I am SO bitter.

Since we moved recently, Mr. W called the county registrar-recorder last week to see where we’re supposed to vote. Would I be voting in my hometown, where I was previously registered? Or had my changing my address with the Department of Motor Vehicles effectively changed my voting place to our new city? Turned out, I was to vote at neither location. I’m not allowed to participate in this election AT ALL.

Mr. W gave his date of birth and name, and was told he is still registered to vote in his old city, but when they looked me up, they said that because I had not voted the last few years, I was “purged out of the system.” What?! What does that mean?! It means I’ve been involuntarily, automatically un-registered. Well, how do we reverse that so that I could vote?, Mr. W asked them. It’s too late. “She won’t be voting in this election,” they told him.

When he called me at work last week to tell me this, I was dumbfounded. “You didn’t vote the last few years?” he asked me.
“Why would I vote the last few years? There was no presidential election!”

I can not believe that I am alive during this amazing ground-breaking pivotal election, which will be recorded in the history books forever as the first presidential race in which a black man AND a woman were the front runners for the Democratic party, and a black man is the Democratic candidate, and a woman is the Republican vice presidency candidate, Barack Obama is taking the country by storm (especially in my home state of California) not because he’s black, but because (and I truly believe this) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream has finally solidified into reality and this educated innovative respectable man, who just happens to be black, is being judged and taken seriously by this country based on the content of his character, and not by the color of his skin. I am economically conservative, but I cheer the progress of this country on in its ability and eagerness to accept and WANT Barack Obama as its leader.

Sure, there are bigots. Sure, there are racists spewing blood and chanting bloody murder right now, but they are the minority. I think in LARGE part, this country has become pretty colorblind. But speaking of small-minded idiots, I also REALLY wanted to participate in this election to vote NO on Proposition 8, which bans gay marriages. Our town, it turns out, is tightly conservative. For weeks on end, people have stood on street corners during rush hours holding “Vote YES on Prop 8” signs. “Prop 8 for Religious Freedom.” “Proposition 8 Supports Families.” They have TICKED ME OFF beyond reason. All the cars honking their support driving by these sign holders, lots of whom have pulled their young CHILDREN out of school to wave these signs with their prejudiced parents on corners, have caused me to rave at least 3 minutes straight every time we drive by them on the way to and from work. Most of these people, come to find out, were volunteers from a very large local church. Mr. W one day offered, “Do you want me to print out some signs for you that you can post up?”
“YEAH, how about BIGOTRY IS UNGODLY?”
Cuz here’s my view on it. Who the hell are YOU to judge what other people do with their lives? Who are YOU to say you get to dictate what’s right for everyone else? That’s like saying, “I don’t like bananas. I don’t eat bananas. And because of that, I’m going to pass a law that NOBODY gets to eat bananas anymore, either. A ban on bananas!” What the hell. Maybe some people only HAVE bananas to eat. Maybe some people LIKE bananas. Maybe some people are allergic to apples. If you don’t like bananas, DON’T EAT THEM. That’s it. There was a floater who came by my courtroom the other week and decided to sit down, make herself at home, and spew all sorts of one-sided uninformed garbage at my courtroom assistant, and one of the things she raved about was supporting Proposition 8. “If that’s what you choose to do [be in a same-sex relationship], that’s what you choose to do, but don’t try to change the Constitution to say it’s correct. It isn’t.” That’s an exact quote cuz I wrote it down immediately. She also insists that Prop 8 doesn’t ban gay marriage, it just doesn’t allow the Constitution to change the definition of “marriage” as “being between a man and a woman.” “They can still get married or whatever they do,” she said. She’s WRONG. Even Prop 8’s own radio ads say that it “eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry.” And to same-sex couples, a “commitment ceremony” not legally recognized by the state is NOT the same thing as getting married. And what are they gonna micromanage next? Are they gonna say that they don’t want different races to intermarry? That only people within 5 years of each others’ ages will be allowed to marry? What the hell does someone else’s same-sex marriage have to do with Prop 8 people? As for the supposed child impact about how same-sex marriage destroys family units, what proof is there that same-sex couples are unable to provide the same nourishing, loving home environment for children? What makes parents flawless just because they’re dual-gender? Do they think that if a lesbian couple raises a boy that he will have zero access to other men in the world and hence will miss out on influence of adult men? PLEASE. And mandatory school teaching about same-sex marriages? WHOT the FOCK? I’ve asked everybody and nobody was taught marriage in school that I’ve talked to. And if a child in a classroom asks a teacher about same-sex marriages, that teacher SHOULD be able to explain, without being lynched by religious paranoid parents, that some people emotionally lean toward and fall in love with people of their own gender. It’s a REALITY. It HAPPENS. It has ALWAYS happened throughout history. It happens in BONOBOS MONKEYS, our closest primates. Sticking your heads in the sand and trying to force your own kids’ heads in the sand does not change the fact that the world is made up of DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

Because this post has gone on for way longer than I thought, I’m gonna not touch on any other issues. That, and I feel a little better now. But I am still EXCEEDINGLY SALTY that in the future when some kid, maybe even my own kid, asks me how I voted in that one historical election where [the first black man became president] or [the first woman became president cuz she was the first female vice president when the man who did win presidency died of old age] and they tried to do away with fundamental civil rights to marry, I’d have to say, “I didn’t vote.”

I sat here after work watching Mr. W vote.

My Canadian cousin Mark text messaged me right then, “Did you vote?” (The world’s watching us.) I had to tell him the same thing I told the two volunteers giving out “I voted!” stickers when they offered me a sticker asking the same question. “I didn’t vote.” The volunteers actually physically drew away from me and their “Ohh” involuntarily carried a scornful/disgusted tone as they looked at me being unAmerican.

Now I know how my 10-year-old godson Evan feels every year his mother, Gym Trainee, takes him with her to vote. He’s been ranting for years about how age-discriminatory it is that children are not allowed to vote. Each year as he stands in the waiting area watching grownups vote, waiting for his mother and grandmother, he sulks. One year he tried to follow his mom into the voting booth. She told him to stay in the designated waiting area, he was not allowed to follow her in. “But you can’t HEAR my opinions from THERE!” he’d complained.

We’ll both be sulking this year, Evan.