And some of you, no doubt, are celebrating the fact that you've driven one more lesbian away from your state. That you've managed to keep your precious bubble of sanctimoniousness and anti-Christian hatred in place for another year, or two, or five.

But believe me when I say this: There are enough of you North Carolina voters who did not vote to exclude me that you majority who did? Your days are numbered. You are on the wrong side of history. You are on the wrong side of God's love. You are on the wrong side, period.

I've thought a lot about what home is, in part because I've never felt entirely at home anywhere in my life. My family moved constantly. Every house was temporary. Every move was fraught. Two places, though, were home: Grandmama's house and the beach cottage. Those two places had something very important connecting them. They were places where I felt utterly and completely safe, and where I knew that I was loved unconditionally.

Voters in North Carolina who voted against not just the recognition of marriage for people like me, but also for any sort of legal protections? You just told me that I will never feel safe, never feel unconditionally loved in North Carolina again. You just told me that I am not a fully realized person in your eyes.

I had hoped it wouldn't come to this. See, whenever the majority is allowed to vote on the rights of the minority, democracy is turned on its head. It's subverted and used for evil. I had, though, deep in my heart where I barely acknowledged it, hope. Hope that North Carolina would not become yet one more state in the modern confederacy. One more state where some people are more equal than others. One more state where discrimination against people like me - who are in so many ways so very privileged (white, middle class) - is upheld as moral. Excuse the language, but how is discrimination ever fucking moral?

I follow the teachings of Christ. I try my very best to live by the commandments Christ gave as the two most important: To love God, and to love others. I fully admit that tonight? After being told that because of who I am, I and people like me are not worth the same legal protections as everyone else, I am having a very hard time with the second part. It seems that a majority of voting North Carolinians never even tried.

From a legal standpoint, the vote is bullshit. The founders of our country thought that it was important enough to say in our Constitution that no religion should be established by the state. And that's what this amendment tries very hard to do - to make one set of religious beliefs superior to all others. And you know what? From a religious standpoint, it's bullshit, too. Christians happily overlook the parts of the Bible that endorse slavery (or that say not to eat shellfish, or to stone one's non-virgin daughter, or to hide menstruating women away because they're unclean). But you take a handful of verses out of context and you tell me that I am by definition evil? Fuck that. It's lazy theology. And - more importantly - IT SHOULD HAVE NO PLACE IN THE LAW OF THE LAND.

I'm grateful that in my adopted state, I can't be fired for who I am. I can get married to any consenting adult I choose. I can't be kicked out of my house. I can't be denied health care. I can be myself.

But North Carolina? You were the first place I found home. Maybe the only place I've ever found the safety and love that a home makes. And you just broke my heart.