Tags:change, civic duty, civil rights, discrimination, election, hope.
Yes, almost every single thing I wanted to happen with this election happened:
President-Elect Obama
Yes on 1A (high-speed rail)
Yes on 2 (humane treatment of farm animals)
No on 4 (forcible parental notification and waiting period for teen abortion)
No on 7 and 10 (poorly conceived and manipulative “energy-reform” propositions)
Yes on WW (restoration of state parks)
BUT (and it’s a BIG one),
Proposition 8 passed.
It passed.
I’d like to wail and wonder, “How could this happen?,” but, sadly, I know far too well how this could happen. Of course, it was soundly rejected by my home base, the Bay Area, and pretty much all up and down the California coast.
There are plenty of conservative, religious zealots in the Central Valley, though, and they think everyone should be forced to conform to their religious beliefs.
What about freedom of religion, you ask? Pshaw! Who needs it!
How about the separation of church and state? Sacrilege!
Why, don’t we live in a god-fearing christian country? Didn’t we add “under god” to our pledge of allegiance in the 1950s? Doesn’t it say “in god we trust” on our money? Don’t we still have a born-again christian for president for 3 more months?
I feel so, ugh, I don’t know…elated grim hopeful disgusted joyful depressed.
Some very dear friends of mine have been told they don’t count as much as Mark and I do because of their private, personal, completely loving and non-harmful to anyone, love lives.
Parents at Duncan’s school who volunteer in the PTA and act as room parents and willingly perform their civic duty have been told they are not deserving of the same rights that I have.
Friends, relatives, classmates, and many more people I don’t know, have been told they aren’t good enough to marry the ones they love.
Mark wisely pointed out that civil rights aren’t won in elections, they’re won in court.
That’s true, and lawsuits have already been filed.
Those couples who were married before the ban passed have been assured they would be “grandfathered in” and their marriages will still count.
The folks at No on Prop 8 have said that all the votes still haven’t been counted yet and there’s still hope. I want to believe them, but I fear it’s wishful thinking on their part. I guess time will tell.
So there you have it. The people have both renewed my faith and let me down.
That is, my peeps here in the Bay haven’t let me down, but narrow-minded people in other parts of the state and their fear and intolerance have betrayed us all.
When you start taking away civil rights, by constitutional revision no less, you head down a very slippery slope. Where does it end?
Let’s hope it’ll end very soon in the California Supreme Court.
But, YAY! Obama, still, you know?
There is still hope.
Tags:civic duty, civil rights, discrimination, election, marriage, vote.
and vote NO on Prop. 8 (if you haven’t already)!
(and thanks to the blog Touching an American Sky for informing me of this article)
Here’s one perspective on it (from a Christian minister, no less):
Published on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 by TruthDig.com
To This Minister, Prop. 8 Is Repugnant
As a minister for almost 30 years I have had the joy of performing many weddings. Ministers are called upon to participate in a variety of important moments in the lives of their people; none is more filled with joy than a wedding. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to perform same-gender wedding ceremonies with the blessing of my denomination, the United Church of Christ. But it wasn’t until recent months (June to be exact) that I was able to perform such weddings with the authority of the state of California.Since the state court ruling legalizing equal marriage in California, I have performed eight weddings for same-gender couples. Only one of them had not previously had some other kind of religious or social ceremony to celebrate their relationship. What I find most interesting is how important it is for couples, many of whom have been together for decades, to have the opportunity to be legally married. For most of us straight allies, the right to marry is so fundamental it is difficult to imagine what it would mean to be prohibited from marrying the person we love. Even more difficult to imagine is that the voters of California could conspire to negate my marriage of 25 years! And that brings us to the situation in which we find ourselves regarding Proposition 8, on Tuesday’s ballot in California.
The thousands of same-gender couples who have married in the few months since the California Supreme Court cleared the way are in fact married. The notion that a majority vote by people who are not party to these marriages of love, commitment, care and family will have the power to impose a divorce on these couples is flatly repugnant. The idea that those who wish to form relationships that will enhance their lives, provide a framework of support and nurture for their relationship, protect their families (especially their children) from uncertainty at the most vulnerable times in life (particularly illness and death) should be prohibited because of the religious feelings of some and the blatant bias of others strikes me as un-American.
It has often been noted that the Bill of Rights would have a difficult time passing today. The freedom of religion goes both ways. One is free to marry according to one’s faith (or personal beliefs) and others are free to marry according to their faith (or personal beliefs). As a minister of one of the oldest religious traditions in America (the Pilgrim Congregationalists are our ecclesiastical ancestors) I stand in the tradition of the freedom of conscience that was the basis not only of Protestantism but of democracy and liberty at the founding of the United States.
“The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice” are words made more famous by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the course of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It was his subtle way of warning those wedded to the ideology of segregation that they were not only inevitably wrong but that the world, despite their best efforts, would inevitably change. Many of the advances of the civil rights era were won at the bar of the court and not at the ballot box. It is sad to see black clergy of the megachurch movement, like Frederick Price of the Crenshaw Christian Center, sullying the moral authority of the black church by partnering with the right-wing evangelicals, Mormons and Knights of Columbus to pass Proposition 8. It is a travesty to see the proponents of Prop. 8 use children like human shields against any charge of homophobia that might rightly be leveled against them. They send out mailers and produce ads that use words like violated and child sacrifice in the same sentence with their protestations against gay marriage. The most ironic part of this unholy alliance is that removing discrimination against a class of people is at the heart of equal marriage. The proponents feel if they can leverage the symbol of the struggle against discrimination (black folks) they can blunt the edge of the argument for equal marriage.
I do pray that voters in California will get on the right side of justice and the right side of history on Tuesday. If Proposition 8 passes it will be a devastatingly painful affirmation of our culture’s capacity to inflict intentional harm on millions of persons whose only crime is a desire to live and love honestly. This time it is different from 2000 when Californians voted on Proposition 22, a measure to block same-sex marriage. Then, we had inherited a world in which these relationships were not recognized by law or custom. But now we have entered, although only recently, a brave new world in which all persons may live and love with equality before the law. To go backward would be a tragedy; not just for them but also for all of us who regard as more civilized a society that offers more and not less opportunity for meaningful, legitimate participation by all its citizens.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
The Rev. Madison Shockley is the minister of the Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, Calif. Originally ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he served churches in several states before joining the United Church of Christ in 1990.
Shockley writes commentary on a wide variety of subjects including race, religion, politics, education, reproductive choice and popular culture. His commentaries have been published in papers across the country, primarily in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.