After living in the same house for 20 years, I started to feel like I didn’t belong in my city. 2008 was Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, but at the same time Proposition 8a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in California.
I covered marriage equality for the editorial board and wrote several times a week about everything from child custody rights for same-sex couples to the economics of same-sex marriage.
Then I head home and enter another world on the last leg of my commute. Driving through the quiet streets of Laguna Beach felt more like running the gauntlet than coming home. Most of the gardens along the way were dotted with bright yellows and blues. ”Yes, 8 days” The lawn sign depicts an image of a traditional family eating apple pie, more like the 1950s than the 21st century. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, women in dresses. The sign read “Restore Marriage,” as if the arrival of same-sex marriage had eliminated all other weddings.
The presence of such large numbers of billboards was unusual in Laguna Beach, which was once home to a large gay population and was known as California’s first openly gay mayor. The city’s openness was a big part of why we moved there.
On the surface, my family was just a suburban family: mom, dad, three kids, two dogs, and a cat living in a ranch house in California. But inside, our family values were vehemently opposed to what we were seeing in the city. We were suddenly outsiders in a place that had always felt like home.
People who think it is their right to impose their religious beliefs on others not only offend members of religious minorities like me; they are scary. We are already seeing the expansion of such thinking around abortion, with dire consequences.
When my family moved down the street, there were three same-sex households, but by 2008 they were long gone. In the early days of the Prop. 8 movement, one of my neighbors came by with a pro-Prop. 8 pamphlet. We told him that we thought of him as a good person who we had always gotten along with, but that we would all be better off if he never did something like that again.
Just over half of California voters supported Proposition 8, which would outlaw same-sex marriage in the state. The measure was quickly challenged in court, and in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the defendants in the case were not guilty of any crimes. legal positionwhich meant Proposition 8 was blocked and same-sex marriage could continue.
But marriage equality in California was never proven on its merits, only on technicalities. Although the bill’s text was unenforceable, it remained a dead letter in the California Constitution and weighed on our collective conscience.
Until now.
On Tuesday, Californians defeated reactionary measures in a more meaningful way by passing a bill. Suggestion 3guaranteeing the right to marry without prejudice. They rejected Proposition 8’s message of hatred and intolerance, removed its language from the constitution, and publicly abandoned the lack of understanding and acceptance shown by the state’s voters in 2008.
Of course, times have changed in many ways. Young children in the era of Proposition 8 are now voting for adults who have broader ideas about sex and gender.
No one put up lawn signs on that street this year. Perhaps it was an attempt to remain friendly despite our differences under great stress. Perhaps it was a détente. Perhaps they’ve changed their mind about same-sex marriage, or maybe they’re just too busy gardening.
Or perhaps they have realized that there is no point in stirring up bad feelings about a bill that polls show is certain to pass. This time it was a narrow-minded way of thinking that was outside the mainstream.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage will be legal in California and, two years later, nationwide. General. A generation grew up seeing that marriage equality helped many and harmed no one. The initial defeat of Proposition 8 was unsatisfying, but still, both for the happiness it brought and for a generation that just voted with knowledge that many voters lacked 16 years ago. It was worth celebrating.
That day in 2008, I took out the rainbow flag I had bought and hung it on the roof in front of my house. That message is: Yes, we don’t belong here, but that’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.
I still live in that house.
