So, amid my bliss over Obama’s election, I read the news a few minutes ago that California voters passed Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. Can’t I ever just get an all-around Good News Day????
Says Frank Schubert, co-manager of the Yes on 8 campaign: “People believe in the institution of marriage. It’s one institution that crosses ethnic divides, that crosses partisan divides…People have stood up because they care about marriage and they care a great deal.”
Nice try at making marriage sound like an inclusive, ecumenical institution – “crosses ethnic divides…crosses partisan divides” – but it doesn’t cross divides in sexual orientation, does it? I guess it’s not supposed to. People on our side of the divide are dirty and deviant, aren’t we?
Oh, and “crosses ethnic divides”: clever, au courant way of inviting minorities to come on board and hate us as much as you and your kind once hated them.
Naturally, the Schubert camp will invoke the Bible, which condones all manner of bigotry.
Oh, yes, the Yes voters “care about marriage…they care a great deal”: and that’s why their divorce rates are over 50%.
Why is the (supposedly) straight majority so bent on claiming marriage as their own? How does commitment within homosexual relationships detract from commitment within heterosexual relationships? Why are some willing to go so far as to “concede” the right to civil unions to us (like we should even have to ask) but not marriage, as though we have no purchase on the sanctified term? John Edwards was one. Look how much respect he showed for the very institution that he said he would refuse to extend to gays – and he was cheating the whole time he was taking this moral high-ground, while his wife was battling cancer.
Meanwhile as Proposition 8 revved up in California, Arkansas voters approved a ban on unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Supporters did not hide that gays and lesbians were their chief target.
So, even with the hope that an Obama tomorrow brings, it does not herald an end to inequities.
Tags: Barack Obama, Frank Schubert, gays, Proposition 8
November 5, 2008 at 7:43 pm |
So, how can you be against Prop. 8 and for Obama? He doesn’t support the right to marry who you want. He’s said so on numerous occasions. It seems incongruous.
November 5, 2008 at 7:47 pm |
Yes, and I took him to task for it in the following August blog:
http://streetlegalplay.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/selling-us-down-the-river-barack/
Barack is not perfect, as he has clearly shown.
November 8, 2008 at 9:06 pm |
This is a really delicate issue, and one in which the jury is still out for me personally. I understand the arguments of both sides and totally respect them. I do however; feel as though I am not totally against the ban either. Marriage as an institution has always been more symbolic than anything. And the root of it has always been in religion. Otherwise, two people could simply love one another and never feel the need to join in “Holy Matrimony”. It is as symbolic as circumcision is for Jews. Non-Jews began to participate once they recognized the health benefits of doing so, but as a practice, it was symbolic as a rites of passage in the Jewish faith. For a Homosexual to want to be married in the standard sense of the action is in my opinion, that orientation wanting to rewrite the rules that has governed the faith up to this point. Are Christians totally ethical and morally superior? Of course not! But to use that as an argument to totally let go all the foundational elements that has characterized its existence for the past 2000 years I think is an awfully aggressive move. And for people to believe that simply because a Black Man has been elected President is by any means an indication that the flood gates are opening up for every liberal minded view to take precedence is unrealistic and a little opportunistic at the same time. People should stop believing that because one doesn’t support Gay Marriage they must be totally against Homosexuality and wish to suppress another. Anytime you are dealing with matters of faith you are dealing with delicate territory and I think we should respect that and not try and turn everything into an issue of us against them. But that’s just my take on it.
November 8, 2008 at 10:35 pm |
With all due respect, Mr. Paul, you’re wrong.
There is both secular and religious marriage. I am not asking any church to revise its laws and begin performing same-sex marriage ceremonies. However, the state does grant heterosexual couples certain rights that it denies homosexual couples – plain and simple. I think you and these proponents on whom you confer such respect are lending the issue of marriage equality a complexity that it simply does not have. Many couples are married in front of the justice of the peace without any religious intervention. Marriage should not be defined as a religious institution nor should it be defined as exclusively (or exclusionarily) heterosexual institution.
Also, outlawing gay adoption? What does that imply about homosexual parents? That we’re immoral or morally inferior? Furthermore, if one partner bears the child, the other partner would have no rights to guardianship to that child. It’s asinine and unjust.
With regards to your contention that it is opportunistic to think that the floodgates are open for gay marriage simply because a black man has been elected president – agreed! Only, this particular black man has courted the gay community and told us he is our friend. He has gay friends and openly advocates gay rights. EXCEPT for marriage. He himself has held on to that exclusionary concept that a gay union simply is not up to the mark of marriage – a privilege only heterosexuals should enjoy.
While we’re on the subject, I hate the patronizing term “Tolerance.” Oh, you’ll TOLERATE us! How nice for so many Yes on 8’s to deign to tolerate us. “We’ve already decriminalized your behavior. Now you want more?!” Sadly, yes! I should be entitled to the same rights as you.
November 11, 2008 at 3:34 pm |
I agree Kyle, it’s really sad and tragic that this passed . . . and I agree with your post and comments . . . My husband & I eloped and were married in a private civil ceremony, and we STILL get all the benefits afforded by the state.