Yesterday I was heading home late from work and waiting for the train.  I was listening to my music – a little Mana to haunt me since  I wasn’t able to see them when they rolled into the town the last few days.

I reluctantly paused my music when a man next to me started making small talk – let’s just call him GED teacher…if that’s what he really is.

He worked for a federal GED program teaching high school drop-outs, so we talked about education and I asked if he had heard about the LAUSD/10% homework news.  We talked about how students really need to do work outside of class and make education a priority.  He mentioned that he had his doctorate in education and how he told this story to his students to hopefully motivate them because he actually came to this country as an illegal immigrant.  He mentioned that he and his wife – they had since divorced – had made education a priority over kids so that they could both work on their education.

I suppose he didn’t think that I would notice that sometime in our conversation, he tried to switch his gold band wedding ring from his left hand to his right hand’s pinky – even though he did this in front of my face as we were talking.

It was one of those conversation that had to continue on since we were on the same train, else I would’ve been rude.  So we continued talking about education and I just asked him about the different types of students he had.  I left the train and wished him luck with his students.

I turned my iPod back on with Mana continuing to play as if I had never left the comfort of my musical world….

…except GED teacher had gotten off the train to ask me for my number.

Me: I’m sorry.  I don’t give my number out.

GED Teacher: (flustered) I’m actually a happily married man…

As he says this, he tries to do another wedding ring switch or show me his wedding ring…

GED Teacher: …and am just looking for contacts of people in education…

Me: Oh, I don’t work in education.

And I left – I left feeling really sad for the world and sad for singular stories.  There was the singular story of the woman not in the conversation, the one he’s “happily” married to and probably doesn’t know that he does this wedding band switch-a-roo.  The story of a man who may or may not even be a GED teacher, who feels that not only can he say he is divorced, but also blatantly try to both create this lie and untangle himself from the lie in front of my face.  At no time did I give any impression that I might be interested in this man, let alone for him to get himself into a crazy lie in a 10-15 minute conversation where I kept my arms crossed and myself distant.

I don’t fault people for taking chances.  I don’t think people take enough chances in this world.  But to do so at the expense of your own integrity, at the expense of a marriage – a lifelong commitment -  that you can claim is happy after you try and pretend it doesn’t exist?  That just makes me sad.

-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