Amidst the general euphoria accompanying the election of our new president (yes!) there was oh so much sadness in and around the gay community. Three states decided on Nov. 4 that same-sex marriage should not be acknowledged, and one made it impossible for gay people to adopt. And BTW, did you know that supporters of these amendments were under direct orders from God? In California, Prop 8 was largely subsidized (more than $15 million) by Mormon church members responding to a call from the LDS heirarchy, and more than a million dollars came from that lovely Catholic fraternity, the Knights of Columbus.

Somehow, despite making a clearly progressive choice for Obama, enough of those voters got freaked out in the voting booth to help naysayers win a majority. It could have been the ads threatening that homosexuality would be taught in schools... as if that's where gay kids figure out they're gay.

This reminds me of the parents of a boy in my daughter's high school. A guest educator was going to be presenting a sex ed talk, and there was such a fuss that she did a sample session for parents. Despite her lecture being both tasteful and informative (not to mention entertaining), some parents insisted their children not attend. And to nobody's surprise, the son of the most outspoken and obnoxious of these was overheard in the movie line later that week making obscene comments about a girl. Despite his parents' best efforts, they just couldn't stop his hormones. And just as high school kids will always find out about sex, gay kids are always going to figure out their preferences eventually, and hopefully without too much heartache.

What Prop 8 in California and the two amendments in Florida and Arizona do is to actually cause heartache. They allow a majority to deprive a minority of their constitutional rights. Marriage is a legal institution, not a moral one, and we simply do not have the right to make moral decisions for other people (and believe me, if we did, I'd be tempted to make a few myself, and they wouldn't please the Mormons or the Catholics). Whether or not you choose a same-sex partner in your own life (and the California judge whose May 2008 ruling was overturned was as straight as an arrow), nobody has the right to make that decision for someone else.

As for not being able to adopt children in Arkansas, who benefits from that? Over the past five years, nearly 1,000 Arkansas children reached the age of 18 and left the system without ever having been adopted into a permanent home. So let's see: gay parents or no parents, what do you choose?

The demonstrations to overturn these amendments are continuing, but they never should have been on the ballot. Just as anti-miscegenation laws were thrown out in the last century, making it possible for our president-elect to be born to a mixed-race couple, we need to stop pretending that some people are less equal than others because of their sexuality. Who knows, a same-sex couple could right now be raising the president we'll elect in 2040, and we have no idea if she'll be gay.

Photo: Bob Bobster