Crunch Time on California’s Prop 8

October 27, 2008

Next Tuesday is Election Day. In California the political ads on the radio and TV are less about the Presidential candidates than on several major state-wide measures. The one that has the full attention at our household is Proposition 8, which if passed, will eliminate the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry by amending the California Constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Similar measures are on ballots in Florida and Arizona. The difference in California is that in May of this year the California Supreme Court struck down a ban on same-sex marriage finding that marriage was a basic right afforded to all citizens of the state. Since that ruling several thousand gay couples, D and myself included, have legally married.

I’ve already blogged on this issue in the following posts:

• This Should End Any Doubt She is My Better Half
• Equal Under the Law is a Sweet Thing
• Going to the Chapel of Love…Again
• The Surprising Situation of State-Sanctioned Spouses
• Perhaps It Was the Best for Both of Us: An Encounter with a Yes on 8 Handbill
• Chance Encounters of the Restorative Kind

Up until now I’ve approached Prop 8 as I normally do in most of my blogging and that’s through personal story. Today I want to change things up a little and address it directly because not only are we getting close to crunch time with Election Day being this coming Tuesday but this girl is fed up with the lies and mean-spirited tactics being used by “Yes on 8″ organizations in their attempt to win.

Over the past several months D and I have made several financial contributions to the No on Prop 8 campaign. We’ve shown up for the Marriage Equality Bridge Walk and I’m intending to participate in several visibility events between now and Election Day. On Sunday I addressed our congregation on Prop 8 by sharing your comments about what marriage equality in California has meant to you. I’ve got the bumper stickers, the buttons and the tee shirt. Still it’s not enough and so tomorrow I’ll be participating with other bloggers on Write to Marry Day to say one more time…

• If you live in California get to the polls next Tuesday and vote NO on Prop 8!
• If you live in California smack a bumper sticker on your car or a button on your flannel shirt.
• If you care about equality, whether you’re GLBTQ or straight, call or email your California friends and family and tell them that Prop 8 is unfair and wrong!
• Make a donation (and no, it’s not too late to give and make a difference!)
• And then when you’ve done everything else you can do, pray as people of faith that in California, Arizona and Florida, justice and equality will win the day.

Oh but wait. I’m going to blog about that all tomorrow on Write to Marry Day so what does that leave me to blog about today?

I know.

On Saturday D and I were out on errands and noticed a gathering of about 30 “Yes on 8″ supporters near the freeway on ramp chanting “Yes on 8! Yes on 8!” while waving signs adored with their painfully familiar graphic. And can we just talk about the graphic for a minute? Supposedly the image represents the traditional family, comprised of children parented by one mother and one father. This is the ideal family that will be afforded protection by the passage of Prop 8, but since this ideal family presently represents less than 14% of all households in California I’m left to wonder: Could it be possible that other issues such as poverty, domestic abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction, child abuse and neglect, lack of education, and infidelity have contributed to such a low statistic or does this only confirm that the hundreds of same-sex couples legally married in the past five months all skipped their honeymoons and got right to work destroying the traditional family?

Okay, that was all an aside. Let me get back into the story. So we passed these folks and a few minutes later when the next errands on our list were about to lead us back in the same direction I asked D to take an alternate route so we could avoid crossing their path again, and so we went three miles down the road only to pass in front of the second string of “Yes on 8″ supporters who were positioned at a corner where we had to stop for a traffic light. Waiting for the light to turn green I had the chance to read all the signs and posters they were holding. Which in turn required that I sit on my hands while tasting blood from clamping my teeth down on my tongue.

Here’s the thing. I’ve already heard all the lies and distortions of truth they’ve been passing off on their TV spots but there was something about seeing those lies only a few yards away and in my town that brought the ugliness far too close to home. And what were the lies?

“Yes on 8 = Religious Freedom!”

Excuse me? This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, Proposition 8 has nothing to do with religious freedom. Religious freedom is protected under the first Amendment which is why the state can’t interfere when the Catholic Church denies communion to legally divorced individuals, protects the right of extremist churches to preach White Supremacy and anti-Semitic messages, and would not impose requirements on clergy to officiate at same-sex marriages or force churches to conduct same-sex marriages in their building. No church would ever lose their tax-exempt status for maintaining their religious convictions in this matter. This is a civil issue dealing explicitly with equality under the law. Either all California citizens have the same rights and protections under the law or they do not. All Prop 8 would do is write discrimination into the California Constitution and that has nothing to do with religious freedom.

Secondly, I understand that a large number of people supporting Prop 8 are people of faith. Faith-based organizations including Focus on the Family and the Mormon Church have fueled the “Yes on 8″ campaign from the start both in financial backing and rhetoric. What these folks fail to recognize is that numerous faith-based organizations, congregations and temples, and clergy from every faith tradition have rallied in equal support against Prop 8 and so it’s ridiculous to suggest that a yes vote has anything more to do with religious freedom than would a no vote.

While Prop 8 isn’t a religious issue, as a person of faith my faith influences all aspects of my life, including my political views, so as a Christian do I believe Jesus would encourage his followers to limit equality under the law for anyone? Give me a couple minutes to think about that and NO!

Seems I didn’t need a couple minutes to think about it after all.

Related Resources:

• California Clergy Speak Out Against Prop 8 – Video
• To Have and To Hold: Faith Leaders for Marriage Equality – Video
• List of Faith-Based Organizations Opposed to Prop 8
• Opinion in the Ventura County Star by Rabbi John Sherwood of Oxnard

“Yes on 8 Protects Our Children!”

Oh stop it already! Prop 8 has nothing to do with children and should Prop 8 be defeated it will have no change on what is currently being taught in public schools. All that Prop 8 is concerned with is stripping gay and lesbian Californians of the rights and protections of legal marriage they presently have under the law. Period. Claiming that Yes on 8 protects children ignores the hundreds of children who by its passage would be sent the clear and painful message that their families don’t count and are inferior to the families of their classmates. Supporters of Prop 8 further claim that should Prop 8 be defeated children would be taught about same-sex marriage in schools against their parents wishes. A current TV spot supporting Prop 8 cites as an example the recent case of a class room of children who were taken on a field trip to San Francisco City Hall to witness the wedding of their lesbian teacher. What they fail to mention in their ad is that all the parents were given the opportunity to opt-out of having their child participate and in fact, two children were opted out of the field trip by their parents and joined another class at school during the outing. The children who went on the field trip went with their parent’s approval. California law prohibits that any child can be forced to be taught anything about family issues and health at school that goes against their parents wishes so stop using children and their education to win votes based on fear and ignorance of truth.

Related Resources:

• No Prop 8 TV Ad featuring the California Superintendent of Schools – Video
• California Teachers Association Opposes Prop 8 – Official Site
• Editorial in the LA Times: A Lesson on Prop 8
• Vote No On 8 – Protect These Children – Video
• Parents Demand Their Children Be Removed from Yes on 8 Campaign Ad – Video and Article

“Yes on 8 Restores Marriage!”

Let’s go over this one more time. The growing divorce rate in this country existed long before a single gay or lesbian couple was afforded legal marriage under the law and so if the “Yes on Prop 8″ folks are really so concerned with restoring marriage then I’d like to offer my 10 Suggestions for Defending the Sanctity of Marriage. Feel free to pass this list along to your “Yes on 8″ friends and family. I’m sure you have a few.

1. Tend to your own family.
2. Do not cheat on your spouse.
3. Pay attention to your children.
4. Prioritize and see if your family comes in somewhere above work, sports, and me time.
5. Be more respectful, thoughtful and attentive to your opposite gender spouse.
6. Play with your kids. Hug them. Tell you you love them.
7. If you are abusive in anyway to your wife, husband or children, stop it.
8. If you have a substance abuse problem, seek help.
9. Do not get a divorce. This is worth repeating. Do not get a divorce.
10. And when you have your own marriage and family shored up, take some action to end poverty, homelessness, and illiteracy for the sake of families everywhere.

Marriage equality strengthens marriage and families. Do I really need to say more about this?

Okay. I feel better now and maybe if I’m lucky one of my local “Yes on 8″ sign-wavers will Google themselves here, which would be ironic considering this. If that doesn’t happen then I’m just here preaching to the choir but what a lovely choir you are! At the very least this should hold me until I head out later this week to take my turn at waving my own sign: “Vote No on Prop 8! It’s Unfair and Wrong!”

[There are dozens of bloggers and websites that have been on this from the beginning and where you can find valuable information and resources that are far more informative and interesting than my fervent ramblings on this topic. A few I recommend include Good As You, Queers United, Lavender Newswire, 365 Gay, No on Prop 8, and Mormon's For Marriage, but again that's only a few.]

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Posted in Marriage, News and Events