Saturday, November 8, 2008

I am sure that my fellow blogistas are just as disappointed about the passing of Proposition 8 in California as I am. In fact, I definitely cried about it. More than once. It was only compounded by the fact that the ballot measures banning gay marriage also passed in Arizona and Florida. Oh, and gay couples can't adopt children in Arkansas, because we all know that gay folks will corrupt the poor innocent little children in their care.

You all know that I'm an optimist and an idealist, but this was a major blow. It's hard to keep your head up when you face this kind of discrimination.

While browsing Feministing today, I came across this post about the Prop 8 aftermath. At least in California, people are not giving into this easily. You can read about all the protests in the post. At the end of the entry, there's a quote by a blogger named Pam:

"If victories make us complacent, it is our defeats that rally us to a new level of community and activism. We stood up after mortal blows from Anita Bryant pushing her anti-gay vitriol in Florida. We rallied to the bedside of Matthew Shephard in his family's time of tribulation. More recently, we re-committed our vows to protect our youngest members in the wake of the murder of Lawrence King by a fellow classmate. In the wake of the passage of Prop 8, we see now and will see another historic re-awakening of our community."

My response to that: Hell yeah!

3 comments:

Lady Audley said...

I've been pretty livid about this all week, for a number of reasons.

I'm going to set aside the issues of prejudice and hate that Twist has already talked about, and talk about this as a political issue. I'm also looking just at marriage here, not adoption.

Basically, we have here an example of passionate people with different values coming into conflict. We are not, as citizens of the US, required to have the same religious values, social values, taste in drapery, ethnic heritage, or romantic inclinations as our neighbors.

So, given all of that, we cannot say that there is one "American culture." The one thing, the ONLY thing that is common to all of us is our support of a system of governance, outlined in the Constitution.

And what happened in these votes is clearly a violation of the one thing we all believe in.

If marriage is a religious right, it CANNOT be legislated by the government.

If marriage is a civil right, it CANNOT be denied to the minority by the majority.

Either way, every American, whether you support gay marriage or not, should be indignant about what has been allowed to happen.

Rhetorical Twist said...

My dear Lady Audley, I could not have said it better myself.

I think I've been swinging between livid and galvanized this week...

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