Grey's Anatomy star T.R. Knight spent Election
Day volunteering for No on 8, standing 100 feet away from
poling places handing out palm cards and urging people
to vote against the same-sex marriage ban. Here he
recounts the well-wishers who brought cookies and
cheered from cars and the Prop. 8 supporters who yelled
and spat -- one even got violent. But Knight says all
he ultimately felt was sadness when Prop. 8
passed.
Tuesday, 4 a.m.
The alarm on my
cell phone wakes me with that annoying ring. Not the most
pleasant way to start the day; I keep forgetting to change
it. But I was wide awake. After a quick shower and
throwing on clothes while playing “don’t
wake the boyfriend,” I was out on the road driving
toward Santa Monica. My day of volunteering at the
polls for No on Proposition 8 had begun.
We all met
shortly after 6 a.m. to get our polling place assignments
and to be matched up with fellow volunteers. Having
agreed to be a team captain, I was questioning my
leadership ability in light of my sometimes
pathological shyness. That is, until I saw my friend Melissa
Fitzgerald. Besides being a wonderful actress, she is
also fiercely political, smart as a whip, and a
natural-born leader. She had just flown in to work on
this campaign (she was working for Obama until she saw how
close this race was), and by coincidence, we showed up
at the same place. We joined up with a guy named
Nathan and we were off to our first polling location.
Nathan also
turned out to be a political phenom, and thankfully they
both led by example. We introduced ourselves to the
polling supervisor and informed them we would respect
the required 100 feet distance from the polling place.
We then held our signs high and passed out our palm cards.
The three of us, two straight, one gay, working together to
help inform people about protecting civil rights.
And that is what
we did, we volunteers, all day. I had two more shifts at
two more polling locations. We worked until the polls closed
at 8 p.m. What will remain most in my memory from
those hours are the extreme reactions from both sides.
The man who
screamed “Homos and lesbians!” as he drove by,
the older man who shouted at me to go back to West
Hollywood (I live in Los Feliz), the woman who called
us “abominations,” the man who spat on the
palm card we had handed him. There was a man who
attacked a young female volunteer of ours at a nearby
polling place at a Catholic church, shoving and
pushing her and ripping up her palm cards. Every single
supporter of Prop. 8 was so filled with anger and bile
as they voiced their "support" to us, with the
exception of one older gentleman, who engaged us in a
very civil conversation.
One person in
over 13 hours.
All of that was
countered by the many straight families who were very
vocal in their support of No on 8. The young man who joined
us while on break from work (holding a sign he had
downloaded from his computer), another guy who brought
us cookies and juice in the morning, the husband and
wife who brought us cappuccinos at nightfall, the drivers
who honked in support (when others weren’t
flippin’ us the bird), and the woman who
hollered from her car, “Thank you for fighting for
our family.”
As we packed up
for the evening the news came in. It looked as though
Obama would be our next president. As my boyfriend and I
drove home (he had joined us, even though he was sick
as a dog), we listened to McCain concede the race. We
made it to the television set just in time to witness
the beautiful, truly awesome sight of the first family
making their appearance on that Chicago stage. We
heard a president-elect mention gay people in his
acceptance speech. A night of many firsts.
But then the news
of Proposition 8.
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