making the spam

In 1993 little Hawaii put all of right wing America into an out right conniption. The Aloha State Supreme Court ruled in Baehr v Lewin that - oops - the gays were people too, and the good folks in Hawaii had to do something about us not being able to get married and all....and back then when you flew out to the islands to get married, you were married once you got back to , where ever. Could not let that happen - ending up with Hawaii having only a domestic partnership agreement, but still , better than the stoning that we had for the previous 7000 years. All sorts of things rained down from this decision, the ugliest being DOMA

Fast forward TWENTY years and you get my Friday night, glued to my little computer here watching one of the most bizarre political nights that I have ever experienced. The new Governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie , had called a legislative special session, just to pass a marriage equality. He really would have only done this if the outcome was a forgone decision - so most, if not all of the over the top hysterics that went on were moot.

Hawaii is just an odd place, something I never really knew. Race and religion, things that are - well, black and white on the mainland have all been put in a blender and just mixed all the hell up. EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY - but with a strong strong evangelical community - who were not going to take this lying down. It did not go by the usual party line either - the lead female crack pot was an very lovely Asian lady, who is a leader of the Democratic party. There was screaming, chanting, singing - loud loud loud from outside the chamber, from both sides - with an actual tape down the middle to keep them separate - including the bathrooms - it was just a circus. Out and Proud Lesbians voting against it, men who spent 45 min crying about their love for Jesus voting for it.

I started watching pretty early, doing things coming and going, around maybe 5 our time - and tried and tried to walk away/ go to bed many times, but just could not leave - finally at 3:00 am eastern time, it was all over with and we were ALMOST over the final hurdle that started this whole race. A couple of dotted i's and crossed t's and Hawaii becomes - #16!

ALOHA!

The pro equality folks gathered broke into song upon winning.