Listen to your elders
In the wake of the California Supreme Court ruling on Prop 8 I think we're all feeling anger and disbelief but I can't believe in all of this that anyone is truly surprised. That lack of surprise does not mean the decision isn't still depressing but what I needed to do was find hope. Something to make me keep believe and keep fighting.
That hopes comes from the words of Phyllis Lyon.
Phyllis and her late wife Del Martin were the first couple to marry in June of last year after a "courtship" of over fifty years.
The whole article is wonderful to read. It tells the story of how they met. How they became a couple and eventually how they got involved in civil rights. But they thing that got me was this woman, who has seen so much, has lived a full and wonderful live, who married the woman she shared that life with and lost her not long after could still say:
I'm optimistic about the future. Look at all the states that have now done this. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. They may not all last. But it's going to be all right. It may not be while I'm alive, but eventually it will work out that if two people want to get married, they can get married and it won't matter to whom. We went through this before with people of color. It will be OK.
I hope I won't be saying the same thing when I'm 84. In fact I know by then that the world will be a different place. One thing we can always be sure about is that we will continue to evolve as a people and as a global community. Change is going to come we just have to believe it will be OK.