lizw

It's been an odd week to be 1,750 kilometres from home. (I got that number from the taxi driver who drove me to the station to begin my trek home, so don't quote me on it). I watched the news of Obama's victory come through on BBC Mobile in a bunk on a sleeper train from Paris to Munich. I cried. It felt weird having no-one to share that joy with - until the opening reception at the conference, where one of the delegates was wearing an Obama T-shirt, and suddenly everyone seemed to be crowding round to congratulate her. Whenever I wasn't in a conference hall, I watched wall-to-wall coverage of every conceivable angle of that victory on BBC World, ZDF, TF1 and TV5 in my hotel room for the next three days, and I cried again, several times.

djm4 texted me on Wednesday morning to let me know that Prop 8 had passed. I wouldn't have known from BBC Mobile or from the TV. It took until Saturday morning before BBC World mentioned it. When I left the hotel at noon on Saturday, it still hadn't mentioned any of the other anti-marriage ballots. None of the other channels mentioned them at all. BBC Mobile didn't have room for it either, despite finding several paragraphs to speculate on whether Kenyan goats were apprehensive of an Obama victory. So I was saddened, but not surprised to come home to find one of my gay friends has posted that he feels invisible. But "while we breathe, we hope", as Obama said in his acceptance speech.