big day

I felt like today would never get here.

I'll be honest... as exciting a day as it is, I'm kind of looking forward to its end.

THE VOTE.

Last night, Sandi and I sat at our kitchen table to complete our absentee ballot (she works 12 hours today and I was fearful that if I took Maya into the voting booth, she might take the whole thing down.) I unfolded my ballot and was overcome with emotion.

Same-sex marriage. On the ballot. Is this for real??

Sandi and I have been together almost nine years. In that time we have had friends who had been together for 25 years work up the courage to come out to their families. We took what was at the time a huge risk and participated in a "walk with the ones you love" walk in Bangor and appeared in the local paper, aware that our business may suffer as a result. We saw domestic partnership health benefits become possible at Sandi's work. We saw the passing of an anti-discrimination law in Maine. We became registered domestic partners. And the biggest to date- last March we legally adopted our own children.

Biggest to date until now.


Connecting the black marks with my pencil to indicate I was voting no, not to repeal this law, this brave law that is unprecedented in any other state felt as momentous as it was. Our state is the only one whose government, not its courts, decided to allow same-sex marriage.

This is the first fight for equal rights that somehow has surpassed just the gay people the law effects. Somehow, gay and straight people are working side by side to uphold this law, seeing it as civil rights, no longer just gay rights.

I want to say thank you. Thank you to the people who have come from around the country to help. Thank you to the people who care enough to put up signs, have conversations, go into those darker recesses and challenge conventional thinking. Thank you for going out to vote. Thank you for making this about our society, the culture of our state being about inclusion, equality and fairness.

Ella's thoughts on the vote?

I had been trying to educate her about what this vote meant (and it is not as easy as one might think). I asked her to explain it back to me and this was what she said, "If you have a No on 1 sign, it means that you have two moms at your house." Then after an attempt at clarification: "No on 1 means that if a girl is married to boy now she will want to be married to a girl." Oh jeez...

When she heard that people were stealing No on 1 signs in our town: "That is just not right. People are allowed to have their own opinions and can vote how they want. But stealing is just wrong."

Which was why I was happy when she was overheard saying to her cousin while they were talking about making signs: "Let's make a sign that says 'vote no on 1.' That means girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys. Want to make a sign that says that?"