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What if there were a ballot measure that would amend your state's constitution so that only white couples could get married? Or only people of the same racial background could marry each other? Or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints could not get legally married?

Would you vote for it?

I still cannot fathom why we can even put civil rights to a vote. If you were to put desegregation of public schools to a vote back in the fifties and sixties, do you think it would have passed? Or even if you were to put those laws that outlawed biracial marriage to a vote, it's quite possible some of those laws would remain. Maybe even slavery would have withstood a vote to abolish it. In fact, I'd be willing to bet it could have, because we had to fight a war with each other to abolish it.

Letting people vote on whether or not gay people deserve the same damn rights as heterosexuals is just as ridiculous as letting people vote on whether or not black people should have the same rights as white people. It's a forgone conclusion: of course black people deserve the same rights as white people, no matter what a majority of voters would say.

Which is why it really makes me sad that so many black and Hispanic voters supported Proposition Eight. I would never, ever vote for anything that would deny them the rights that white people enjoy. I would be just as incensed if Proposition Eight denied black couples the right to legal marriage. Because black people are no better or worse than white people. Gay people are no better or worse than straight people. We are all equal. Everyone says we proved that by electing a black President, but Proposition Eight says different.

The way things are in this country right now, we are not all equal.

But I have hope that President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama will help us change all that. I freaked right out when he actually stood up and recognized that gay people exist in this country in his acceptance speech. I've never heard any politician do that in that manner. And no one would have even given it a second thought if he hadn't. For the first time, a man we elected to lead our country has stood up and said, "I hear you too, homos."

I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart.