Students in the UCLA class helping out with the project were asked to express their own sentiments and/or find articles that dealt with the Prop 8 debate from a variety of angles. The articles chosen, thus represent a wide breadth of opionions, and by no means represent the viewpoint of the UCLA ArtGlobal Health Center. Please feel free to comment on any post that you find on this blog.Sincerely,Robert GordonTHATH Blog Editor
I am a gay French student at UCLA. White and privileged, I have the chance to live my life “out”. I used to live for more than five years with a man. We are still in a civil union (we had a celebration at the Eleventh district of Paris city hall) even if we will have to separate soon. Gay people wanted marriage; they have now to experience divorce. These things happen.
My boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) and I went to San Francisco in August 2008. We were so excited as the same sex marriage law just passed in California. To be in SF at this time was an amazing chance as a member of the homosexual community. What a big step forward for gay and human rights in general. We went hand in hand to visit the San Francisco City Hall.
Below the huge Napoleon style dome, a couple was getting married in front of a judge. The judge was a women, the groom a chic lady and the couple: two men at least in their sixties. I am 24 as I told you. I cannot tell you how strong I felt seeing this. To be in a free country where you can live your love while people are killed or in jail because they are gay, it was an infinite emotion. The second cause of young’s suicide in France is because they live in the closet and they fear the reaction of their family or community.
I can proudly tell to my friends and family that I saw a gay couple being married in a city hall (the most official symbol of urban communities): twenty years after the ban of homosexuality from the mental disease list of the ONU; sixty years after the deportation of homosexuals by the Nazis, one hundred and twenty years after the incarceration of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality.
This couple had only one maid, but two secret grooms. My boyfriend and I remained silent, almost crying. So many people are dead for our rights, for the simple right to be married with the one you love. We left the city hall full of joy and pride of being born in a society that can accept every type of love. This was a moment as powerful as my own union in Paris.
Then, the Election Day came. An incredible man has been elected the same day I felt threaten and endangered by the human stupidity and cruelty. November 4th, my faith in a better society, an equal and clever one, collapsed. I thought of many sufferings and debates it will create in a few days. But I especially thought of the lovers in San Francisco. They got married in the same place where Harvey Milk died because he was proud or at least not ashamed to be gay. They waited maybe for forty years to see their love recognized by the country they live in. And after all this struggles, the pain, the permanent political fight, everything is destroyed.
(the Memorial dedicated to gay deported by the Nazis during WWII. Berlin, Germany)The proposition 8 is not a problem of religion, tradition, way of life or way to fuck; it is a question of annihilating human rights. Proposition 8 is a caterpillar in the human enlighten and a bomb threw in the social progress. It is not like impeaching a law to pass, it is simply destroying more than 16 000 marriages. It is saying no to open your mind and your heart. That is why I did not celebrated Barack Hussein Obama’s election. I was mourning the human capacity to really change. Democracy is a weapon against fear and fanatics, not an official way to demolish human beings, lives and loves.
Give the future generations a reason to be afraid and to hide … “yes we did it”.
this is why the TO HAVE AND TO HOLD project must be seen by everyone. This why we need everyone to make it exist, to make it our statement for bigots and close-minded human beings.
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