I had a hard time sleeping last night. When I finally went to bed only about 30% of the votes had been tallied in California, but Proposition 8 – the one that *removes* the rights of gays and lesbians to marry by amending the constitution – looked like it was going to pass. As the night went on, the margin between yes and no kept on shrinking, but it wasn’t looking good. The first thing I did this morning upon rising from bed was immediately check in on the state results website and ugh. Just..ugh.

I decided that I needed to distract myself because obsessively refreshing the vote tally page wasn’t going to make the final count come up any faster. And there is that huge box of apples we bought from Apple Hill this past weekend, waiting to be dealt with. So I went into the kitchen and I pulled out my handy corer/peeler/slicer contraption and I filled the crockpot to the brim with apples, and then stirred in some sugar and some cinnamon and a little bit of cloves and nutmeg, and smashed it all down with a spoon just enough to let me put the lid on, and I left it there to cook all day while I headed off to work. And on the way in to work, listening to NPR, I teared up again, listening to parts of Obama’s speech from last night, and my coworkers and I walked around all day alternately grinning giddily at each other about Obama’s landslide victory, or muttering choice swear words about the setback to civil rights.

I understand that there are good and decent people on both sides of this issue, even though it might be easier to believe otherwise. And I also know that the people who supported this proposition believe with great certainty that they did the right thing, even though it is nearly impossible for me to even comprehend how they can think so, because my version of gods and of what ‘separation of church and state’ means differs so radically from theirs.

But here is the thing. Even though this is not what we wanted and hoped for, I still believe that eventually, reason and tolerance will prevail. The margin between passing and failing this time around is tiny, which is a huge improvement from ten years ago when the state passed a similar (although non-constitutionally amending) ballot measure by far more overwhelming odds. And as someone online pointed out, our brand new President-elect Obama (excuse me if I squee when I say that) was born to parents who would not have been allowed to marry in 22 states at that time, and these days, the general public looks at interracial marriage and wonders why anyone made such a huge fuss over such a non-issue. I have to believe that at some point in the future, people will look at the whole issue of gay marriage and feel exactly the same way.

It’s NaBloPoMo time again!