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With the passage of Prop. 8, many Californians now worry that their families will not be equally protected by law. (photo courtesy of Adrienne DeAngelo)

Others may not see the irony in this day, but it is all too plain to me.

I was in the car, driving my son to daycare, when I heard it.

The caller was recalling the previous night’s historic election of Barack Obama. With equal part awe and incredulity, she said, “And my seven-year-old daughter looked at me and said, ‘Everyone really is equal, mommy.’

“I had taught her that at home, of course,” the mother went on to explain. “But now she was seeing it in the outside world. It was an incredible moment for me to witness.”

Hearing this woman tell her story, I started to cry, too. But not in empathy.

My tears were of sorrow. Fear. Rage.

“Sure, some people are equal!” I yelled into the steering wheel, to the car ahead of me, to my son singing the ABCs in the backseat. There would be no equality for my family. Not on this historic day. Not when just over half of the voters of California had decided, in the very same election that was supposed to lift us up, give us hope, bring us change, and transcend race, that I was not deserving of the same rights they were.

My legal marriage to my partner three months prior meant nothing to the Californians who voted for a ban on same-sex marriage, changing the state constitution in the process. It hadn’t even meant anything to a relative who I found out from a friend of a friend voted to support the ban. Someone who had attended our warm, romantic, traditional wedding four years before.

Not that I don’t share in the joy of the ascendancy of an African American to the highest office in the land. Only the night before I was basking in the light of the new political dawn. I had desperately wanted this beacon of hope to win. I wanted to hear this man’s reassuring voice, experience his calming presence for a long time to come.

And yet. The outcome is bittersweet. The irony of equality is too great for me to bear. The irony of the comparisons to Lincoln. The irony that the excited masses of African Americans and Latinos who helped usher Obama to victory in California were many of the same voters who nudged the passage of Proposition 8. The proposition that would take away our right to marry as quickly and as decisively as we’d been handed it by the California Supreme Court four and a half months ago.

I dropped my son off and wound my back down the hills of Montclair. Every driver of every passing car became a suspect. Did they vote for or against my family? Every driver became my accuser, telling me, “You and your family are shameful.”

Some wonder how the interaction between proponents and opponents of Prop 8 could have gotten so rancorous in the final weeks of the campaign. It’s because my family is discussed calmly…passively…theoretically by advocates of a marriage ban. Even the No on Prop 8 campaign didn’t show or mention a single gay or lesbian couple in any of its ads.

But I am not a two-dimensional portrait. I am not theoretical. I have feelings. I have a child who depends on me. A partner who supports me. I have a mortgage to pay. A home to maintain. I am just like you. And I am not like you.

Out of earshot of the car radio and safely in the cocoon of my home, I find solace in an unexpected outpouring of sympathy from real people. Beginning with an early-morning e-mail from a colleague and continuing throughout the day in a steady stream of reassuring messages and heartfelt calls from aunts, cousins, playgroup friends, and distant relatives. “I’m so sorry to hear about Prop 8…We’re deeply disappointed with the outcome of the election…We’re thinking of you…I expected more of California…We’re standing with you...We love you.”

Every message goes straight to my heart. Hot tears sting my face as I read and reread each one. Tears of happiness. Love. Pride. In the afterwards of the election, my anger fades away and makes way for something new. Hope.

“Yes we can,” I think to myself.