disclaimer: i wasn't going to make this a political blog and that is still my intention. this however, is going to be a political post. the opinions of this blog are unabashedly liberal. if that bothers you, i'm sorry, but i still encourage you to read it.
yesterday morning, i was in a mood.
we had been waiting for the supreme court to rule on DOMA and Prop 8 and not only had they not, but they had essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act, disenfranchising minority voters in the very places that had tried so hard to keep them from voting not 7 months ago. so i was pissed.
and i was pissed that very few people seemed to care. and i said something snarky on facebook about how i wished that even half the people who had so gleefully been coming up with butter puns about paula deen days before cared that discrimination was just made law by the supreme court.
and i was scared about what that meant for the marriage cases coming up.
and then, through social media, i heard about wendy davis. and my day totally changed.
(continue reading after the jump...)
wendy davis, for anyone who is not up to speed (and really, you should google this and find out more about it) is the democratic state senator from ft. worth who was committed to filibustering for 13 hours against one of those super aggressive and unnecessary abortion bills that tries to undo a 40 year old constitutional right.
i'm not going to take this opportunity to defend abortion because it's not an argument i wish to have. but i will say this. there is a special brand of outrage that comes from watching group after group of men dictating me what i can and cannot do with my own body. i am so tired of it.
turns out, wendy davis was tired of it too and decided to stop it.
shortly after i started the livestream, another senator said she had gotten off topic and there was a very long pause while they conferred and ultimately ruled that she was off topic and the filibuster would be over (they were desperate to get her to stop). with 2 hours to go, she was silenced. so the other democratic senators stood up and started trying to overturn the ruling and then when republicans tried to shut that down, they tried to overturn THAT. they tried to stall with "parliamentary inquiries" and at one point, the senator who tried to overturn the original ruling, tried to filibuster on his own.
finally, the exasperated republican chair, realizing that he was running out of time, tried to force a vote with about 11 minutes to go. and that is when the most amazing thing i have ever seen in politics happened. the crowd, who had had a couple of outbursts, started chanting, yelling, clapping, making as much noise as they could so that the roll call could not be heard, it had to be suspended.
when their elected officials tried and failed, the people filibustered injustice.
i don't think i will ever forget it for as long as i live. people, men and women of all ages, had finally had enough and they were literally taking things into their own hands. it was the most direct effect on law-making they could have and they were not going to be stopped. it was inspiring in a way that politics hardly ever is.
and the best part was, through social media, i was able to share this experience with friends near and far, updating each other when our own livestreams failed us, sharing tidbits we heard on other platforms. it was magic.
when i went to bed, the republicans were trying to claim that the roll call had in fact happened before the time ran out. this morning, i was thrilled to find out that their efforts had failed and the people won. i hate that they had to fight for it, but they did, and they won. i'm sure the republicans will try again, because that's what they do. but now they know what they are up against and they better come with better tactics next time.
this morning, as the world knows, the supreme court ruled the DOMA was unconstitutional. that our marriages are valid, that we are valid. my friends who have been married in california started their days very early by having their marriages validated and knowing that they would not be invalid or "in limbo" again.
i wish i could put into words what this moment means, but they fail me. i know how important this moment is, that if i ever got married, my marriage would be legal not only in my home state of washington and my other home state of new york, but in the eyes of my country. at least on the federal level, on this issue, there is no more second class citizenship. there is no "traditional marriage" and "gay marriage," there is only marriage. this is a huge, gigantic victory. i hate that we had to fight for that, but we did fight, and we won.
i am still angry about VRA. i understand that there are still battles to be won in the 37 states in which marriage is not legal for us. but we are a lot farther up the mountain now and the view is starting to look pretty sweet. and we will continue to fight for others to join us, and we will win.
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