Apologies from California, by Mark Morford

[madokie]

Wow, did we ever botch the gay marriage thing! Sorry, world


I know, we're supposed to be the vanguard. We're supposed to lead the way, set the agenda, be at the forefront on exactly this kind of delightfully blistering, divisive, sticky cultural issue, especially given our world-renowned reputation for flying our fearlessly flamboyant freak flag as high as the Transamerica Pyramid dancing on ecstasy at Burning Man.

I know, we're supposed to be this unswerving bastion of progressive liberalthink, the frothing epicenter of just about every wild/weird/wonderful sociocultural movement and civil right in America. After all, we're the birthplace of hippie culture and gay culture and New Age culture and roughly 10,000 other progressive beliefs and revolutions and soul-fellatings you can name and many you can't, because they have yet to be concocted in one of our genius inventor/scientist/poet's feverish peyote dreams. I know.

In other words, we're supposed to know better. We're supposed to get it right, particularly about something as obvious and relatively, uh, straightforward as gay marriage, exactly the kind of issue about which the world expects California not merely to have our godless, revolutionary sh-t together, but to know how to follow through. After all, in terms of blue-state, damn-the-fundamentalists street cred, we gotta represent.

This is why the truth is so very difficult to admit: we failed. Choked. Dropped the ball. Botched it completely. Gay marriage, that is. Prop 8. The whole gay rights shebang. What a shame. And how utterly embarrassing. ...

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(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/05/29/notes052909.DTL&nl=fix)