On Saturday evening - a few members of the press and a handful of AFI Festival organizers were sipping cocktails and kibitzing about the days events in the Cinema Lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel - when a disturbance outside caught our eye.
A rag-tag band of protestors - in support of Gay Marriage - stormed by in the streets angrily denouncing the passing of Proposition 8.
On their heels, a swarm of motorcycle cops and squad cars - manned by hard-jawed officers in riot gear - began to form an impenetrable barricade on the glitzy "Walk of Fame".
At first, onlookers surmised that the police were there to crack heads in the event the gay protestors got out of line.
However, when I stepped outside to determine the facts, passers-by assured me they were there to prevent "fag bashing".
As I trundled down the street to check my e-mail at the Internet cafe - a couple of ugly incidents around me - validated that argument.
Red-neck types were cruising the Hollywood streets in the vicinity shouting out car windows "Fu** you faggots".
As I hopped on the Internet at the PC outlet at La Brea and Sunset, I overheard some patrons muttering about the turn of events with disgust.
"Those faggots. They lost! When are they going to figure it out?"
I can't recall this kind of shocking conduct going down against Gays in a number of years in the streets of Hollywood proper.
Ironically - earlier in the day - I attended a screening for a small Independent Feature - "A Quiet Little Marriage" - at Mann's Chinese Theatre.
The film was a romantic little drama about a newly-wed heterosexual couple focusing on their wedded bliss, issues about child-rearing, and so forth and so on.
In essence, "Quiet Marriage" was about a nurturing union of two "souls", that a majority of voters in California appear to want to deny "gays".
Over the weekend, Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the fray and noted for the record, that he hoped Proposition 8 would be overturned by the Courts.
Shortly after the vote count was in on the eve of the November 4th election - supporters of the right for Gays to "marry" - sprang into action, too.
Anti-discrimination groups and bar associations have joined with 44 State Legislators in a bid to overturn the anti-gay marriage initiative made into Law last week by virtue of ballot.
A ban on same-sex marriage amounts to a sweeping revision of the State Constitution, some have argued, and is way beyond the scope it was intended to span.
"Proposition 8 threatens the permanent and abiding nature of the requirement that Laws must apply equally to all - the most basic principle of democratic government," it was noted in a letter to the court from the Anti-Defamation League, Asian Law Caucus, Bet Tzedek Legal Services, Japanese American Citizens, and the Public Counsel.
The issue continues to be a contentious one.
And, potentially explosive, too.
During the course of the drive by both sides to get their message out to the voters, a handful of individuals and businesses were threatened - according to eyewitnesses - that any position taken contrary to their own would result in retaliation.
Will the courts be able to resolve this thorny issue sometime in the near future?
David Kaczynski once opined:
"We've got to take back the ideal of justice, we've got to take back this principle of human dignity. We've got to take it back from vengeance, from hatred, we've got to say: look, we're all in this together. We are human beings."
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