professional development and Prop. 8

Saturday I went to TFA's professional development. For the last two hours, I was with the group of people that I've spent all my time with for the last 18 months. By this time, we know each other really well. Because we've had to introduce ourselves to each professor in our GMU classes, everyone knows where I'm from, what my home life was like, where I went to school, what I've studied, what I like to do, a few random facts, and of course, the pervasive question of why I joined Teach For America. They also know that I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that my beliefs are relatively quite conservative.

Anyway, while we were working, the topic of Proposition 8 came up. Several members of this group are openly homosexual, and the discussion became a venting session about Prop. 8. Everyone was pulling up youtube videos bashing Prop. 8 and organizing carpools to the protest on Prop. 8 that was going on at the capitol that afternoon. I didn't say much, mainly because everyone already knew where I stood on the issue, and engaging them in battle wasn't going to change anyone's opinions. Any comments I would have made would have been taken as a personal offense by those who were homosexual and would have only created more antagonism. No one attacked me, either, for which I was grateful, but I left feeling exhausted and defeated, as though I had been arguing with them for the last two hours. It took a while for me to get recentered, and I'm so grateful for the gospel, which offers truth for those willing to receive it, and which no unhallowed hand can stop - not even my colleagues who feel that Prop. 8 is, in mild terms, a disgrace and an unjustice.