California Proposition 8 Anniversary: Revisiting the (Bad) Arguments
The following is an editorial:
In the last year, we had some victories: marriage equality came to Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire, recognition came to Washington D.C., and Domestic Partnerships came to Nevada and were expanded in Washington. And then today, on the one year anniversary of California's Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that took away same-sex marriage, gay and lesbian residents of Maine wake up with the news that Proposition 1 had passed and their marriage rights were revoked. The battle over Proposition 1 showed that opponents of marriage equality have not developed their arguments much since Proposition 8, but that, unfortunately, those arguments were still working. With that knowledge, I feel obligated to revisit some of the claims made in the debate surrounding same-sex marriage.
On November 18, two weeks after the passage of Proposition 8, The View featured a segment discussing the proposition and same-sex marriage generally. The show's two conservative members, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd, took the stance against same-sex marriage. The video is to the right. I have extracted some of the two ladies' arguments to address:
"...this is minimizing [the struggle for racial equality]. To equate what's going on—and now these protests—and those situations during the civil rights moviement; it just shouldn't even be happening. It minimizes all what occurred."
Civil equality is not a competition; the winners are not the ones that suffered the greatest. Discrimination and the denial of rights should be addressed and remedied whenever it occurs, not just when it is the greatest example of discrimination. To discredit the gay rights movement in this way is to discredit the American feminist movement because women in the Middle East have it worse.
Promoting same-sex marriage does nothing to minimize the black civil rights movement. Rather, it is a continuation and the next step in the fight to win social equality regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation.
"They should be fighting for the rights rather than the word 'marriage'. There are a lot of people who are arguing there were four judges who decided what was best for the country all of a sudden. This Prop 8 came as a result of that. These protesters, in essence, are protesting what the majority wants."
The rights of marriage and the word 'marriage' itself are entangled. It is impossible to impart all of the rights without also providing the word. This is because the concept of marriage is one that, for the purposes of law, is recognized uniformly through each of the states in the country. Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships do not enjoy such ubiquity; a couple could not travel from Oregon to Nevada and have their relationship recognized even though both states have Domestic Partnerships. Even in states that provide comprehensive Domestic Partnerships, some benefits, like pension agreements, insurance policies, and other private offerings are available only to couples who are 'married'. So it is impossible to to fight for the rights without also fighting for the word.
Further, I believe it is a miscategorization to say that four judges decided what was best. The California Supreme Court did not make any value judgement on same-sex marriage; it simply held that the Equal Protections Clause of the California Constitution made the denial of marriage rights—a "basic civil right"—to a protected class unlawful. The ruling followed 4 years of procedural history and argumentation. To make it sound as if the judges woke up one morning and decided to judicially mandate marriage equality is misleading and dishonest.
The protestors were not protesting what the majority wanted; they were protesting the fact that a slim majority (52% of voters) could strip fundamental rights from a class of people in defiance of the state's three elected branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial. They were protesting that the will of only 7 million voters in a state of 37 million could decide whether or not they were permitted to marry the person they love. They were protesting the frightening precedent that voters could decide civil rights. To characterize the protesters "in essence" as anti-democratic sore losers is an demeans their message.
"There are some people who go 'because I can, I want to have my dream wedding in a Church and you're saying 'no', so I might sue you because you're discriminating against me' And so you're impeding on their rights and their beliefs."
Gay and lesbian rights are no threat to religious freedom.
"If you're voting yes on Prop 8, then all of a sudden, you're a bigot."
Bigot is not a nice word, and it does not feel good to be called one. But if you did vote yes on Proposition 8, you chose to jealously keep a right that you enjoy from a group of people. It does not matter what your reasons are, because the outcome is the same. People who once could marry their partners are once again legally prohibited from doing so. Your marriage was not affected for better or worse as a result of your vote. The only thing that changed is that we could no longer have ours. You may claim no animus, but you can not strip away a right from a group of people while gaining nothing for yourself and call the action anything but malicious. You may not feel like a bigot, but your vote was one a bigot would cast. Love is not a limited commodity to be hoarded.
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