Post-Election Stress

It was historic.
Obama is inspiring.
America is poised to rebuild its image worldwide.
We are optimistic for great change.
The excitement is still everywhere...

But on a separate battleground, the principles of equality that stand as the cornerstone of our nation have been shaken. Living in the 21st century, I take pride in the knowledge that discrimination has become an evil of the past, or at the very least, the current social taboo. Our society makes an effort to look beyond race, sex, age, etc. because to allow those factors alone to deny opportunities is wrong. It gets complicated to be sure, but parity is our living creed.

So why does California now stand with discriminatory language written into its Constitution? Why is a group of people being singled out under the law? The attempt (and sadly, success) to amend the Constitution so that something, by default, was no longer unconstitutional is frightening. Also puzzling are arguments that refer to religious texts as authority, to which I ask what happened to the separation of church and state?

But civil rights movements achieve the greater success because their goals are undeniably just. Women's suffrage is so fundamentally ingrained among our generation. "Separate but equal" was an egregious policy that we cannot imagine being implemented today. And how many of us today would frown upon an interracial marriage? It requires time for the landscape of the human consciousness to change. Time, however, is a passive agent. People make the difference. So when 5 million Californians voted against injustice, their voices reflected not a defeat but a growing passion for equality. That is what makes me proud, and that is what still excites me.

GObama! Go California! Go humanity!