Prop. (h) 8

by Dennis Green

“My two moms can beat up your ten wives!” So read a sign held by one demonstrator in the face of another, and that’s how heated this debate has been. Yesterday’s ruling will no doubt be appealed, all the way up to the Supreme Court, where a majority of the justices are Catholic. Is this a civil rights issue, or not?

Yesterday, I wore my Prop. (h) 8 T-shirt to our monthly dialysis meeting, and our final one with Nurse Sandy, who has complete our training, and will now be passing us off to Nurse Kate. My T-shirt, turquoise, was from Fifty Seven Thirty Three, a wonderful silk-screening artisnal shop long located next door to Tania & James’ art studio, and now open as a retail shop on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.

The T-shirt features two lesbians embracing, passionately making out, and reads, “Love is not the problem.” I wore it specifically for good luck in the outcome of yesterday’s ruling, which found the ban on same-sex marriage in California in violation of equal protection and the 14^th Amendment. “Proponents of this ban have offered no rational argument why it should be in force,” read a portion of the ruling.

The exam itself did not go all that well, revealing that I have been retaining fluid from the peritoneal dialysis exchanges. This results in weight gain, high blood pressure, swollen ankles and, most threatening, fluid in the lungs and congestive heart failure. So my nephrologist, on call, promptly ordered some fine tuning in our procedure.

Instead of exchanges at 6 pm, midnight and 6 am, he ordered three overnight, at 6, 9, and 3 am, plus a drain at 6 am, leaving my cavity empty all day. He also told us to use the 2.5 solution, and prescribed large doses of a diuretic. We just had our first such night, and it is almost as disruptive as being on the machine all night long. Very little deep REM sleep and genuine rest. But already I’m losing weight and fluid.

At the end of our session yesterday, after collecting my 24-hour urine draw and samples from all the previous day’s drains, after the Hepetitus B vaccine shot, the thorough exam, change of dressings, blood draw, and scheduling of future appointments — as I was putting my shirts back on, I peeled off the Prop. (h) 8 Tee, folded it gently, and gave it to Nurse Sandy.

“I may be a toughie, and a warrior,” I said to her, “but I’ve been wearing a T-shirt with two nude lesbians on it, and I think you can make even better use of it!” She blushed at the gift, but knows where our sentiments are.

I fought mightily against Prop. (h) 8 myself, a totally unfair and irrational imposition of religious values on a secular citizenry. The Catholic and Mormon Churches spent millions to get it passed — two organizations with a troubled past in the issues of marriage and child molestation and hardly qualified to sit in moral judgment — and then complained when donor lists were made public and donor businesses were boycotted by opponents.

We’ve had our own little dust-up over gay rights here in Alameda, where the schools adopted a curriculum of lesson plans teaching students not to bully gay classmates, or those parented by same sex couples. There was even an attempted recall of school board Trustees, which petered out from lack of support.

I’m confident that the Supreme Court, with its majority of conservatives, will rule against such bans on marriage between consenting same sex adults. Anything else would be judicial activism, and we know how much conservatives hate that stuff.

©2010 Dennis Green