NEWS: Real Love: How True Families Are Affected by the Hate of Prop 8

POLITICS: Real Love: How True Families Are Affected by the Hate of Prop 8

Part 1: Julie Rose and Lynda Brocchini



Shortly before going to bed at midnight last night, Julie Rose updated her Facebook status message: "Julie Rose is wondering if she will still be married in the morning."

Rose wasn't waiting for a divorce to finalize, or for her spouse to leave her. Instead, the legality of her marriage to Lynda Brocchini (her partner of a decade) was hanging in the balance, at the mercy of California voters deciding on the fate of Proposition 8. If passed, Prop 8 would amend the State Constitution to ban same-sex unions such as theirs.

Today, even with some three to four million absentee ballots yet to be counted, Prop 8 still looks to be on the road to passing in California, with 52.5% in favor and 47.5% against the measure at press time. San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Clara County (the latter where the bulk of Silicon Valley is based) have already joined forces in filing a petition with the California Supreme Court for a writ of mandate to invalidate Prop 8, so the fight isn't even close to being over. But for families like Rose and Brocchini, who share a three-year-old son named Dylan and have had no less than five different commitment ceremonies together (including one performed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom himself), this is a truly difficult and disheartening moment.

"It's hard, because there's all this talk of, 'Yes we can,' and change," says Rose, "But for a group of us, it doesn't feel all there."

Proposition 8 was endorsed and largely funded by individuals and organizations with ties to religious groups such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

"What kills me is that the people funding [Prop 8] are people who say that say they are religious people and all of these churches, the Catholic church and the Mormon church that threw all this money behind this, claim to be Christian people," Rose observes. "I can see why the 'No on 8' people would throw a lot of money behind it, because you're fighting for your rights. But these 'Yes on 8' people who threw millions and millions of dollars that they spent to take rights away from us, why aren't they spending it trying to help poor children or feed people or build houses for people or help third world countries? Isn't that what Christianity is supposed to be about? Helping people, not trying to hurt people?

"If I belonged to a church and I gave money to that church thinking it was to feed people who were hungry or homeless and then I found out that they were using it on a political campaign to take rights away from somebody, I don't know how happy I would be about that."

For the past seven years, Rose has worked for Levi Strauss & Co., the San-Francisco-based company that made history in 1992 by being the first Fortune 500 company to extend its domestic partner medical benefits program to same-sex couples. But even that doesn't have equal advantage to married couples, as she explains.

"I don't get to claim married medical benefits, so all the benefits that they pay for my partner medically, I get taxed on as income. And we had to go to an attorney to have all of this complicated paperwork drawn up –– a married couple, even if they got a trust put together, they pay one fee for the trust. Well, we had to pay for each of us, so twice as much. There's a lot of real, concrete benefits that you don't get.

"In California, domestic partnership laws after AB205 are very good. But also there's the whole 'separate but equal' argument, saying, 'Well, why do you need the word marriage if you have everything else?' But why can't we have the word marriage? Why should it be good enough that we should get a subclass of the same thing? The word shouldn't just be used for one group of people. If they were running around and saying that black people couldn't say they were married, or interracial marriages could only say that they were civil unions, people would think they were ridiculous."

While the battle for Prop 8 continues, so does this family's strength and devotion to the idea that this story will have a happy ending.

"Our son gets really excited when he sees our wedding pictures," she adds. "He thinks it was so great because he was at [two] of them, and he says, 'Mommies are married!' It's not like he's old enough that I could even begin to explain [Prop 8] to him, but I'm hoping he's not going to remember a time when we weren't legally married."

Well, the Mormons totally want to let bygones be bygones.

So, lets all respect and love each other now.

I don't think I've ever wanted to tell such a large group of people to go fuck themselves.

I'm really, really surprised and upset that it went through. I thought people had moved forward a little more than this but apparently not. So many couples who fought so hard for what they wanted and just had it taken back.

So much for the Church and the State being separate.

This truly breaks my heart. When this passed, just seeing the hope and happiness it put in the eyes of my friend that are gay, it was like the people in this country finally got it. Only to dissappoint again.

Whether you believe in God, Goddess, simple engergy or chaos, put something out there. Even if you don't believe in anything, show support in some way.

This is wrong and in human to think that all people do not deserve happiness how their hearts see as fit.

DING!!! makes the liberal win so bittersweet today.

God, the hate and the shame! so fucking sad.

The really sad irony of the election in California? Blacks had a greatly increased turnout due largely to Obama. Blacks also voted 2-1 in favor of Prop 8.

However, if blacks had turned out in normal (i.e. non-Obama) proprotion, Prop 8 would have failed. In other words, Obama's turnout machine ensured the passage of Prop 8.

Sad.

I hope a counter-amendment gets on the ballot for 2010. That seems like a long way off, though.

Isn't voter turnout lower during non-presidential elections? Would that hurt or help a counter-amendment? I don't know. I'm just devastated over Prop 8 passing. It's so disheartening.

What's really unfortunate is the fact that we are legislating morality. The founding fathers never intended to do that, and the christian faiths do not beleive in the interference of the government in their business. Even better is that according to federal law any church contributing money to a political campaign or cause can lose their tax free status, however I suspect that they won't. Everybody hates a shrub!!

Yes, it is.


Too many black people are dogmatic and quite afraid of seeming out of the mainstream.

Meanwhile 'straight' black guys are getting clandestine blow jobs in the bushes of public parks, and 'straight' black women are straining against their natural non-hetero impulses so as not to be alienated from friends, family and church.

It's a really crappy, desperate need for acceptance.

People HAVE moved forward. Just not as far as we hoped. Think of what the results would have been 10 or 20 years ago.

Personally, I'm not big on marriage in general, but as someone who has two fathers, you better believe I was disapointed to hear about this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's the fault of blacks or anything like that. I'm simply talking about the demographics of the hard numbers. I 100% agree that the No campaign woefully mishandled the effort and these numbers could have been totally different with a more competent movement.

This makes me so sad.

Keep your religion out of my civil union.

Keep your religion out of my bedroom.

I don't think things will improve until Obama gets a few of his Supreme Court nominees in and the new and hopefully more tolerant court makes it legal nation-wide...

I don't mean that to sound as if there is some genetic predisposition to this line of behavior, but it is a particularly strong culturally reinforced behavior in segments of the black community.

And, of course it's shared with quite a few other communities. I just wanted to address the issue as it is expressed in some black communities in particular.

I'm in complete agreement.

It's not over. All Prop. 8 did is kick the can down the road (I just feel bad for the 16,000+ families in the can).

I hope that the lawsuits somehow make an effect here. But this really put a damper on things for me today.