Painfully bittersweet

Last night I cheered Barack Obama's historic victory and toasted him with champagne. This morning I'm overwhelmed by pain.

Voters in Arizona and Florida banned marriage equality. Voters in Arkansas denied lesbians, gays and single heterosexuals the right to foster children and adopt. And most horrific of all, it looks like voters in California are taking the right to marry away from lesbian and gay couples.

To put this into perspective...

* If the Arkansas ban had been the law in Kansas when my life partner died of cancer, I would never have been able to adopt the son I had raised. Because she was his biological parent and I was invisible under the law, he would have lost both parents because of the death of one.

* Nearly 20,000 same-sex couples in California no longer know whether their marriages are legal. And the children of all same-sex couples throughout this nation woke up this morning to once again learn that their families are reviled.