On California’s Proposition 8
By Emily Rutherford - Nov 5th, 2008 at 2:32 pmI woke up to pictures of celebration in the Los Angeles Times that were very different from the live scenes of exuberance I witnessed last night. That’s because Proposition 8 passed in California by four percentage points, banning gay marriage in California and throwing into question the unions of several couples who have gotten married since May.
This is definitely an occasion to doubt the hippie idealism of California, to be upset and angry with all the people I know who voted yes on Prop 8. It’s an occasion to maybe feel guilty myself, that I didn’t work hard enough to defeat the initiative. Maybe if I had donated money, maybe if I had volunteered over the summer or when I was home for vacation, maybe if I had devoted more of my emotional resources to Prop 8 instead of the presidential election, discrimination would not be written into the California Constitution for the first time in its history.
But on the other hand, I think the tendency to mourn and wallow is misguided. Yes, it’s a terrible thing, but the fact is that this is just one battle in an ongoing fight for nondiscrimination. Not only is this just one step on the road to marriage equality, there are innumerable other ways in which progress needs to be made to secure full rights for LGBT folks in California and throughout the country. My feeling, as sad as the results of the election were in this case, is that we can’t stop for a minute before we begin the next step of the fight.
I think that many people saw Barack Obama’s victory as the culmination of everything the Civil Rights Movement fought for. It gave many people hope that the discrimination they or their parents suffered in their lifetimes would no longer be an issue for their children or grandchildren. The parallels between racial equality and LGBT equality are very strong, and at the risk of being overly optimistic, I think this is an indication that perseverance and determination can result, before long, in the triumphant victory of freedom and equality.
That’s part of your problem. You read the Los Angeles Times.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:32 pm