We still have some progress to make.

We've elected the first black president of the United States, in the face of some lingering racism in many parts of the country. We elected the right choice for president based on policies, looking past skin color, which speaks volumes for how far we've come from the Jim Crow laws that once separated races in buses, schools, drinking fountains, and marriage.

We can look back at that time and stand in awe of how bigoted this society once was, and how difficult it was to live as a dark-skinned person in the midst of laws limiting many basic rights, based on nothing but ignorance and insidious hatred.

How far we've come since then! But unfortunately, ignorance and bigotry and hatred are far from dead in this country, even in relatively progressive states like California. Of course, it's nothing new to say that these societal cancers aren't dead (they won't ever fully go away), but I thought - naively - that they were far enough gone to at least live in a state where intolerance is no longer tolerated.

Thanks to a combination of bigotry and dirty tactics by those unashamed bigots, California Proposition 8 has passed, which eliminates the right of same-sex couples to get married. It adds a single sentence to the California constitution: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

People who see that this proposition has nothing to do with "protecting" marriage and everything to do with those despicable views that "different" equals "immoral" have had discrimination foisted on them and written into California's constitution. People who believe that civil rights should never be taken away because of the way people "feel" about gay marriage have been betrayed.

Some may think that we must respect all views equally - that all views deserve respect simply for being views. Should we then respect racism? Sexism? Of course not. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is no different whatsoever from discrimination based on race, and anyone who argues otherwise is delusional. Think about the Separate but Equal laws of the past. "Separate but Equal" was found to be inherently unequal and unconstitutional. How is the right to marry any different?

California, and many other states (Arkansas, for one, passed a ballot measure outlawing gay couples from adopting children) are a disgrace to American progress.

But there's still hope. Just as time and daylight have washed us of most of our previous bigotry, it will continue to cleanse us and improve our society so that following generations will look back in amazement at a time when people against gay rights could show their faces without shame. It's only a matter of time.

I will never stop fighting for equal rights. I will never give up on this front. And I will never respect those people who would taint our modern society with their backward morals and ignorance.

As for now, I'm ashamed to be a Californian.