2009-02-14: Do they really know what they are doing?
by Emily
Prop 8 passed in California, and if not overturned may nullify 18,000 marriages that took place there. How on Earth can this be happening?
http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/divorce
2009-02-14 04:41:43 Vincent
Half of the money spent promoting Prop 8 was spent by Mormons.
If anybody wants to see me in a scripture-quoting rage - serious, I will quote scripture - mention Prop 8 to me in person.
I know you've heard this a zillion times Emily but I can't not say it again: 100 years ago, my Mormon great-grandparents went to Mexico and to jail for the sake of their illegal marriages. That Mormons have become the oppression they once suffered ... well, they aren't the first, but it gets me in a genuine state. I mean, it takes an awful lot to get me quoting scripture.
(And, Mormons? When someone like me would call you to remember Christ, that's a bad sign.)
2009-02-14 18:48:18 Brand Robins
I feel betrayed. I feel loss. It makes me angry and it makes me want to cry.
There is a line for me, that makes little sense. But last time the gay marriage issue came up in California and the Church urged folks to vote against it, I wasn't happy. But it also wasn't a violent rupture inside myself. It was people voting to keep people from becoming a family, and I felt that was wrong—I felt the government shouldn't have say in it, nor should any church have say over the lives of those who weren't members of the church. It made me mad, but it didn't do this.
This time its different. Its worse. It wasn't a vote to prevent something from happening, it wasn't a vote to protect the members of the church or bishops from being sued or whatever crap they used to sell it. It was a vote to nullify families. It was a vote to crush a way of life. It was a vote to stop something that was already a granted right.
It was exactly the same vote that took away my ancestors rights, that ruptured the Church of my fathers and has resulted in terror and heresy and bigamist cults that persist to this day. It is a violation. It is the same violation. And this time we did it. What was done to us we have now done unto others, in exactly the opposite of the Golden rule.
I do not understand. I see my brother on his blog carrying a Prop 8 sign and I do not understand. We used to talk about this: about our family's history and the separation of church and state, about the ongoing struggle of it, about the ways in which the church used to be a radical force, a force of change. There was a point at which the Church was communist in all but name, for Gods sake. And now my brother is carrying a Prop 8 sign and I do not understand.
2009-02-15 03:38:14 Emily
What you guys say is telling. It is ripping families apart, even among those supposedly benefiting from the measure.
I just saw the movie Milk, which is very timely. It charts the rise of gay rights in opposition to Anita Bryant's movement which mirrors the current actions. Though in the 70s, the measures were about making it illegal for queer folk to be teachers—such a clear violation of civil rights. It's ironic that the Prop 8 campaign manipulated those same fears, using the idea that if gay and lesbians marriages were supported legally that teachers would teach small children that it's okay to be gay. (As if it isn't, but..) The same fears get peddled year after year.
There are two bills in the CA congress now to invalidate Prop 8. I think the premise of both is that the initiative revised the state constitution structurally, by denying rights to one set of people that are allowed to others. Think about it, that is one hell of a slippery slope. Since that changes the principle of equal rights under the law, the argument is that it is a revision, which needs to orginate in the legislature and can't be done by referendum. Referendums can only add amendments. If Prop 8 is overturned, this could be a great precedent to set for all civil rights.
2009-02-25 05:47:03 Tobias Wrigstad
Thanks for the link.
Also, this reminded me to revisit the Doubt is a homosexual game issue.