Proposition “Next You’ll Want to Marry Two Poodles and a Thermos”

Proposition 8 passed.


Typed up there on the blog page, those words might not look like much.

But these very words should strike horror into the minds and souls of enlightened liberals everywhere.

But nowhere more so than in California.

The irony is rich, indeed.

Think of it. California, the home of the avocado-wheat germ smoothie and inventor of The Pill! California, with its drive-in churches, pesticide laws dating to 1901, and mystical crystal skulls. California! Where pot is legal and a car must have a driver if it is traveling at more than 60 mph! (One of those is true, the other is false. Can you guess? Or are you going to peek to see just what those wacky Californians are up to this time?)

So, anyway, California - the state that’s game for almost anything - is no longer, it seems, game for making marriage legal between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. And just one of each, here…we’re not talking about the entire starting line-up of the Dodgers marrying each other.

Now, sure, plenty of states will tell you that it’s just weird for, say, a woman and a woman to want to marry and to equally benefit from all of the securities, protections, and cost-savings afforded married heterosexual couples. In fact, most states will tell you that.

But California?

C’mon, California. I didn’t think that you, too, would be sauntering around the annual state get-together in a pair of flip-flops and a long skirt with a glass of zinfandel in one hand while making scare quotes with the other hand when talking about gay marriage to Arkansas.


Dude? What’s up with that? Like, totally?


Now, over the past few days, I’ve been reading stuff here and there from different people in different corners all giving their say-so and what-for regarding how this could have happened in a state that voted-in Obama as they were voting out equal rights, and frankly, I don’t know what to think. I’m just as likely to think it was all the ill consequences of a bad batch of wheat grass juice as anything else.

(Have I used all the overused California stereotypes yet? Okay, I’ll stop.)

Well - just speaking for me personally - I think it stinks that Proposition 8 passed.

I don’t know the hearts and minds of every single voter who voted “yes” to pass the ban, or whether Proposition 8’s defeat would have made it less likely in the future that any one person would have the shit beat out of him or her because they dared to fall in love with a person of the same sex. The same as I don’t fool myself into thinking that our country’s electing a black president is suddenly going to make little girls of any race love black doll babies as much as white doll babies.


But it’s a start.

Or rather, it would have been a start.

Ellen DeGeneres can only take the understanding and acceptance so far.

Anyway….

During the aftermath of discussion and debate and blaming everyone from the Democrats to the Gay and Lesbian community to the black community to Obama himself - everyone, it seems, except Ru Paul and Elton John - for just not trying hard enough to reach out and change the hearts and minds of California's bigots of all ilk on this gay marriage thing, I got to thinking. Cause I think a lot. Like, constantly.

And what I was thinking was this:

Where the hell was all this talk of reaching out when it came to small town, rural Pennsylvania and our beloved bigots?

Oh no, when it came to rural small town Pennsylvania and our bitter god-clingin’, rifle-totin’ voters who were supposedly aiming to suck the wind out of the Democrat's campaign what with our one issue votin’ and our gay-hatin’ and our wholesale fear of the letter “g”, those fancy-pants big city Democrats were all “Meh. We don’t really need small town Pennsylvania. Let John McCain have them. We’ve got the urban centers and Oprah Winfrey. Outreach, outsmeach. And we don’t even care that outsmeach isn’t a word, that’s how much we couldn't care less about rural small town Pennsylvania.”

Ouch, big city smarty pants Democrats! Ouch!

You really know how to hurt a hillbilly even while trying to gain downhome folk-cred by listening to our bluegrass music on your college radio stations with their mumbling, disaffected DJs.


Well, after thinking about this long and hard, I realized that I had two choices:

1) I could bitch and complain about being just another Appalachian coal miner’s granddaughter getting the shaft, or

2) I could do something about it.

Of course, I chose first to bitch and complain. Because I’m a pill like that.

However, after a good long jumping around and ranting and raving, I’m deciding to do something about it. And what I’m going to do is this.

Ready?

I’m going to start my own Rural Small Town Pennsylvania Gay and Lesbian Outreach...Thingy.


That’s right. I’m going to venture into the bingo halls and bars and boilo parties and churches and bars and then the other bar down the block and then the after-hours bar that the township cops all know about but let slide because they drink there too on their nights off, and I’m going to talk to people and listen to people and educate people and hand out pamphlets and work really hard to get out the yonko vote for gay lesbian equal rights. I will have to, of course, drink a lot of beers and play a lot of bingo. But I won’t be daunted or discouraged! I’ve worked all my life for this moment; this moment when all my experience at being smart and obnoxious and drunk can be used to turn hearts and minds and the course of events!

Yup. All that.

Now, you might be thinking about this and scratching your head and wondering something like, “Uh…okay. But aren’t you forgetting one thing, Madame Halushki? Aren’t you forgetting that you aren’t, in fact, a lesbian? Where’s your street cred, missy?”

Valid point. I’m glad you asked.

Yes, it’s true, I’m not what you’d technically call a lesbian: I am, after all, married to a man, and I do think George Clooney is kind of hunky. However, I think that except for the part about my not being overwhelmingly attracted to women in an “I can think of nothing more wonderful than intimately dealing with not one but two periods every 28-30 days” way, I have enough gay sway to prove a formidable warrior in this cause. Like so:

1. I once spent a summer living in a house full of lesbian rugby players. I was, I think, the mascot. At least they never encouraged me to play rugby, and for that my spine is eternally thankful. For, along with being a wiener girl, I am also a weenie girl.

2. I once endured listening to an entire Ferron album on a drive from Lancaster to Philadelphia.

3. I know who Mo and Sydney are.

4. When I was 12 years old, I had a crush on Jodie Foster in Candleshoe.

5. A gay friend once ate $12.00 worth of brie that I had just bought for a party and I didn’t kick him in the shins.

6. When I was 17 years old, I rode a bus three hours to New York City with my friend so she could watch the movie Entres Nous. I fell asleep in the theater, but she says the movie was good.

7. I adore pink triangles and the color purple.

8. I danced with Grace Jones in a Philly nightclub.

9. I own a copy of Marilyn Hacker’s Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons.

10. I think that Madonna kissing Britney and Christina was just plain goofy.


So! That about sums up my credentials. Pretty good for a straight girl, eh?

Okay...not so much. But I'm a tryin'!

Now we just need a catchy acronymy moniker, and we’ll be on our way!

The Schuylkill County Outreach to Religious Extremists.

SCORE!

No?

How about Gay Lesbian Out Reach to Yonkos? GLORY? Hmmmm…still not setting the right tone?

Well, I’ll leave the naming to the PR people for now. If you have your own suggestion, I’m all ears.

As of now, me and my Gay Lesbian task force are ready to ride our ponies - Hope, Change, and Starhawk - into rural, small town hicksville to meet and greet with the locals and let them know that folks who like folks of the same sex are still just folks the same as they are.

(One of us works undercover at Mrs. T's Pierogies factory
and her identity must be kept secret.)

Wish us well! Do unto others! Join the Yonko Enlightenment...Thingy!