After viewing and listening to this Keith Olbermann video a few times, I started to really think about what Lisa and I are going to miss out on by not having the opportunity to get married.
This will be the last personal statement that I will post regarding Proposition 8. Frankly, the emotional reserves are drained. I am not giving up; I have just decided to no longer use this public forum and space to address the issue.
All you need is love.
How sweet it is to be loved by you.
You’re the one for me.
Nothing compares to you.
Give me a kiss to build a dream on.
I can’t help falling in love with you.
Because of those lyrics, many of you have chosen these songs for the First Dance at your wedding. I would have liked to have had that opportunity.
Hiking through Cinque Terre, Italy. Dinner at Spago overlooking the ocean on Maui. Cave tubing in Belize.
There have been several occasions during the last eleven years when we’ve been on breathtaking adventures or in spectacularly romantic locales, and it crossed my mind during each that those would have been perfect locations to propose to the love of my life. I would have liked to have had that opportunity.
Our relationship is traditional because we love one another unconditionally; through better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow. And we will continue to do so until death do us part. We are blessed by the love and support of both families. They would have liked to have had the opportunity to participate in our wedding.
I truly do not believe that those who voted in favor of Proposition 8 in California did so from their hearts or put themselves into the shoes of those who wished for the same opportunity to wed. Imagine if you, your sibling or your own child were fortunate enough to have found a soul mate, but were not allowed to experience the elation of an engagement, the sheer bliss of a wedding day or the nervous excitement about a honeymoon.
I wish more people would have put aside their Bibles and fears just long enough to contemplate how denying someone like us the opportunity to get married was absolutely heartbreaking; we were standing together inside that glass house before it was shattered with stone votes. Supporters of Prop 8 are celebrating and continuing to get married while we are left to pick up the shards of discarded dreams.
It is also quite disturbing that many of the good folks in my home state of California are more concerned about the living conditions of their future chicken dinner than of the hearts and souls of fellow human beings.
It is obviously too late to change a vote, but perhaps not a perspective. I am not a political figure and I have no clout; I simply write about pop culture. But if I can open up even one dialog about the other side of Proposition 8, then I feel that this will have been worth the effort.
- Jo
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