Yes! A double feature today! This was tacked onto my last post, but I figured it deserved it’s own slot for rantage.

Florida further legalizes discrimination by passing a constitutional ban on same-sex (a doubling of state law) and domestic partnerships with 62 percent support. Thank you Florida! for being intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, and identities differing from your own.

Perhaps you may be thinking, what’s the big whoop, Heza? You and Alex are heterosexual, just get married. While this (marriage) may be a dream of many, and I celebrate with all my heart with those who fulfill this aspiration, this ideal does not define my core or my identity.

I am fully in the belief that a relationship can be stable, loving, and committed without a religious or secular marriage. We share the ups and downs in life and this is how we choose to live. I believe and I know that family is defined beyond blood, marriage, or adoption.

When I announce that Alex is my partner and best-friend and we are committed to each other without marriage, this should not be a challenge to treat my relationship or my beliefs with disrespect, discrimination and bigotry.

I don’t want special treatment, allocation, or protection. I just want you sociopaths to stay out of my life and out of my beliefs.

So Florida. Thanks to the dysfunctional groups who put this measure on the ballot and 62% who voted yes to Amendment No. 2, your children and grandchildren of same-sex, unwed, or divorced parents will continue to face unwarranted taunts and labels as abnormal and inferior bastards.

Go head and make it acceptable for so-called friends and ‘loving’ family members to continue to pressure the membership into an antiquated fraternity whose fundamentals are long overdue for a enlightenment overhaul.

Make it easy for insurance companies to refuse to insure health coverage and to allow landlords to turn people away from obtaining shelter or employers to overlook unmarried people for promotion, assignments or benefits.

Thanks to the 62% for make my constitution less neutral and more immoral.

You know, A Free Man, you can continue your Florida Hate Week.

As we left the Busching Garten in the neighborhood near Prinzregentenplatz and my Obama balloon tied to my Crumpler, it hadn’t clicked.

We rode our bikes through the deserted Munich streets on a relatively warm November morning, passed the Friedensengel and along the Isar River toward home, all the while millions of Americans around the world waited.

Although conservative CNN already called for Obama’s victory in Pennsylvania and Ohio and it was clearly impossible that McCain could rule the electorate the rest of the way west, beyond Monterey Bay, still it had not fully sunk in that soon Obama would be named President-Elect. Even when we got home at 4:30 in the morning, I wasn’t giddy. Just dog tired and hopeful.

But I must have slept well and woke up to beaming sunlight and the sound of children playing outside. It was noon and I felt like a zombie just out of a 7-hour coma. This faded as Alex and I drank coffee and ate scrambled eggs while we watched N24 cover the last hour of reporting on a momentous event. In the End: 338 to 163. It was hard for me not to get choked up with emotion and happiness. It’s been a long journey to come to this point.

So some scenes from the party hosted by the Democrats Abroad in Munich:

In other related happy news

I’m ecstatic that over 4 million Floridians voted for Obama giving him 27 votes to secure a win for presidency. Obama won my county, Hillsborough, which is unheard of, and Alachua (where I went to university). Counties I had worked in: he tied with McCain in Sarasota County, but lost DeSoto (traditionally poor, turning to a haven for wealthy urban sprawlites) Manatee and Charlotte (retreat for rich, retired, snow birds).