Pollys last blog post..Breaking: Court will hear challenges to Prop 8*

I am so glad you wrote about this Casey, since like others, you were the “token” Mormon I first thought of, too. I had an email open to you for weeks, but never finished writing it, since I didn’t want to “tokenize” you. But I knew you to be of good heart.

So many folks upthread on the comment stream here have repeated falsehoods about the proposition, but then many others have corrected them. And then the falsehoods come back again. I am very fatigued over the whole thing, and saddened. Very. Doesn’t seem worth it anymore to repeat what *I* believe to be the truth, when the falsehoods are so powerful.

Still, I have to say:

(1) We are currently goverend by a constitutional republic, not a direct democracy, and the court’s job is to interpret the constitution, regardless of majoritarian sentiment. (Folks should look up all those terms on Wikipedia — constitutional republic, direct democracy, majoritarian — if any seem unfamiliar.)

(2) In 1964 Californians voted on a proposition (Prop 14) 2:1 to overturn the Rumford Fair Housing Act (which ensured landlords and realtors couldn’t deny people housing on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status). Two to one. That’s a lot more than the less than 500,000 votes that cleared Prop 8. (For non-Californians: 500,000 votes = a mere 1.3% of our state’s population.) Back in 1967, the CA Supreme Court found proposition 14 to be unconstitutional, even though it was *then* the “will of the people. That “will” now looks breathtakingly narrow-minded and mean-spirited, and I’m sure many are grateful that the Supreme Court kept their eyes on the constitution, rather than the masses outside their windows.

(3) I agree, many Mormons and other people of faith took exception to the position of their church leadership; I expect many Catholics as well. One of the petitions filed against Prop 8 was filed by the California Council of Churches and a whole host of other faith groups. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is filled with people of faith who believe that the church/state separations urged by America’s founders were put in place to protect the church as much as the state. That our voting populace continues to have a hard time drawing the distinction between public, civil issues and private, religious ones is a long, longstanding one. And this issue is a prime example of that blurred line.

(4) Fortunately, a vast overwhelming majority of LGBT individuals and organizations swiftly and decisively condemn the most extreme expressions of frustration (e.g., sending a suspicious — even if ultimately harmless — white powder in an envelope to an organization is utterly absurd and abominable). All official statements, and the bulk of the mass sentiment, have tried to redirect anger toward education and outreach. I read on one comment stream a good point: no one who feels strongly anti-abortion would like their entire cause to be judged by the extreme actions of clinic bombers or those who have killed doctors who have performed abortions. What’s important to look at is the language (and the effectiveness) of the leadership of any given movement.

After all’s said and done, what’s not so debatable is my personal experience. To me, and my heterosexual sister, and many others who are either gay or have gay people in their families, the Yes on 8 campaign felt like a very personal attack. On our families. Very, very personal. I have never harbored ill will against Mormon people, nor had a strong opinion of its leadership. (Neither would it occur to me to want to pass a proposition limiting their exercise of the right to practice their religion.) But it sure as heck felt like a very, very powerful attack, and its orchestration seems to be well enough documented by now. (NY Times piece of Nov 15, “Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage” outlines the comprehensiveness of the campaign).

Folks out of state probably don’t really know how visceral and personal it was, and that visceral, personal feeling of being attacked is very much behind the strong reaction against the outcome now. I daresay it’s proportional: to the feelings of being attacked during the campaign, and collectively, the feelings of being under attack for so very, very long.

As many have said, the calls for “both sides” to be kind does impose a kind of false equivalence to the situation. Kind of like when a bully takes a swing at a kid on the playground, and the kid gets up, dusts him/herself off, and then pushes back at the bully. Was it fair to push back? No. Was it understandable? Probably. The yard duty teacher should lecture both parties. But in my view, the bully who initiated the fight is the one who needs to stay after school and write “I will love my neighbor as myself” over and over again on the chalkboard.

Pollys last blog post..Breaking: Court will hear challenges to Prop 8*

Emily the Utah transplant from the Midwests last blog post..Ripples

I came here from Liza’s and really appreciated your post. I do have one bone to pick though… you say: “For me, the piece of paper I signed after my wedding was a mere legality. I literally only did it to save money when it come time to change my name, since a marriage license is easier to do so with than hiring an attorney to have it changed.”

A lot of us gay and lesbian folks would love to have the FREEDOM to make that choice. That civil marriage license may have been insignificant to you emotionally, but it gave you the right to sponsor your spouse for immigration. It gave you the right to collect your spouse’s social security benefits. It gave you the right to see him in the hospital.

The religious folks can keep “marriage” as far as I’m concerned. Let’s just make the state sanctioned part of it, which will cost me literally tens of thousands of dollars over the course of my lifetime and which treats me as a second class citizen by denying me the RIGHTS that legally wed people have, completely separate from the word marriage. You – and I – pick up our union licenses and get the same rights and privileges as a result. Then you go off to your church and get married. Your church doesn’t have to marry me, and my synagogue doesn’t have to marry you.

But to dismiss those rights as not being significant to you tells me that you – and many others – don’t understand what is being denied us when we’re denied the right to wed.

Here’s here’s a list from the U.S. General Accounting Office of the CIVIL benefits that marriage provides (pdf file).

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf

artsweets last blog post..Many Pictures, Few Words

1) The Supreme Court is not responsible for paying any attention to the will of the people. In fact, it’s kind of their job not to. Their only job is to interpret the constitution as it relates to legal issues. They are a completely separate branch of government (they are judicial, laws are legislative) altogether.

2) The Supreme Court was interpreting the California constitution, which until prop 8, did not deny gay marriage. Their decision was a proclamation of what the constitution already said.

3) Many important Supreme Court cases have been won by a slim majority. That does not make the decision any less important or reliable and it’s a little unfair to imply that.

Okay, I’m done. I promise.

Overflowing Brains last blog post..The box is overrated

I think that both sides of this proposition have or are doing themselves great discredit by promoting some level of hatred or intolerance. On the one hand, the yes-on-prop-8 folks, whether intentionally or not, are being intolerant and in some cases, hateful towards homosexuals. On the other hand, the no-on-prop-8 are doing the same towards the yes-on-prop-8 people.

I vehemently opposed prop 8 and am deeply saddened by its passage because even as a Christian, I cannot understand how we can deprive American citizens of basic rights. I just can’t. But that said, trying to combat hate with hate isn’t the answer.

I just hope we figure out what it is soon.

(And also, I really found this clip profoundly eloquent and it articulated the way I’ve felt about prop 8 better than I’ve been able to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVUecPhQPqY)

Overflowing Brains last blog post..The box is overrated

I wasn’t able to get past my anger and disappointment with the passage of Prop 8 sufficiently to blog about it until after today’s nationwide protest.

Thanks for providing a post I could happily link to in support of my argument that we the frustrated GLBT community need to distinguish between individual believers and our concern that the organized church may have overstepped its bounds. (Allegations which seem both sufficiently serious and sufficiently well grounded as to deserve investigation by an appropriate governmental fact-finding body.)

Lizas last blog post..Opposing Prop 8 and Supporting GLBT Families In Georgia