In the big picture, there was nothing sad about last night’s election results – we elected Barack Obama as our next president. Enough said. Bring on the change.

And yet, in a country where we can overcome eight years of hell and embarrassment – thank god my pledge of ignorance is coming to an end – we’ve suddenly taken a huge step back. I was fearful I had to be ashamed of being an American, but for sure I’m ashamed to be one in the state of California. I’ve always known there were pockets of scary here, but I never really associated them with my neighbors, or people I work with, or the people I went to school with. In my mind, because I had gravitated toward the liberal, I naively assumed the rest of the state was behind me too.

Last night’s feeling of “the rest of them finally get it” turned into sadness as the California results trickled in: Animal rights, yes. Abortion rights, yes. Same-sex marriage, no. What. The. Fuck.

I went to sleep with 62% of the precincts reporting on Prop 8, hoping they had just left out the good ones and woke up at 5 am nervous, and then 10 am disappointed. I was hoping to use this picture as an unusual sign of celebration on this site to rejoice about all the upcoming gay weddings I would attend with open bar and copious boys to fulfill my dream of being lifted by a group of gays.

Instead, with sadness, I will have to use this picture to encourage people to come lift me at MY future wedding, which is rude. Or, I can promise to do more next time to help lift up my gays, if not for equal rights for everybody, then for my growing obsession of being gloriously lifted. I mean, look at that picture, look at how happy I am. And fuck you, 52%, for denying my right to lifted by gays, single or married (but preferably married because the more gays to lift, the better).