I Me Mine

I ME MINE is a Beatles song, writ­ten and sung by George Har­rison on the Let It Be album. It is also a way to de­scribe what hap­pened in Cali­fornia when Ba­rack Obama was elected pre­si­dent of the United States.

California's hate-filled anti-gay law gets spe­cial at­ten­tion be­cause gay peo­ple were already being mar­ried there. Texas did a pre­emptive strike on the sub­ject: pas­sing anti-gay laws on mar­riage be­fore any­body here had pro­posed. Mar­riage is so shaky here that same-gender people tying the knot would render opposite-gender mar­riage to shambles.

Little girl: "Johnny, are you the opposite sex? Or am I?"
K-Mart Photography radio commercial, 1970s

Arkansas and Florida were just as god­less and hate­ful in crea­ting mar­riage apart­heid in their states. Apart­heid: we can have it, but you can't.

Gay people were out-gunned, or so I'm told. They were bet­ter organized. The hate groups — such as the Ro­man Catholic Church — jumped in to do­nate a bunch of hate-money into the state.

Mormons added $20-million because mar­riage is a sacred institu­tion be­tween a man and a dozen or so women. I think it is very sad for the Mor­mons to do that. In the ear­ly 1980s, I worked for Bonee­ville, broad­casting com­pany owned by the Mor­mon church. Listen­ing to any Bonneville radio sta­tion, you would nev­er know it was run by a right-wing church. They seemed to have a "Live and Let Live" at­ti­tude. At the time, Mormons didn't drink coffee, but they had free gour­met cof­fee for their employees. That at­titude has obviously changed, and they want to impose their stu­pid ideas about what should consti­tute a mar­riage on everyone.

If Mormons and Romans don't consider a same-gender couple to be a proper or valid union, they should have such a rule ... but for their own adherents.

I'm also told that exit polls showed most population groups broke about 50::50 on the Cali­fornia proposi­tion. The excep­tion is the black popu­lation, who were 70::30 against equal rights for gay people.

Mormons: I ME MINE, and you have to do like we do. If you get out of step, we will pass laws the dis­allow equal rights and equal treat­ment. (Note to Mitt: if you don't fix this, it will still be an issue in 2012.)

Roman Catholics: I ME MINE, and your church exper­ience — Sacra­ment of Matri­mony — must com­ply with our canons.

African Americans: I ME MINE. "We got our deal done, and we don't care (70%) about gay pe­ople."

For all them, I have to keep remind­ing my­self: Love God, love your­self, love your neigh­bor as your­self, love your ene­mies. Some days I just don't want to.

OBAMA! Yes we did.

Barack Obama: President-elect. The good guys won for a change!

It has been a zillion years since I was a pimply-faced high school kid dating a black guy with an activist mother. The fact that he was black was a bigger deal with my parents than the fact he was another guy. His mom dragged Tony and me along to an out-of-town protest/rally/march/shin-dig.

It was the mid-1960s. The speaker was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, and my folks were hopping mad that I wanted to go. But go I did, continuing my streak of bucking my dad's button-up lips, button-down shirts. His friends were all right-wing Republicans, while his only son was way out on the left where the busses don't run.

I'd love to tell you that I went to the rally for The Cause, but frankly it was because I was head-over-heels for Tony and wanted to spend every waking moment with him.

I had no idea who this King guy was, other than the TV news called him a trouble-maker. I also had no idea what hatred was until we were faced with state troopers with barking dogs, pulling their leashes like they wanted to tear us limb-from-limb.

Rev. King was the calmest one there. He told us not to do anything other than be peaceful and walk together.

I wanted to pee in my pants. Tony and his mother seemed afraid but not as much as me.

That was my first -- but not my last -- chance to fight for equal rights for racial minorities. It wasn't my Number One thing: I had Vietnam to protest and Nixon to annoy. I had Gay Lib, too... which was not a trivial undertaking in the 60s in Texas.

Had Rev. King not been killed, he could still be alive today. I like to think that he would not be surprised to see Barack Obama elected because with somebody like Rev. King around, I'm convinced we already would have had our first person of color in the White House.

Anyway, Mr. Obama's election isn't the REAL news. The actual Big Deal is when we have a person of color eected and nobody notices.

Tony is dead now: AIDS. His mother is too: cancer. They didn't get to see the country come together, and they were of ages that makes this transition in power bitter-sweet for me personally. They didn't have the health care. Tony ended up into drugs and booze and one-night-stands. He didn't stand a chance. His mother did everything right, except get sick when she didn't have health insurance. I miss them both.

Of course, Tony would have been royally pissed that California passed that godless law making gay marriage illegal. He (and I think his mother too) would have been ready to go take on the bigoted goof-balls who decided a minority group like gays and lesbians shouldn't have equal rights.

It was sheer bigotry (or an insistence on feeling superior to another groups) that has told thousands of legally married couples that they are no longer married. They are single and "living in sin."


One TV report said the California law passed because African-Americans voted in unprecedented numbers. They went to vote so they could vote for Barack Obama. Good for them. Hurray for the good guys: we won finally.

But, excuse me? The black community thinks being gay is wrong? It is for crackers like me?

It is a promiscuous lifestyle for some, because gay people are never given society's blessing to be monogamous. Tony would have settled down if society had told him he was permitted to do that. But I know what Tony would be screaming today... and I don't like putting those kinds of words in ink.

Just this simple: gay people in California fought for the guy whose supporters yanked their most basic civil right away. Gay people in California are now staring at fellow citizens. I'm embarrassed for those fellow citizens and the shame they should be feeling.

I am so very happy that Barack Obama won the election. The good guys won.

Next time, do the good guys think it might be possible to win without pissing all over the rights of others?