Share Your Story – Prop 8
November 14, 2008 by Justin Cole, GLAAD's Director of Digital Media
It’s time to hear from YOU!
Through our culture-changing work we know the power personal stories have to shape perceptions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Help us make a difference by sharing YOUR personal story with us. How are you affected by Prop 8? Have you felt the need to take action now that it has passed? Are you joining in the rallies and marches in your local community?
Below you’ll see options to leave either a written comment or to submit a multimedia comment. With a multimedia comment you can record a video with your webcam, display YouTube videos, Flickr photos, upload video, audio, or pictures and much more.
So please, leave a comment and share your story. We will continue our work to share stories like yours in the media so the lives of LGBT people and their allies can inspire others and change hearts and minds.
Share your story, tell us your thoughts and help change hearts and minds!
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I’m going inward right now. The focus is shifting from the outside world inward to my family. I’ve tried to balance a full time job, being a parent, being a partner, being a volunteer, and being an activist. Time was taken from my family and given to the marriage equality movement and I don’t regret a minute of it. But I will not be at the protest this weekend, nor have I been this past week. Instead, I’m going to work hard at my job, be closer to my children, be more supportive and attached to my partner, and breathe. The fight isn’t over and there’s plenty of fight left in me but right now – at this time and at this place – the fighter in me is coming out mad and has already yelled at people who don’t deserve it. Who could guess what I might do if I came across a counter-protester? I don’t want my children to feel this pain I’m feeling. Nor do I want them to witness the anger and the rage. Because they already hurt and they feel their own pain at what the passage of this proposition means to them. I don’t need to tell them what it means to me because they have their own sorrow and anger right now. Sophie heard the boy she likes in school say he’d vote against prop 8 to keep kids from learning about gays in school. She didn’t bother to correct him to say that his position then really would be in support of prop 8. She knew that any vote in our favor was helpful.
Afterall, the reason I work so hard, volunteer, and serve as an activist is because of my family. So, thank you to all of you protesting and working on the movement this weekend. I’m going to take my daughter to piano lessons, then take the family to Grandma’s for birthday celebrations. I’ll be at church on Sunday and teaching Sunday School. I’ll be at work each day and at the hospital volunteering next week. When the time comes and the tears of rage aren’t pressing upon the back of my throat, I’ll get back in activist mode. You go ahead, I’ll catch up, I still know the way there.
But for now, I have a family that deserves more of my time.