Prop 8 through the courts. Seems back on February 18, at an event on courts and new media in Arizona, Judge Walker delivered a session called Shooting the Messenger: How Cameras in the Courtroom Got a Bad Wrap, and during that session he showed pieces of the videotaped trial, including testimony from a Prop 8 proponent.  C-SPAN was there to record it, which amounted essentially to “broadcasting the testimony on TV,” which is of course what the Prop 8  folks never wanted in the first place.  Since a stern motion about this apparent “illegal” release of videotape was delivered today, you should watch it there while you can (I can’t get a version with embed strings but will come back and embed if I find one).

The Ninth Circuit Court later had no problem showing the Prop 8 trial live on C-SPAN. You can watch it in its entirety to this day:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO_HoF1EBfw%5D

Beyond Walker’s district court however there are no live witnesses to testify. All records of people’s motivations are preserved back in the district court.

For the moment let’s ignore the the obvious question “What do Prop 8 proponents continue to want to hide?” I used to think that The Law was one of the next biggest areas of disruption in the “Web 2.0” space. Now that I’m involved in a video project, naturally I think video is the current huge disruption in politics.

Of course — none of these things are new, but whereas Law seems to be purposefully designed to be slow in a fast-media world, Politics is far from it.  A quick campaign ad released the day before an election can change its course.  Thankfully, checks and balances are however still in tact. A targeted attack on a meticulously prepared, thoroughly researched and fairly tried case (or the relevance of the case’s judge’s sexuality) will amount to nothing except passing fancy in the “court of public opinion.”

Video however? Video can reveal to anyone who cares to see the real motivations behind Prop 8 as revealed in the courtroom from its proponents under testimony, and you can try to pull it down, but the record is cast. The Internet will continue to remember. And we’re here to see it.