The people have spoken
By Manny Casillas | Editorial Assistant
The 2008 presidential election has come to an end with Barack Obama becoming our 44th commander-in-chief. It is an outcome that has many celebrating loudly and proudly.
Sadly, in California, the Obama victory is bittersweet.
Just hours after announcing Obama as the winner, it was announced that California voters passed Proposition 8, which would amend the California state constitution to ban gay marriage and civil unions. This came just months after California’s supreme court ruled to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians in that state.
It is a major blow to gay rights, it is a sad day to be a homosexual in this country who only desires the same equal rights that all Americans are entitled to.
No doubt about it, this has been an election year full of unprecedented twists and turns, from Obama winning the Iowa caucus to the defeat of Hilary Clinton to Gov. Sarah Palin making a splash onto the political scene.
For me, the biggest surprise came just a few hours after Obama’s victory, roughly at 2 a.m., when it was announced Obama had narrowly won the state of Indiana. For the first time since the election of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, The Hoosier State voted Democrat, one of the final states to be tallied. Back in 2004, Bush won the state by 20 points, but from the moment the polls closed in Indiana it was too early to call.
Not long ago, Indiana had its own obstacle to overcome in the fight for gay rights, when it came time for the Indiana House Rules Committee to vote on SJR-7, championed by Advance America’s Eric Miller.
The measure went to a vote and was defeated. Truthfully, the defeat was due to the concern that prominent Indiana businesses like Eli Lilly and Emmis Communications expressed over potential employee loss, but a victory is a victory.
It’s ironic to me that a state so reviled by much of America for its supposed debauched liberalism just amended its constitution to ban same-sex marriage, while our own state of Indiana, which is reputed to be fiercely conservative, managed to stave off such a similar measure.
These days Indiana is full of surprises. I’ve only lived here for eight full years now, originally from Chicago, and it was this state and this city, in which I came of age and witnessed the last eight years of history. I may not be crazy about Indiana’s stance in certain areas, such as gay rights, but when SJR-7 was defeated I was ecstatic. I didn’t feel as if I had been living in an adamantly backward state after all.
I am still thrilled beyond belief over Obama’s victory, but as a gay man I feel for many of the happy couples who today have just been told: “It’s over.”
The fight continues, and now that Indiana has shown that it can shake things up a little, perhaps it will be the Hoosier State that starts setting the example for equality and progress.
