Election Night 2008 is being hailed as the birth of post racial America, yet for all the strides made by our new president, the night was marred by three punishing blows for the rights of gays and lesbians to live and love in matrimony with their partners in Arizona, California and Florida.
In the Golden State, Prop 8 passed by 52 percent of the vote. Driven by some $20 million in donations by affiliates of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who a letter in June to each of its churches, asking members to “do all you can to support” the proposition by donating “your means and time,” to insure that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for His children.”
I find this rather narrow interpretation of the holy bond of matrimony ironic given that the last time the Church faced a constitutional question on the issue, it packed up the store and moved from Nauvoo, Illinois to the Great Salt Lake.
Prop 8 is a stunning aberration in California’s legal history, the codification of bigotry and fear into one of our foundational documents and the wholesale disenfranchisement of a vital part of our community.
With exit polls showing up to 70% of black voters backing Prop. 8, it also shows that we’re far from the founding of a rainbow nation, even on a night when an African American managed to overcome a huge obstacle on the 400-year old path to freedom.
To deny legal status to same sex love here in California is antithetical to the arc of our history, which has embraced the outsider long before our founding in 1850. Just go Google Emperor Norton.
What’s even more disturbing about the victory of the marriage amendment is that it was predicated on the values of Christianity, and couched in the language of preserving the nuclear family.
Frankly speaking, the true threat vectors to familial love are not questions of plumbing, but temperament. I fear the angry and drunk father, or the abusive mother of any orientation much more than the love and affection of two daddies or mommies.
To sublimate the obvious love between many gay and lesbian couples, that differs not one iota from the one shared by my parents or myself is a denial of our humanity and an affront to the civil and human rights of our fellow citizens. As Gandhi so elegantly put it, “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”
With the support of Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and several legal challenges to Prop 8, this debate is far from over, but the fact that it is still a debate is thoroughly depressing.
Reopening the closet is not an option and neither is denying the existence of love in all its wondrous forms. Repression and bigotry are not family values, they are not religious values and they just aren’t intelligent.
It’s my sincere hope that this year’s electoral aberration, when overthrown, will fade into the historical mists to join other ill-conceived legal actions like Dred Scott or the Briggs Initiative, which sought the power to fire gay school teachers and their supporters in an ill conceived attempt to protect children from sexual predators.
Prop 8 didn’t win by much, and is proof that despite this setback, the gay rights movement is never going away and it’s goals, which seemed so bold at Stonewall, will be accepted by our children as self-evident, just as my generation accepts women in the workplace and embraces a multiracial society.
I’m going to leave the last word to another of history’s confirmed bachelors, Jesuha of Nazareth. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” – Matthew 7:21-23
Paul M Davis
5 Comments
Chanda
I am so sick of this whole “post-racial” America thing, especially since plenty of racism has come out of the gay community since Proposition 8 passed.
12 Nov 2008 10:11 am
Peter Koht
True that Chanda, but I needed a lede. gawd i’m pissed about 8
14 Nov 2008 03:11 am
MIchelle
I still don’t understand the whole ballot measure concept. If the California supreme court said that gay marriage is legal, why should the voters even be allowed to overturn it? I don’t know specifically in CA, but nationally, isn’t the one of the duties of the supreme court to make sure a minority isn’t being tyrannized by the majority? Where would racial integration be now if separate-but-equal was put to a state-by-state vote back in the sixties?
14 Nov 2008 03:11 pm
Elaina
So, measure 8 was designed to change the text of the state constitution. Thus the court ruling is irrelevant because they were interpreting constitutionality based on the old constitution. Miraculously, a simple majority is sufficient to change the State constitution in California….but, seriously, why is family life regulated by the state?! My fear is that we are fighting for the wrong thing: we should demand that no special privileges be awarded based on marital status, rather than demanding those same privileges for stable, monogamous queer couples. Mmm, lose battle either way. Grumble.
15 Nov 2008 12:11 am
MIchelle
Aha, thanks Elaina. Your point is interesting too. One of my favorite professors recently made the argument that even when equality is achieved, single people ultimately get the shaft, i.e. why do you have to be in a state-sanctioned relationship to get tax breaks?
19 Nov 2008 05:11 pm
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