Shiz Registered to Vote

I registered to vote for the first time in my life.

I became a US citizen when I was around 20 (I don't really remember), but I never bothered to register to vote. It just seemed like a hassle to go to a voting place during work hours.

So why now?
After missing three presidential elections and then some?

I don't really care about the presidential election. It's not like a Republican is going to win in California anyway. My vote would just off-set Alpha Ben's vote or something.

I decided to register because I wanted to vote against Prop 8.
That's the one where a crazy Pepperdine law professor is talking about not wanting his kids to learn boys can marry boys in school. I can't believe such a hateful commercial is allowed to be aired on TV.

Well, those crazy commercials have been running for weeks now, and they didn't push me over the edge to register. Facebook did. I had assumed everyone I know would be voting against Prop 8, but I recently saw a post supporting the hateful measure and I was a bit devastated.

So much so that I went searching around the web and found a Japanese blog written by a gay man living in San Francisco. He doesn't plan on getting married to his longtime partner (marriage isn't important to them), but he made an argument against Prop 8. And because he can't vote, he asked anyone who can to vote against it.

Silly me.
Before I get disappointed at my friends for supporting Prop 8, I should just vote against it.

So the voter registration sheet (I didn't know it's a half-page form) is in an envelope & being dropped off at the post office today.

Good thing I made it in time before the Oct 20 deadline.


PS. I was really really really thinking whether or not I should be writing this here. I mean, I haven't asked every one of my friends if they were voting against Prop 8. Even those with religions that don't accept gays.

But now I even think I should write about this in my work blogs too. I work with gay literature (even though it's not targeted to gay men, but to straight women), so I feel like it's my responsibility to have our readers think about it.