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?