Joy and Pain

I stayed up last night until 3:30 a.m. By that point, I was so wired up I couldn't really sleep - voices of Wolf Blitzer dancing like sugarcanes in my head. I woke up exhausted.

I started watching the election coverage long before anything happened or could happen. It was kind of like watching the pre-pre-Oscars. I didn't want to miss the first results though, so I kept myself entertained by switching between CNN in Spanish, regular CNN and the BBC. Each one of the programs had something annoying. CNN had that big bag of hot air, Bill Bennett, former secretary of education under Reagan, who took every opportunity he could to espouse some form of right wing ideology. Every time he started blowing hot air, I'd switch to another channel. On the BBC they had this annoying Republican pollster, Kelli Ann something, when she came on, I'd go to another channel.

At about midnight here it started to become clear that McCain had no chance. He had lost Pennsylvania and Ohio and it seemed like all of the other states that were leaning towards Obama were going to fall his way. I popped open my champagne at that point, thinking that midnight was a good time to open champagne.

But I decided I would stay up until they called the race, which seemed imminent right after the west coast polls closed. I must have dozed off, because when I looked at the TV, they had indeed called it for Obama. So then I decided to stay up and watch his speech. It was a very moving and historical moment and I should be thrilled to death, right?

Well, there was one very dark spot to yesterday's election. Three states had anti-gay ballot measures, Florida, Arizona and California, and all three look like they passed. In California, it means that thousands of couples who were able to get married in the past few months will find themselves in limbo until the courts figure out what to do. It means that thousands more will not have access to the same rights and privileges that any two random heterosexuals can gain just by signing a piece of paper, and it means that the religious regressives who are so itching to impose their views and values on the rest of us feel like they have had a major victory in spite of their major loss, and are going to be empowered to go further. I'm angry, I'm sad, but I also know that in the end, justice will win out and those hateful people will be exposed for the bigots they are. The question is just how long it will take.

How long did it take before Americans realized that enslaving other human beings, degrading and demeaning them was wrong? How long did it take before Americans realized that women were capable of making the same decisions as men in terms of their political leaders? How long did it take before Americans realized that the internment of thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans during WWII was wrong? How long did it take before Americans realized that seperate but equal was not equal? We seem to be slow at realizing - we say one thing and do another when it comes to democracy and fairness. We love to impose our democracy on the rest of the world, but don't seem too good at actually carrying it out ourselves. Yesterday was a historic day because Obama was elected, and because three out of our 50 United States wrote discrimination into their constitutions.