I shared about thirty minutes of joy last night with the Manly Fireplug, eating at Blue restaurant after he got off work, both of us checking our phones throughout dinner for updates on the election, toasting each other with glasses of cream soda and strawberry lemondade when Obama won.

But when we joined the gathering throng outside Harvey’s restaurant, and as passing cabs honked their horns for the crowd, and as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence flirted with my Fireplug, I scanned the televisions inside Harvey’s for news on Prop 8, and, well, we all know now how that one turned out.

For thirty minutes I dared dream that we would get everything we wanted last night. But of course we rarely get everything we want. I wish I could feel a little more of that joy that I see expressed in people’s faces on the front pages of every newspaper of our so-called “transformed” nation. I wish I could feel a little more a part of that audacity of hope that everyone’s talking about. But I don’t. It’s not that I need the stamp of approval from straight people on my relationship with the Fireplug. Nor do I care, despite my earlier post, about china patterns and bridal registries.

I do care that we continue to be scapegoated by others, that we get blamed by straight people for their own inability to save their marriages, that the Yes on 8 people used the pathetic “oh-what-about-the-children” argument to camouflage their bigotry. That we will continue to be expected to participate in, if not fucking plan, straight people’s weddings, while they continue to believe, deep in their hearts, that we’re not good enough for marriage.

Fuck domestic partnerships. If we learned anything from the civil rights era, it’s that separate but equal never means equal. By definition, to call marriage something else is unconstitutional.

It’s hard to swallow the fact that a good percentage of Californians who voted for Obama also voted for Prop 8. That other minorities checked “yes” on “eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry.”  That no prominent politicians really came to our aid and proved themselves a leader. Including our new president-elect. That everyone wants to distance themselves from the homosexuals. That more people in California voted to protect animals than to protect the rights of gays.

And five, ten, twenty years down the line, when some of you people have your fucking epiphanies and realize that you were wrong, that you had indeed participated in discrimination, and that you have now changed your minds, well, spare me your tales of conversion. Go fuck yourselves.

So yeah my heart is heavy, and I’m beyond angry. My anger is my consolation and my fuel. Because we’re obviously going to need some fuel over the next few months and years.  Some days, this day in particular, I hate that we need the help of straight people to win our rights. I wish that we could do it all for ourselves, and take care of each other. I wish that we had more political power on our own, which is why I live in San Francisco, where at least the local politicians need to win our favor.

But we do need fucking straight people. And with each passing month, with each passing year, a whole crop of aging bigots die off, and a new crop of kids, who don’t see the big deal with gay people marrying, come of voting age. The truth is that the tide has already turned, and that all of the Prop 8’s will eventually die a horrible death, and the bigots will see that their numbers are actually dwindling, and that nobody cares anymore about the homosexual threat. Gay people will marry.

That day is coming. But it’s not today. So many people today will talk about transformation, and hope, and the dawning of a new era. But for some of us, nothing much has changed. Yeah, we’ll get there eventually. But today I have no patience.