I just think it's totally undemocratic that outside groups can influence the elections in another state. If you don't live in a state, you have no business funding its elections. Period.

So, you loss the right to get married in California. It's an important right to fight for, especially since California HAS ALL THE OTHER DAMN RIGHTS MANY OF US DON'T. Gee. There is a point when my sympathy is taxed to the limit. LGBT people are still getting FIRED from their jobs here in Georgia and many other states for just being who we are. Please. Forgive me if I don't shed a tear for your "loss."

To Monica,

Your tears are not what's needed, your solidarity with your gay brothers and sisters is what is needed. Right to marry is not about right to marry don't you understand that? It's about being second-class citizens, about the ability to terminate someone's employment JUST BECAUSE THEY"RE GAY. It's about civil rights. Rights we already have, but are being denied us by the people who have and enjoy them daily. And it's only because we're gay.

No,I won't forgive you Monica,until you acknowledge it's not about sympathy, and it's not about who has what. It's about equality and being able to live in the world as though we matter. We shouldn't be denied anything because of who we love, but those who profess to be "Christians" would do that very thing in the name of their God.

And you'd add insult to injury by betraying your gay brothers and sisters by joining them. Shame on you.

To all who think they understand my point of view, you don't. I've been in the advocacy "business" for over a decade, long enough to see gay and lesbians turn their backs on my trans brothers and sisters more times then I can count. Marriage equality has always been the knife that has always been thrust in our backs, in place of fighting for hate crimes legislation and employment protection.

In 2004, the entire GL "upper management," spent time away for other issues that had a chance of passing to fight marriage equality. It set us back years on many other issues. On Feb 14, 2004, I stood on the steps of the Georgia State Capital Building and gave a passionate speech about the GA State Assembly working on putting a ban on same sex marriage in the state constitution. I lobbied against it and contributed a lot of time fighting it.

I also came up with a plan of fighting this amendment that was a radical idea, which would have thrown the legislators into a tissy and took a lot of time away from the dileration, but the head of Georgia Equality wouldn't listen to me. It easily passed the State assembly and then got 76% of the vote in November. But, GA is still one of a few states in the country with NO hate crimes legislation, and it has no ENDA for LGBT people and nothing else for us.

Meanwhile, for a whole year, I kept seeing stories of the Govenator signing bill after bill giving various protection to LGBT Californians. Georgia still has squat. And, now I see this in CA?

I have given my support for the defeat of these bills. I have given my money for the defeat of these bills. I have given my time and now my blog space on these issues. I have taken time and money away from the things I have been working on directly - transgender veterans issues - to fight the discrimination against people who want marriage equality.

I have yet to see anyone trying to support equal rights in the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. I have yet to see anyone but transgender veterans support the issues facing them. I have yet to see HRC support fully inclusive ENDA. And yet, I get chastised for thinking that Californians are acting too self-centered. You spend a whole damn decade being ignored and discarded by those who are suppose to be your friends and those YOU have supported and see how it feels. If people don't like my attitude, then TS, and that doesn't stand for "transsexual."

Jadi-- you make a really important point about the LDS position. It's really not that they care about marriage being the sacred union between one man and one woman and upholding the traditional archetype of the nuclear family. What gay marriage potentially does, in stark contrast to polygamous marriage, is mix up the proper gender roles of men and women in relation to one another. While there is certainly queer support for polyamorous relationships, the mormon tradition is deeply, deeply patriarchal in a way that is antithetical to the LGBT movement.

I think Monica's frustrations actually underscore many of the political weaknesses in the LGBT movement that this week has revealed. By focusing so whole-heartedly on marriage, which only directly benefits a relatively narrow slice of the LGBT population, we have neglected opportunities to cultivate a broader-based, geographically-, racially-, and economically-diverse coaltion that might allow us to stand up effectively to christian conservatives. It is certainly tempting to seek every opportunity to obtain the undeniable symbolic benefit of marriage equality, this past week has shown that there are serious flaws in building a social movement around the interests of mostly rich, white gays and lesbians in liberal parts of the country. While unlike Monica, I certainly did shed a tear over the loss on Prop 8 (and initiatives in FL, AZ, and AR), my tears came from the realization that we have so much farther to go.

As for marching in the streets: It's about goddamned time.

While I agree that we should all work as hard as possible, I think it was a shame that such a disproportionate amount of lgbt resources were diverted away from places like Arkansas, where many LGBT couples have now been essentially foreclosed from raising children. If there needs to be prioritization of resources, we should probably put material benefits (adoption, property rights, job security) over symbolic ones, of course balanced against the uphill battle faced in each case. Prop 8, on both sides, was a national political campaign, and we are much more likely to win when our friends in conservative areas of America feel like there is something in it for them.

Marching in the street? Really? For marriage?

Well, this is starting to look like an actual civil rights movement.