Image by Shepard Fairey

This morning, the doorman in my office building quietly shoved today’s RedEye newspaper in my hand and whispered, “Do you support Obama in his latest decision to support gay marriage?” I loudly responded, “My mother is gay.” He looked around the lobby at the onlookers and then asked, “So you support the president on this?” I responded, “I support my mother and my family and all of the families that look like mine who deserve equal rights and protections.” To this he responded, “Oh.”

Where many see this as a political issue or conversation du jour, this is personal for me and many others like me. Whether my mother should be treated with respect and dignity as an American citizen is not up for debate and I don’t give a damn where Obama stands. He should have gotten off the fence long ago. I’m a pretty intuitive person and believe that internally, Obama has supported gay marriage for a while. He was playing politics and leaning towards more votes than more equality and it was one of my bitter points with him. I guess you can see it as him making decisions for the greater good – first getting in a position of power so that he can create change from within the system, but I don’t know. I guess I’m happy that he is finally speaking from his heart and not the voting booth this time around, but it’s not really about Obama in the grand scheme of homophobia. This is about heterosexism and religious zealots not respecting a constitutional separation of church and state and not respecting the legal rights of other American citizens. North Carolina’s recent ban on same sex marriage, though it was already prohibited is an example of this. This is not a “morality” issue for me. I don’t play those games and indeed, they are glass and stone throwing games. That type of separatist and pseudo sanctimonious thinking is annoying, ignorant and antediluvian. As a matter of fact, I’m tired of talking about this already. Let’s keep fighting and taking action because power will never be given to our families. As usual, power will have to be taken and we will gladly oblige. And if Obama is any slight indication, that day may be closer than we think.

Power to our families,

Tina