This post will not be an blame game and I apologize if my earlier post hurt anyone's feelings. But I envisioned today, a day if Proposition 8 passed, and I thought what I would feel and how friends I knew would feel. And I thought I would feel angrier, but really I just feel a great sense of dissappointment and loss. President Barack Obama and the millions of people who voted for him made history today. Yet, I can't help but think this election year was another case of "one step forward, two steps back" for gay marriage.
I can't help but feel that it was a combination of messy advertisements, word of mouth, and possibly bad wording for the proposition. I can envision some people thinking "oh yes on 8 means I support gay marriage!". Marriage is a privilege. A privilege that I have (and everyone should they choose to marry someone of the opposite sex). Yet, this privilege has now been restricted to a certain section of society.
Don't tell me that is not discrimination.
A friend mentioned that "marriage" itself is a messy term with religious affiliations. This is true, but the word marriage also has social and cultural affiliations. And like it or not, marriage also has perks. A blogger on a website called "right pundits" (suprisingly enought, right?) states:
With both fits and starts, the long history of mankind is one of more and more individual liberties. A ban on gay marriage would be a fit rather than a start.And that is because without gay unions in some form, same sex couples do not share the same societal perks and handouts from the government. Those who think that an equal standing with married couples can be obtained through contractual arrangement make a disingenuous argument or are simply uninformed. Just as one small example among many, social security survivor benefits are available to married spouses but not unmarried domestic partners. “Marriage” means something in the law.
One can argue that these perks, most of them wasteful government handouts, should not exist at all. I tend to agree, but exist they do and so everyone should be entitled to the same line at Big Brother’s wasteful pork window. (1)
It is the question of those marriage rights and not the challenge to marriage rites- which is at stake. And argue if you will, but marriage within the government is NOT a religious institution (or shouldn't be at least). Why? Because a person who is an atheist can get married.
Now, what is difficult is to separate ideas of religious marriage and government marriage. But again I challenge you to think - if an atheist can get married, is it not about religion. Just at Prop 8 is not about the "gay" part of gay marriage so much as the "marriage rights" part. Florida and Arizona and other states have struck down gay marriage. But look at Arkansas, who voted to ban adoption for unmarried couples. UNmarried. And it didn't say heterosexual or homosexual couples - it said ALL couples who are unmarried. That means unmarried people who have been with each other for 10, 20, 30 years, but do not have a marriage will be unable to adopt.
And so the discrimination continues. And look, it's not just affecting gay people either.
I will concede that gay marriage and Proposition 8 really isn't just about marriage. I am now going to address the elephant in the room that No on Prop. 8 supporters really haven't addressed. In fact they have said that Prop. 8 ISN'T about this, but in fact is really is the cornerstone to supporters of Yes on Prop. 8. It's about heterosexism and homophobia (to quote a infosheet I once made at the Gender Equity Resource Center). That is that marriage (and a lot of other government rights) should be for heterosexual (straight) people ONLY. And the other layer of people being uncomfortable with homosexuality in general.
However, no matter how you feel about homosexuality- it is not a government's place to mete out rights to certain sections of society. You can be racist, homophobic, heck even a satanist but that should not be reflected in the government. As the previous article indicated what is important to Americans is our FREEDOM to have our individual rights. And those rights and that freedom is not available for homosexuals.
Once the government curtails these freedoms - it gives people the freedom to discriminate and commit heinous acts of violence. I think of the murders of people just because they happen to be gay in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or I think of people protesting at these same people's marriage- a murdered person doesn't even get the respect for a peaceful burial. That's the sick underbelly and the results you can't see when you vote on a law.
Anti miscegenation laws prevented interracial marriage. And these laws were based on concepts of racism. Because these laws merely reflected other's racism and bigotry there were riots, murders, and all around violence. We had a period of civil instability. It tooks years and years of pain, protests, and violence against those who fought for civil rights to overturn these laws and many others.
I can't help but smile my ironic smile and think a little ruefully that maybe we were asking for too much. No, we aren't asking for too much (to those who voted no on Prop. 8), but what we were asking for - other people aren't ready to accept. Afterall, it took 42 years after the Civil Rights Act to elected Barack Obama into presidency (it also took - a failed war and a broken economy).
I urge people not to give up.
In percentages it was 52 to 48 percent with a yes majority. Which means that odds are only slightly in favor of Yes on 8 supporters.
I'll take that.
In the media, it said that everyone would be looking toward California to create a state platform into a national one (2). Which means that the battle for gay marriage has lost, but we have yet to win the war.
------
1 http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=2328
2 http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20081105-9999-lz1n5marriage.html
No comments:
Post a Comment