Prop. 8: Saddened, but not surprised - or defeated

The collectively held breath was let out Tuesday morning when the California Supreme Court decision finally came. Proposition 8 will be upheld, but so will the 18,000 or more marriages performed during the few months when same-sex marriages were legal in the state.
It's a perplexing decision that will certainly cause legal issues in the near future for those married, but not technically recognized couples. The language of the Constitution reads "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" and yet 18,000 couples live a reality every day that proves that wrong. How the legal battles will pan out, only time can tell.
But putting aside the hypocrisy of the decision, we at Between The Lines offer up a few things to think about now that the gavel has come down.
When California began the fight in the courts in November of last year, many said that this decision could make or break the marriage argument in the rest of the U.S. We saw California as the domino that could knock the rest down.
Now we know better.
Iowa, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and (hopefully soon) New Hampshire and New York have shown us that we don't have to wait for "liberal" states to do the work before others can follow. Given the victories in recent months, losing in California doesn't seem so bad.
And the fight isn't over.
Often, we speak of how someday, gay marriages will be as non-controversial as interracial marriages are today. But we forget how recently that, and many other civil rights issues we take for granted were huge battles in this country.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it also looks like it happened faster than when we're in the middle of it. Right now, it seems as though we'll never get there. But someday in the not-so-distant future, we will wonder how it happened so fast.
It's a generational feeling, too. For many older LGBT people, it seems like marriage equality as an issue crept up and just appeared in our laps one day. In the '90s, it wasn't even discussed, and now, it's gaining momentum every day – even with setbacks like California's Prop. 8.
For younger generations of LGBTs, however, marriage is something they have always seen in their future.
For everyone, young and old, any wait seems too long. Whether you see the Proposition 8 decision as big or small, surprising or expected, it still hurts to hear that the votes of an ill-informed and hateful majority can take away the rights of a minority.
Recent interviews with some black clergymen have indicated their displeasure with equating our struggle to the struggle of black Americans. But alas, here we go again. In Martin Luther King, Jr.'s letter from a Birmingham jail, he made a statement that applies so well to how we feel, and to what we should do:
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. …For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' … . This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."