Il fait mauvais

I'm curled up in bed on a Saturday night with a bottle of tasty wine (1€70 at my local grocer), a good French flick, and blankets piled high. Outside, it's cold and windy and rainy, and I don't think I could be dragged out of this house for anything ce soir. Over the easy jazz music my house mother seems to be blaring downstairs, there's the steady sound of rain on the skylight outside my bedroom door.
It wasn't so bad this afternoon. I sat near the lake in the park a block from my house and wrote a few pages of crap. I've been feeling kind of stuck. Or lazy, I suppose, for the last week or so. My head is swimming with French words and facts about writers and artists and philosophers whose names I will inevitably forget. I feel frozen in the shadow of these great thinkers. As it's been said, it's all been done.
Like millions of Americans, I felt inspired by the election of Barack Obama this week. I watched on a big screen at a bar in Paris with 2 young Tunisian friends (one of whom is convinced I am his future wife/mother of his 6 children...HA!) while a band sang ridiculously wrong lyrics to classic American rock. I woke up the next morning still buzzing. Perhaps from lack of sleep as I'm 6 hours ahead; perhaps from excitement. I watched his acceptance speech (this time with the sound on), and got goosebumps. If you didn't, I think it's time to throw in the towel on the whole being human thing, because there's obviously something wrong with your heart. It wasn't until I saw a friend's post on Facebook, that I learned the disgusting news about Proposition 8.
This situation makes me incredibly nauseous. The propaganda I saw for prop8 was so ridiculous, I had a hard time imagining anyone taking it seriously. They used kids in these ads, saying that allowing gay marriage is bad for children. It will confuse them because marriage is an institution for procreation. Public schools will be obligated to teach children about gay marriage, therefore undermining any religious beliefs of some parents. And the sanctity of marriage will be desecrated.
- Did I miss the day of school that we had the "marriage" lesson? And are we not giving children enough credit? Is it really so difficult to describe it as a legal bond between two people who want to share their lives together?
- If this choice of adults that allegedly affects children in a negative way is banned, we will now have to make divorce (you know the way over 60% of marriages end) illegal as well, right? That's not even alleged! We know how badly that affects children.
- Hmmm, 40% of births are out of wedlock in the US, and a lot of married couples don't ever have children. You don't think the definition of marriage as an "institution for procreation" will confuse children?
- Am I having deja vu? Didn't we already have this fight about teaching evolution?
- If you truly believe in the religious beliefs this country was "founded on," not only should divorce be illegal, but we should reinstate slavery, women should not vote (and should also be burned at the stake for reading or other witch-like behavior) and don't even get me started on the whole manifest destiny bullshit that pretty much wiped out the very first Americans.
What our country was founded on was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our basic, constitutional rights as Americans. If we look really close and are honest, we can determine this whole proposition is completely blind, intolerant bigotry. The same kind that would not have allowed Obama's parents to marry in some states at that time.
For those of you that support this ban, could you please tell me why so much time and energy (that could be used for so many great works of compassion) was spent to prevent happiness for others? Really. I know not everyone who reads this shares my views, and I want to know what you think.
Anyway, I don't want to sound preachy...I'm just confused, and sickened, and saddened. Ah well, nothing like French existentialism and red wine to turn it all around;-) Ha! Bonne nuit, mes amis.