On election night in November 2008, I stood with leaders of the "No on Prop 8" campaign at a rally in Los Angeles and listened to Barack Obama give his victory speech from Chicago. Together we heard him say:
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. ... It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled -- Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.It was a historic moment, not only because we had just elected the first African-American president but because we heard for the first time from a president-elect who intentionally included "gay" in his list of "all" when he spoke about "liberty and justice for all." And as quickly as our hearts soared at those powerful words, they sank as the "Yes on 8" polling numbers rose. And so we stood together in an awful tension between elation at the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States and devastation as a bare majority of Californians wrote discrimination into our state constitution.
What a difference four years make.
Read the rest here.
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