California Was The Future

When I first moved to San Francisco from India, my aunt said, Be careful, its full of homosexuals. And it has earthquakes.

I didnt tell her that I wanted to feel the earth move. I had watched The Times of Harvey Milk on video and knew that this was where you came to be gay, from places where you didnt dare to say its name.

California drew not just the lonely teenagers from Idaho and Missouri on Greyhound buses. It also drew immigrants like me from all over the world seeking to put an ocean or two between them and their parents and clans trying to arrange their marriages. This was where software companies gave us domestic partner rights and the mayor marched in Pride Parades and Hollywood sold the world its glamour. This was where the world looked to see if change had come to America. And where we came for sanctuary.

But now the center of gravity is shifting. In the wake of the court decision on the legality of Proposition 8 (as opposed to its righteousness) there will protests and candlelight marches and angry rhetoric. Already I am getting the faxes and emails. But perhaps it could also be a time for those of us who have been used to the world looking at us, to look out at the world instead.

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