31 days later and I still don’t know how to say how sorry I am to those who had their hopes quashed by bigotry and hate. We will get there eventually but until then I apologize for how wrong we have been for 31 days…going on 32…

“without struggle there is no progress” ~ Frederick DouglassFriends who have never registered to vote, peers who have never spoken up on anything related to current events or politics, and those with political perspectives the opposite of my own have all spoken up in some manner against enshrining hate in our state’s constitution.

So that is why I believe the passing of this proposition was a good thing, sure I would give anything to have seen the proposition defeated and I honestly weeped at it’s passage, at least something positive has grown out of something so wrong.

We have seen marches in all corners of this state and marches in other states. Young, old, gay, straight, republican and democrat and independent alike have all marched in the days after this election to denounce this proposition’s passage.

In the aftermath of something so wrong, this movement for equality and yes change, has dusted itself off and only grown larger, you see I was complacent, possibly like you were. I looked at the polls and looked inwards at myself and believed the rejection of proposition 8 was only days away. I watched the exit polls showing an Obama victory on election night and assumed to have a huge victory at hand.

That was until just after Obama’s speech and I saw the results start to flow in and reality began to set in. While some exulted in the glow of the election of the first black president, others simply could not, while the nation took one gigantic step forward, my state also took a bigger step back.

Even with this step back though, my hope for the future only grows. I look at the exit polling, and I see hope. I compare the results of proposition 22 in 2000, a similarly themed proposition tossed out by the courts, and the results of proposition 8, and I see the tide slowly turning. Most of all however I look at the youth vote, a segment I still call my own and I see true change. Just over 60% of those under 29 voted against the marriage ban, a number we can only hope to see increase.

Change never comes easy in this country, but change is coming to this state and eventually in this country. In my grandmothers lifetime she has seen a world war, the end of segregation, and the fall of a superpower, and now the first black president, so don’t tell her we can’t change.

There is no legally or morally justifiable reason to not extend the right of marriage to all couples, hate and intolerance has a short life span in this country, it is only a matter of time.

Len Burman, a former Treasury tax official who is now a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, says if Obama’s proposals—which include plans to rescind the Bush tax cuts on couples making more than $250,000, close corporate tax loopholes, and tax private equity earnings known as “carried interest” as ordinary income—were adopted in 2009, for example, married couples with earnings in the lowest quintile of the population would see their aftertax income rise 5.8%. Those in the next quintile would see an increase of 4%. Those breaks would be paid for by those with high incomes: the top 1% of taxpayers would see aftertax income fall 8.4%.

Under McCain’s proposals, by contrast—including an extension of the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, a corporate tax cut, and a larger reduction in estate taxes than Obama would support—far more of the benefits would go to the top. If his plans went into effect in 2009, married couples in the bottom fifth of the population would see aftertax income go up just 0.2%, while those in the next quintile would see a 0.7% hike. But those in the top quintile would see a bump up in aftertax income of 2.7%.

The complete article can be found here and dugg here

That right there is the crux of our election.

The original tweet is right here.