Back to Normal

Can America finally move away from using the LGBT community enough so that we can have a break-through in the freedom of loving LGBT couples in California to marry? Will we be able to stand up to those politicians, people and institutions that blame and use LGBT for their own political and personal gain? Speaking for myself I am getting tired of being blamed for natural disasters, acts of terrorism, even prison abuse at Abu Ghraib - let alone the sanctity of my neighbor's marriage. Of course the Republican Party and George Bush used gays brilliantly - playing us like a fiddle so they could rally their voters to the polls. Mr. Bush wanted Americans to be afraid of terrorists and he wanted us to be afraid of gay people - particularly the marrying kind.

Now with California moving to the forefront of the gay marriage battle once again with the recent State Supreme Court ruling on the right of gays and lesbians to marry, right wing conservative groups have already started to gather signatures for a ballot initiative to ban same sex marriage in the State of California. But the LGBT community and their supporters are gearing up for the fight. Groups like the Human Rights Campaign and Equality for All are organizing and fundraising to fight back against this divisive amendment. One thing you can do right now if you are a California voter is vow to vote no on Proposition 8 by signing Equality for All's Vow to Vote No pledge. Another part of our campaign for equality is to get as many people as we can married. The idea being somewhat like coming out in that when you put names to all the faces of all these happy gay and lesbian couples and when those couples are your neighbors and your co-workers it will be a lot harder for those that fear us to deny us our rights - in other words visibility is key. Even where I work - UCSF - they are organizing a campaign to get members of the campus community to submit their wedding photos to help raise awareness and funds!

Hi, all,

In an effort to defeat the anti-marriage amendment, a group of faculty, staff, and students are organizing a huge fundraising effort to mobilize our friends and colleagues on campus and in the larger Bay Area health care community.

We are putting together our own website for this effort and feel it would be more effective if it included photos of couples from our campus community who either have married or plan to marry (or who simply feel deeply affected by this issue).

If you are interested in including your photo, please send a copy to me at my personal email: Rob@Daroff.com. Please include your names as you would like them to appear, and the date of your wedding if applicable.

If you are interested in helping with the fundraising campaign, also feel free to contact me or join our group, the UCSF Protect Our Constitution Interest Group.

Thanks!

-Rob

Robert B. Daroff, Jr., MD
Clinical Professor

All of this reminds me of a column I read back in the 90's by Rob Morse in the San Francisco Chronicle. Mr. Morse a happily married heterosexual male got it! He was wise enough, mature enough, and astute enough to know that the happiness and health of his marriage did not depend nor was it diminished by gay and lesbian people being married. To wit "They should do some field work in San Francisco, where the only normal people on the average block are gay couples. I live in a bungalow that was occupied for 45 years by two women, easily the stablest relationship for a radius of three mile. On my old block the two gay men next door were quiet, loving neat and owned a successful small business. The other neighbors included a psychopathic heterosexual redneck couple who kept .357 Magnum stashed in their broken dishwasher, and a zoned-out-heterosexual hippie couple who grew pot in a house with so many grow-lights it glowed like something from "The X-Files." Everybody else was single and lonely." wrote Morse.

Now we have a chance to bring equality to gays and lesbian couples in California; helping create the social support necessary to help foster an environment that alleviates some of that singleness and loneliness that Morse wrote about back in the "Defense of Marriage" days. Come on America just think of all these gays and lesbians as a bunch of crazy teenagers who fell in love and got hitched. If you can't support them then at least leave them alone so they can try and build a stable and loving family for themselves. The world won't end, the sky won't crack open, American civilization won't end as we know it but maybe just maybe some of us will have a little more happiness and companionship in our journey through life.