Bittersweet

America is a better country than it was yesterday; California is a worse state.

I wish our folks had lived to see Obama win. Last night MSNBC had John Lewis on, and he talked about the hundreds of thousands of civil rights workers in the '60s who had helped to make this election possible. Mom and Dad were among those hundreds of thousands, and they would have been thrilled beyond measure to see this victory. Not the final victory, not the promised land, but an enormous step in that direction.

And Proposition 8 was a step backwards. Our folks spent 25 years fighting for equality; they would have been so disheartened to see the voters of California reject it. Today, hundreds of thousands of Californians who for a little while had equal rights are again second-class citizens.