Progressive Michigan?

Ever since I have moved back to the Midwest, I have been pining for the general liberal lean of the West Coast. Out there, having a nose piercing didn't raise the eyebrows of managers interviewing me for a job, neighbors of every color, culture, gender, religion and orientation greeted me at the food co-op. The weather is better in the winter out there and everyone seems to take it a little more easy and be a little more inclusive.

I am absolutely stunned that California's preposterous Proposition 8 managed to pass. I'm so very heartbroken. I sigh as gay rights takes another step backward into the shadows and hides from the bigotry of the religious right. Why in the world would someone put the rights of a minority to the vote of a majority? Can you imagine what would have happened if segregation was put on the ballot in the southern states? That would have been insane and unjust. Just like Prop 8 was insane and unjust.

It reminds me of a wonderful bumper sticker I saw years ago while driving around Denver. Denver and it's surrounding towns are home to some of the largest evangelical groups in the country, including Focus On The Family. While zooming through in I-70, I saw a red minivan with a bumper sticker that read "Focus on your own damn family". I thought that was perfect. Groups like F.O.F. tend to be far more concerned with what's going on in other people's reproductive organs, relationships and spiritual lives when they need to start minding their own damn business. I would never tell any evangelical that their religion is backward thinking bullshit and they can kindly stay the hell out of my world.

I heard that Prop 8 and others of it's ilk are there to "protect marriage". What does marriage need protection from? Perhaps the 60% of straight folks who seem to consistently fuck them up and end up divorced. How does a gay couple getting married make a straight couple any less married? How is the "threatened" straight, married couple even going to know that a gay couple has gotten married? Would there have been email blasts announcing all the gay weddings that happen each week and paranoid straight folks can sign up for the gay wedding newsletter over which to fret and pray? My apologies for being so sarcastic and dramatic, stupidity often brings that out in me.

Michigan, on the other hand, usually that bastion of bringing up the rear managed to pass a state wide medical marijuana proposition as well one allowing stem cell research. Go Team Mitten State! Both of these will be very good for the states economy which has been in recession for about 3-4 years. What's happening to the rest of the USA right now is what has been going on around here for some time. I'm really excited to see how this changes the local economical landscape in a state that has had it's financial backbone staked in noting but automotive for the last 60 years. Winds of change are blowing through the Great Lakes State and it's pretty exciting around here.