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Hi, I'm just your average straight woman living across the United States in suburban Maryland and I care about California's Proposition 8. Enough to write about it, enough to donate money to help ensure that it doesn't pass, enough to ask you to do the same.
Why?
Because it's not truly about watering down the definition of marriage or what they may or may not teach in schools or same-sex relationships. This is about discrimination against a group of people.
For 2 1/2 years on my blog, I've played with the word inclusivity. Did you know this word came into the lexicon in 1939? I can't think of a less inclusive time in world history. How many dozens of countries participated in a war which at one root was about the desire to discriminate? And yet we created this word--inclusivity: the quality or state of being inclusive. It probably won't surprise you when you consider humanity's long and sordid history of discrimination to discover that the word exclusivity was invented first thirteen years earlier in 1926.
I strive for inclusivity because I can. Because I'm a human being and I can choose how I treat other people. We've taught our twins, "we want you to be kind because you can be and not mean because you can be." Because the power is always in their hands--how they'll treat another person, how they'll make another person feel, and how they'll give respect to all people and animals.
What do we teach our children with Proposition 8? That it's okay to change the Constitution if you feel like discriminating?
Proposition 8 is an initiative on the California ballot which is titled: "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry." The goal of the proposition is to change California's Constitution to remove the right of same-sex couples to marry and state that the only marriages recognized occur between a man and a woman. Yes, progressive California, the same state that struck down a 1948 law that would ban interracial marriage (the first time this was ever done in the US) is now moving to remove rights and ban same-sex marriages.
Why now? Well, this has been an ongoing battle in California, but the California Supreme Court ruled that Proposition 22 (remember that one, back from 2000?) was unconstitutional this past May. Proposition 22 stated that a marriage is between a man and a woman and the Supreme Court ruled that it violated the equal protection clause in the Constitution. In other words, the California Supreme Court whose job it is to uphold the Constitution of the state looked at the fact that a group was being singled out and having laws created that removed their rights and they said that it didn't honour the rules and principles decided upon by the people of California.
Here's the thing: you can't say you don't want discrimination and then have discrimination.
So, the point of this amendment is to change what the Constitution says. If it passes, the first Article will have a line that goes between the equal protection clause and the nondiscrimination in business clause that would read:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Frankly, this vote in California scares me.
Because once you start down that slippery slope of saying a group isn't protected under the Constitution, it opens the door for other groups to be discriminated against. And people have fought too long and too hard to have equal rights given to all citizens in America to move backwards towards restricting rights.
But what about civil unions? Why does it have to be marriage?
I'm glad you asked.
Marriage is recognized across state lines. In other words, even if my state has these marriage laws and your
