This is the image I’ll always remember from election night 2008.

A gay man standing outside the grand ballroom of the St. Francis Westin hotel in San Francisco. He had one finger to his ear to block out the hubbub inside, and an Iphone clamped to the other.
“Honey” he was yelling into the phone. “I cried. When Obama spoke I cried.”

Inside the ballroom everyone was glued to a giant TV screen where Prop 8 looked like it was passing. 57 % yes, 46% no. On the stage politicians, incumbents and the newly-elected had been trying to keep hope alive. Mayor Gavin Newsom was telling the crowd that whatever happened in California they were on the right side of history. Now the politicians were gone and everyone was milling around the huge room waiting for the numbers to shift.

But in the end, if we could only get one, I am glad we got the big one. If Obama had lost and same-sex marriage had won that would have been just the scraps of victory.

I have friends who have never volunteered for anything before who took the BART down to Fremont to hand out fliers to commuters during rush hour. I have friends, who cannot even vote, who spent their weekends sticking No on 8 posters in Indian supermarkets and grocery stores. That required not insignificant courage. Mothers of gay friends, who had always shied away from the limelight, came out in their community, putting their faces on posters, to protect their son and son-in-law’s marriage. That doesn’t happen easily in “traditional”communities.

When Barack Obama strode onto the stage to give his speech a friend messaged me from Mumbai. . It was as if there was a kind of whoosh heard all over the world – the sound of millions of people, who had been holding their breath, finally exhaling.

I messaged my friend back in Mumbai – President Barack Hussein Obama, Wow!

For one brief moment it seemed the country was uncynical. Jesse Jackson’s tears. The puppy for the little girls. Even John McCain’s concession. Nothing seemed calculated. In an election dominated by Saturday Night Live, it finally felt real.

It wasn’t about being clever. Or witty. Or smart. It was just wonderful to feel heard. Those thousands who marched against a war that happened as if they had never marched at all. The lonely angry wet people who I saw marching in the Mission on a wet night in November four years ago when Kerry lost. All those friends on Facebook who lied and made Hussein their middle name as if lighting some little virtual candle of solidarity. All those people finally felt heard.

As I walked down the streets of downtown San Francisco, there were long lines at the pizza joint. The crowds at Union Square were hollering and shouting though the night was getting cold. People smiled at strangers, giving each other a thumbs up. Cars were honking.
Everyone was twittering, texting, calling.

Friends were messaging each other from around the world.
It felt like New Year’s Eve.

My friend said “Tonight would be perfect if we could win this one too.”
That’s true.

And though as I go to bed it’s too early to call Prop 8 one way or the other the man outside the ballroom summed it up best for me.

“Honey I cried.”

Not for Prop. 8.

But for Barack Obama.