There's a guy I know named Omar who's been one of my best friends since we were both around 16.
He's been beside me through some of the worst times in my life, providing a kind of unwavering moral support and unconditional love that really can't be done justice with something as mundane as a well-placed word or two. He's more like a brother to me than a friend and I, quite honestly, would go to the ends of the earth for him if he required it. We've always championed each other and I have no doubt that we always will. Our friendship is one of the most important, and certainly the most enduring, things in each of our lives.
If Omar called me tomorrow morning and told me that he'd found somebody he wanted to share the rest of his life with and was planning to get married, I'd congratulate him, send a big hug his way, and ask him where he wanted me to be and when he wanted me to be there. There's no way in hell I'd miss his wedding.
The thing is, I don't have to worry about that.
That's because Omar can't get married -- at least not officially -- because he's gay.
Last week, while America was celebrating what feels, even now, like a rebirth and a restatement of purpose in the wake of the election that will put Barack Obama in the White House, millions in California were reeling from an election day shock -- a decision at the polls that inexplicably aims to undo a very real "march of freedom" within this country and cement the status of gay Americans as second-class citizens.
California's Proposition 8 was unlike anything I'd seen in my lifetime: a clever end-run around the law which attempted to actually take away the rights of a specific segment of the population -- rights that had previously been granted by the California Supreme Court. It was anathema to everything America purports to stand for -- justice and equality for all, without exception -- and yet it passed handily and did so in one of the most progressive states in the country.
It was, it is, a national embarrassment -- and one that never should've been allowed to happen in the first place.
It's true we live in a democracy and that each of us has a say in determining our leaders and the manner in which they govern, but there are some decisions that should be beyond the whim of the electorate -- out of reach of the most ignorant, timid or demagogic within our ranks. There's a reason our court system is charged with interpreting the Constitution and enforcing its tenets: We pay those entrusted with this awesome responsibility to be a little wiser than the rest of us -- to literally lay down the law when no one else can, or will.
Some things aren't up for debate in this country.
Our fundamental freedoms cannot be put to a vote.
Not here -- not in America.
There should be no doubt that eventually we'll look back on this disgraceful moment in our history the way we now regard segregation, pre-suffrage, or the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II: with shame, sadness, and a host of unanswerable questions as to what we might possibly have been thinking. We know this because, as much as those who stand against it will hate to hear this, legal gay marriage in the United States is an inevitability. We know this because of the basic nature of freedom: it expands.
Freedom expands.
It will not be contained -- and it most certainly will not be restricted once it's already been allowed to flourish. Isn't this the very principle that's guided our foreign policy for years? Are we so blind or so unforgivably hypocritical that we can't recognize when the truth of that ideal is staring us right in the face?
The genie is out of the bottle.
There's no putting it back in, and it was inexcusable that we sought to restrain it in the first place. That's not what this country is about.
My friend Omar, like all Americans, should have the right to marry anyone he wants -- to live his life however he chooses.
And not you, nor I, nor anyone else has the right to take those rights away from him.
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