So the “day after” was one of mixed emotions for me.

Of course I was jubilant over Obama’s victory: as someone who was born into a segregated southern society in 1963, who started his education in a segregated school in 1969, who saw his brother have to move North because it wasn’t safe for him to live in our town with his African-American wife after they married in 1971, I marvel at this historical moment.  But as a gay man I felt completely deflated to see California vote to deny marriage equality to same sex couples.  It feels odd to see other progressives so jubilant, seemingly oblivious to the sadness we LGBT people feel.

Barack’s victory shows us how far we have come; Proposition 8’s passage shows us how very far we still have to go.

Kevin Says... | 2 Comments »

My friend Angie Siecker asked me to come down to Philly and help out with the very very last event of the 2008 Presidential election, an 11 pm Monday night rally with Senator Biden in south Philly.

A year ago at this time I was in Iowa volunteering for john Edwards.  It feels like a lifetime ago. This election has been a marathon that has consumed much of my life for the past 18 months, since I first agreed in May 2007 to host a fundraiser for Senator Edwards.  I felt an odd sense of sadness tonight, realizing it is almost over.

The central memory I will take away from this, my last event, tonight was the energy and enthusiasm of the young people who attended.  Their idealism and the purity of their belief shone through, something I first saw back in Iowa a year ago and saw again tonight on Philadelphia, saw just as clearly as I saw my breath when I exhaled into the crisp air of this late fall evening.

I don’t know exactly what will happen tomorrow: while the polls say Obama’s victory is all but certain, I’ve lived through one stolen election in 2000 and refuse to count my chickens before they hatch.  But of the many many reasons I want Senator Obama to win, the one uppermost in my mind right now is the young people I saw tonight who, for the first time in their lives, have been inspired by him to believe that meaningful change, change that truly makes us a nation where there is “liberty and justice for all,” is possible.  I hope we don’t let them down.

Kevin Says... | 1 Comment »