Two faces.
Today, I saw the two faces showing the outcome of last night's election in California.
One was a little boy who was in Rebekah's class last year. I saw him as I walked down the outside hallway toward my daughter's classroom this morning, and that smile ... he could have lit the whole school with it. I have never seen him look so happy or walk so tall. I said, "It's a good day, isn't it?" And he said, "It's a GREAT day!"
What did that seven-year-old boy see on TV last night? He saw himself. He saw his father. He saw his mother. He saw the future, and how he could reach the very top of a mountain once off-limits to him. He saw crowds of people, people of all colors, sobbing with relief and jumping with joy, radiating happiness and hope. So many of us look at that map, that beautiful map, so blue now, and we see ourselves. We don't see black or white. We see hope.
But there's another boy. The one in Rebekah's class this year, who always has a smile on his face. Today he juggled his happiness that Obama won with his bitter disappointment that hatred and intolerance of families like his eliminated the right of his mothers to marry. Proposition 8 tells that little boy, "Your parents aren't fully people. We don't want our children to know that your filthy family exists." His mothers have been together longer than my three marriages combined!
This boy attends church every week, worshiping the same G-d claimed by people who decided that the Bible should now be law in this country. What does it do to a child, to know that people in a country dedicated to freedom and liberty for more than 200 years decided that his parents deserve fewer rights than everyone else's parents? Where he may once have seen a mountain he was free to climb, he now sees a wall. Helpless, I told him we'll work on tearing down that wall. He deserves nothing less.
One was a little boy who was in Rebekah's class last year. I saw him as I walked down the outside hallway toward my daughter's classroom this morning, and that smile ... he could have lit the whole school with it. I have never seen him look so happy or walk so tall. I said, "It's a good day, isn't it?" And he said, "It's a GREAT day!"
What did that seven-year-old boy see on TV last night? He saw himself. He saw his father. He saw his mother. He saw the future, and how he could reach the very top of a mountain once off-limits to him. He saw crowds of people, people of all colors, sobbing with relief and jumping with joy, radiating happiness and hope. So many of us look at that map, that beautiful map, so blue now, and we see ourselves. We don't see black or white. We see hope.
But there's another boy. The one in Rebekah's class this year, who always has a smile on his face. Today he juggled his happiness that Obama won with his bitter disappointment that hatred and intolerance of families like his eliminated the right of his mothers to marry. Proposition 8 tells that little boy, "Your parents aren't fully people. We don't want our children to know that your filthy family exists." His mothers have been together longer than my three marriages combined!
This boy attends church every week, worshiping the same G-d claimed by people who decided that the Bible should now be law in this country. What does it do to a child, to know that people in a country dedicated to freedom and liberty for more than 200 years decided that his parents deserve fewer rights than everyone else's parents? Where he may once have seen a mountain he was free to climb, he now sees a wall. Helpless, I told him we'll work on tearing down that wall. He deserves nothing less.