SAVE the NELLIE ELEMENT

Our Los Angeles friend Jane wrote overnight and gave an account of driving 30 miles on Monday to a polling station where early voting is permitted. She was heartened to see so many African-Americans queuing – the wait was about two hours – though she feared that many of them would be voting “yes on 8”.

It’s an idiosyncrasy (a fabulous one) of the electoral system in the States that many posts and issues are up for a vote at the same time as the presidency: delegates to either or both of the houses on Capitol Hill, state officers including governor, attorney general and on through sheriff and even city dog-catcher, depending on the state constitution; and also specific proposals for changes in state law.

Proposition 8 on the California ballot paper this year is entitled “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry” and would add to the golden state’s constitution the clause that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California”. It was in May of this year that the California Supreme Court voted 4-3 in favour of permitting same-sex marriage. Less than a month later, Proposition 8 was accepted for the ballot paper. In the five months since the court’s ruling was enacted, some 16,000 couples have availed themselves of the dispensation.

For myself, I have never embraced the desire to be married, which is why I was so satisfied with the British invention of the civil partnership – all the legal, economic and social rights that go with conventional marriage and none of the cant – and why David and I entered into a civil partnership two-and-a-half years ago. Being a rationalist, I never felt the need for some kind of superstitious ingredient in my primary relationship. By the same token, I never quite comprehended why gay people would want to enrol in the police, the military, the city, professional sport, parliament or any of the other bastions of homophobia. Life is too short to waste it being a crusader in a lost cause. I’m thrilled that so many uniformed police joined the Gay Pride march in Manchester this year – about 300, supposedly (and believably) the largest gathering of gay fuzz in the world’s history – but I would still feel more comfortable in the company of a straight actor, care-worker, teacher or nurse than a gay prison warden, club bouncer, priest or asset-stripper.

Nonetheless, if lesbians and gay men want to be “married”, they should have all the joy and security of it that it allegedly brings to straights and without the fear of being retroactively outlawed. The proponents of Proposition 8 are the usual suspects in such matters: reactionaries and the espousers of fairytale delusions. But among the nay-sayers are all six Episcopal diocesan bishops in the state, a large number of Jewish organisations including the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and many education organizations and boards. Governor Schwarzenegger’s careful position is that he doesn’t believe that a Supreme Court ruling ought to be open to being overturned by a popular vote. The hopeful signs are that the proposition is not all that popular. The no faction had a significant lead in polling until very recently but there is the danger that Jane identified, that Obama voters will not necessarily oppose the proposal; and Obama himself has taken much the same position as Schwarzenegger.

Musing on this has oddly reminded me of a documentary I saw when it was released thirty years ago. Word is Out was, I believe, the first to gather views from lesbians and gay men to tell, as the movie’s subtitle had it, “stories of some of our lives”. It was wonderful but it quickly seemed to drop from view. Searching on the net just now, I learn that its producer Peter Adair died of Aids in 1996 and that a 30th anniversary DVD has been released (actually a year late) and was shown in June, very properly, at a film festival in the Castro district of San Francisco (which I visited myself a couple of years after the filming was done).

All of those interviewed in the film were adorable and memorable, perhaps none more than George, a camp version of Oliver Hardy with a quiff. George reminisced about his discovery of the gay community in San Francisco in the early 1950s and, heartfelt and weeping, he told of the way groups would put their arms round each other at the end of meetings and sing ‘God Save Us Nellie Queens’.

Our friend Jane and her guy voted early because they plan to spend 14 hours today working to maximize the no vote on Proposition 8. She doesn’t have to do this but I love that she wants to. And of course she sees it as a matter of decency and politics and comradeship, supporting those who, though embracing a different sexual orientation, are still her sisters and brothers. Though they live in a different part of the world, the lesbians and gay men of California are also my sisters and brothers and I send them my love and support. Deliver all of us Nellie queens from oppression, marginalizing, stereotyping and the denial of full and equal rights everywhere in the world. And please don’t forget to elect Senator Obama while you’re about it.