Equality California

The U.S. Supreme Court tossed out any racially based limitations on marriage in the landmark 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. In the unanimous decision, the court said that “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state.”

The above is the closing paragraph of the CNN article about the racist Louisiana judge who would not marry an interracial couple.  In my previous post “Empty Spaces/A Moment without Hapas“, I mention briefly my support of same-sex marriage, but to not draw away from the point of the post, I didn’t elaborate.  I am elaborating now…

Why can it not also be “…the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person based on their gender resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state”?

Why is it that my gay friends are told that they cannot live life like every other American because they prefer to be with someone of the same gender romantically?  Why is it America’s business who you love?

Everyone in this country (with varying age ranges) can have the ability to marry in love, in lust, in drunken 48-hour wedding ceremonies with a backdrop of shiny lights and desert dust so long as the other person is of the opposite sex.  It doesn’t matter if anyone approves or disapproves of any of these decisions.  You have the right to marry whomever you want except…and that word bothers me except…

“…except the person you love because you shouldn’t have matching chromosomes…?”

No.

In all this uproar about not allowing for interracial dating, let’s remember we still have more to do to ensure equality for all.

-cct

Below is a song I’ve featured before, my “So Special” song for Marriage Equality:

I don't know Tiger Woods, but he's mixed race and so is his family. Imagine golf without him...I know, right?

Today a news article about an interracial marriage being denied by a Louisiana Justice of the Peace circulated the internet (See Huffington Post).  You can read the article; it’s sentiments need not be repeated here.  It’s been less than 50 years since the ruling of Loving v. Virginia (1967) and regardless of the prejudice an individual might have against interracial marriage, interracial couples can marry.  That’s the lay of the law.  I won’t bog down this post with my desire that this same litmus test should apply to same-sex couples (just be aware that I think it should).

The point of this post is a conversation I had with one of my former roommates today when the Huffington Post article was circulating.  In the midst of our conversation, I took a moment and looked back on the 26 years of my life and consciously thought about how different my life would be if interracial marriages and couples were outlawed everywhere.

And immediately the image that came to mind was…empty spaces.

It was a realization in the immediate: The conversation I was having with my former roommate would not be happening because she is the daughter of a mixed race couple.

It was a realization in family and friendships:  The people around me, who have inspired me and have shaped who I am, so many of them are children of interracial relationships or are in them or were in them.

The more I thought about this idea, the more people disappeared out of my life, the more I found that the empty spaces were becoming me.

Where would I be?  Who would I be?  If so many people were gone or whose choice in partner was not allowed?  How would they be different?  Would I even know them?

Thankfully, I am not an empty space, and my life is rich with people of all different backgrounds.  But prejudices will always exists and hopefully laws will continue on to say: you can believe whatever you want, but you are not allowed to make anyone an empty space.

-cct

Due to conversations with my co-worker, I am also calling this post A Moment Without Hapas.

Buy "So Special" - All Proceeds to go to Equality California

UPDATED: I have changed the location where you can purchase the song.  Please refer to the updated blog post on this!

I have just released my “So Special” song on SnoCap. Because the song is about my take on marriage equality, I have decided that anything I make from it will go to Equality California (http://www.eqca.org) and the fight for marriage equality. Whether or not you like the song, it’s only 99-cents! So please help out this great cause by purchasing the song! You can catch the full-version of my song on my myspace, or just purchase below.

Lyrics Below:

So Special (cc.tran)

You can wrap your arms around me
I can give you a kiss
We can wear rings of gold
And declare to the world this is it
And anyone could say
That we were right or wrong
But we have the choice, we have the voice,
to say we belong

Chorus
But what makes us special?
What makes us more real -
Than other lovers in love
Just the same?
What makes us so special?
That people could hold claim
That others shouldn’t have it -
What so many throw away

Love one another
Words I abide
Golden rule
In a collective denied
I know that you love me
And that’s all I need
But we have the choice, we have the voice,
to say we belong

Chorus

Bridge
What if the tables were all turned around?
What if we’re the separate side of equal?
Our choice, our voice, was someone else’s sound?

Chorus

But we have the choice, we have the voice,
to say we belong

Thanks!

-cct

Obama Victory and California's Gay Marriage Ban

I’ve been feeling this odd back-and-forth pull in federal politics versus state level politics (in my particular case – California’s).  It seems as if – perhaps by chance – the progressive changes on the federal level is met by regressive issues on the state level.  Though this post is really only focused on one aspect of that – marriage equality.

On the same day that President Obama was elected as our first African-American president, Proposition 8 passed in California – defining that marriage is between a man and a woman, thereby putting the status of all the gay couples who had married in limbo.  Most recently, on the same day President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as the potential first Hispanic Supreme Court judge, judges in California’s Supreme Court laid value to Prop 8 and its passing.

LATimes Front Page: Sonia Sotomayor and Gay Marriage Ban Upheld

While I don’t honestly feel that Prop 8 will stay a fixture for long – the court did, after all, keep the marriages valid between gay couples pre-Proposition 8 – it still saddens me to see progress be ironically regressive.

I’ve been talking lately with friends about the state of relationships in America.  We exist in a world where liberating sexual freedoms are a norm – where multiple partners, heterosexual commitments without marriage, 48-hour marriages, and children out of wedlock are just a part of life.  Some people might not approve of them, but law doesn’t discriminate against them.  Perhaps this stems from the fear of conversation, of dialogue, that people don’t want to face.  It’s okay – so long as we don’t recognize it.

Regardless, while we seem to be at least trying to judge less and less by the color of a person’s skin on a national level and a person’s actions on a social level, the fact that two people love each other and want to make a commitment is denounced because they are the same gender doesn’t reveal us to be a progressive society.  It reveals that we are still biased in matters that affect human beings within our fold.

Proposition 8 is a judgment call against a group of people.  If we wanted to make it at an adequate reflection of what this state and this nation is supposed to founded upon, then we should take away the right of marriage from everyone.  Logically, I understand the court could only do what it could with the voting of Proposition 8 (let’s  face it, California Constitution is also a mess!), but I am disappointed in the California voters that let it pass in the first place.

In the call of right and wrong, we don’t often enough strip away the complicated details to bring it down to heart of the matter – genderless, colorless.

Julian Bond once stated, “The lessons of the civil rights movement of yesterday … is that sometimes the simplest of ordinary everyday acts, of taking a seat on a bus, of sitting down at a lunch counter, of applying for a marriage license, sometimes these can have extraordinary consequences, can change our world.”  I’m a firm believer in this, because the most important question in this debate should have nothing to do with gender or color.

The question comes down to: should people have the right to marry? Answer that question without any clauses, any qualifiers because that is the heart of equal rights – in the simplicity, the everyday.  My answer?  Yes.

-cct