Be Proud Of Who You Are

Dropping the Masks of Intolerance

Twenty months ago, when my best friends Chris and Tracy realized their most cherished dream of becoming a married couple, it was an incredible day. Hundreds of other gay and lesbian couples across California got to realize their dream too, on a bright, crisp October morning in West Hollywood Park.

What I saw at the revolution was love. A lot of love, laughter, tears of happiness. I saw a priest genuinely happy to perform these unions, even though he was an elderly, straight white man. I saw generations of families gathered in celebration, in hope and in a sense of victory.
Across the park, I also saw a tiny faction of protestors. I noticed them because I am a writer. I observe these things. I did a double-take however because their numbers were small (a dozen) and because…some of them wore masks.
My concern at the time was that these people would put a stop to the landmark ceremonies taking place. However, the police went right over to the protestors and shooed them away. A few returned but realized the futility of their presence and shuffled away. I never said much about these masked protestors who were either paid hacks or, were too cowardly to show their faces.
I suppose this is the same mentality of the type of person who sent me an anonymous poison pen letter to my author website on Saturday night:

I hope that they do ban same sex marriage and anything else affiliated with the subject.

I read the highlights of a few of your pages and you appear to be a confused individual with anti social tendencies. Thank god your not in my neighborhood or near children hopefully.

Your one twisted person who needs help.

What do you see when you look in the mirror?
—————————————————————————-
Sender info:
IP: 93.94.245.39 <http://ws.arin.net/whois/?queryinput=93.94.245.39&gt;
Browser/OS: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20100611
Firefox/3.6.4

The sender wrote this email anonymously and went to the trouble of hiding his ISP via a Dutch proxy server. Hmmm. I’d take his vicious message to heart a lot more if he or she could spell. And if he/she had signed his name to it and also gave me an email addy for a response.

What prompted this note?

My post on Twitter that Hawaii’s Governor, Linda Lingle, a woman I have admired up to this point, is mulling over the future of the island state’s civil union bill, HB444. Poised to veto the bill, she will hurt thousands of Hawaiian men, women and children – families – who will have no protections under the law.

I’ve seen California’s same-sex marriage bill overturned, but thanks to the efforts of many, including Lt. Governor, Jerry Brown, my friends Chris and Tracy and the thousands of other couples who were married in historic ceremonies still have marriage certificates.

I feel strongly that this is a potential human rights catastrophe.

Governor Lingle placed HB444, on the list of 39 bills she may veto. On June 23, she declared HB444 among the endangered bills. Under Hawaiian law, the Governor is allotted 10 business days [until July 6]  to decide whether to veto, sign, or allow bills to become law without her signature.

She said openly that HB444 is the most difficult and important decision of her 30 years in public office. She stressed that she has simply not yet made up her mind.

Equality Hawaii and the Human Rights Campaign issued a joint release in response to the Governor’s indecision:

“We are continuing to place pressure on the Governor by launching coordinated statewide action alerts to members encouraging them to express their disappointment with Governor Lingle for placing HB 444 on the list of potential vetoes. We have two weeks left and you can contact the Governor’s office to make your voice heard by calling (808) 586-0034 and urging her to sign HB444, Hawaii’s Civil Unions Bill.”

I don’t care how many anonymous hate letters I get. I have met many of the families whose lives will be ruined if the Governor make a historic misstep. That we are even discussing such intolerance in the year 2010 makes me sad.

It also makes me more determined to see equality, everywhere.

We must drop the masks of Intolerance once and for all.

AJ Llewellyn

www.twitter.com/ajllewellyn
www.facebook.com/aj.llewellyn
www.myspace.com/ajllewellyn

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