Civil Disobedience

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court ruled that gay men and women could not get married. It's the latest event in a long sequence of messiness, including the Supreme Court's ruling last year that they COULD get married, the passing of Proposition 8, which stated that marriage was limited to a man and a woman, and various volleys passed back and forth.

Yesterday's ruling was awkward for a number of reasons, the most significant of which is that the Supreme Court has taken away a right from gay people that straight people have. The Supreme Court has stated that they believe in the equality of gays and straights in the strongest terms, yet they allow this unequality to divide them. This reminds me of separate-but-equal, which forced black people and white people into separate divisions, allowed more resources and opportunities for white people, and then had the gall to suggest that they were somehow equal.

One of the jarring images from that period were the water fountains, separated for whites and 'coloreds.' So, in that spirit, I bring to you this image, which I encourage you to print out, cut into strips, and paste over water fountains near you: