October 8, 2008
Prop 8 Numbers Flip: Now the Marriage Ban is Winning
Leah and Barb from Stop8.org on Vimeo.
This news is, of course, insane, but a new poll indicates that Prop 8 is pulling ahead. If it wins, then a group of Utah Mormons will have seized control of the California Constitution, giving themselves the power to veto any California marriage they want. Like we said: it's insane.
So, what can you do? Plenty. Start by calling everyone you know RIGHT NOW to tell them that this is the big one. This is the election in which anyone who cares about civil rights absolutely MUST vote. You have until October 20 to register -- do it now. And make sure every person you know is registered, too.
And when you tell them about Prop 8, here's some talking points: Namely, that Prop 8 is a bunch of lies.
- They say it'll protect kids from learning about gay marriage in schools, but it won't.
- They say it'll protect churches from lawsuits, but it won't. (Marriage bans actually restrict free exercise; California clergy call them "excessive government entanglement.")
- They say it'll strengthen marriage, but it won't -- you can't "save" marriage by giving control to one religious group so they can arbitrarily withhold it. Prop 8 means more unmarried couples, and less protection for the 52,000 California families with kids.
- They say that Californians supported a marriage ban in 2000 -- but this is different. Unlike last time, Prop 8 introduces a brand new limit on marriage. And this time, the marriage ban had to come from out-of-state because Californians don't want it.
So. There you go. Get to work.
Disclosure: SFist_Matt is hard at work on a website and some videos that explain just how awful Prop 8 is. So, he's not exactly neutral on the subject.
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
I'm a grad student in DC and live in Arlington. Despite my friends' insistence that my liberal vote will be more meaningful in Virginia than California, I'm voting absentee in Santa Clara County because voting no on this measure means a lot to me.
When I did Youth & Government through the YMCA I wrote, proposed and passed a mock California Constitutional Amendment repealing the Knight Initiative which was the original legislation that banned gay marriage.
Hey SFist, not everyone who views this site is ultra left leaning.
For some of us this is about a supreme court legislating from the bench and overturning the will of the voters who banned gay marriage already.
We already have common sense laws allowing domestic partners to have the same legal rights as traditional marriages.
My partner and I do NOT have the same rights as heterosexual married couples and we will be phone banking tonight at the NO on 8 headquarters on Market. Please volunteer your time or $$$! http://noonprop8.com/home
this has nothing -- nothing! -- to do with ultra left leaning views.
unbelievable.
Let me know what those rights are and I'll happily push the City to add them its domestic parters laws.
I can understand that you're wary of the Supreme Court's ruling.
But even if you're opposed to gays having equal access to marriage, surely you can oppose an out-of-state religious organization trying to re-write our constitution. That, to me, seems far worse than a controversial court ruling -- a ruling reached by, once again, our elected officials.
@ missiondweller: domestic partenership is not equal to the marriage relationship on the federal level.
And if you are a right-leaning person, why do you support government interference in how two people of the same gender wish to dispose of their affairs when they choose to commit themselves to a lifelong intimate relationship? Why should the legal validity of such a relationship be subject to the whims of the populace in any case? Is Loving v. Virginia meaningless?
Please spare me the "overturning the will of the voters" bullshit. Do you have any idea what the function of our judicial branch is? It EXISTS to overturn the will of the voters, if the will of the voters is to violate the constitution (e.g., equal protection). I love how, when one doesn't agree with the court it's "legislating from the bench." It's their JOB to interpret legislation.
It was this kind of "legislating from the bench" that integrated schools, and made it illegal to make african americans sit in the back of the bus, and overturned a whole lot of other "voter's will" type measures.
@missiondweller:
Thanks. That's really helpful to have rights within the few square miles that is San Francisco and not in the entire state of CA.
Regarding the difference between "marriage" and "domestic partnership":
It's complicated. But it boils down to leaving gay couples open to liability. If someone wanted to remove rights from gay couples, it would be comparatively easier to do so by making a new law that affects civil unions. Marking a law that changes marriage would be more difficult.
Given the choice of "leave 100,000 couples open to potential loss of rights" or "provide equal protection," what disadvantage could there possibly be to choosing the latter? Surely there's a social benefit to protecting healthy stable couples, and I can't think of a reason that gays shouldn't have access to the same protection as straights.
The very word "marriage" confers a benefit. When your partner is injured in a car crash in some remote town, do you really want to stand there arguing with a clueless nurse about what rights a "civil union" confers on you? That your "civil union" does, in fact, grant you the right to see your partner and make medical decisions? When you say "we're MARRIED" people know immediately what your rights are.
Also, weddings are pretty and fun, and there should be more of them. No on Prop 8! Yes on cake and DJs!
@ bluecanary -
I was preparing the same exact "legislating from the bench" post, but you said it better than I would have. Bravo.
Notice how Republicans didn't say anything about "legislating from the bench" when the Supreme Court struck down the DC gun ban? Where was the "judicial activism" outcry then?
I'd read that the polls really started swinging in Prop 8's favor since the Gav commercials ("whether ya like it or not!!!" etc etc)--it seems it has basically become for many voters a referendum about a smarmy, smug SF politician with slick hair and not the civil rights issue it is.
(I am, of course, not saying that's right)
Unfortunately, if you have to be schooled in the very basics of this discussion than you really have no business discussing so flippantly a topic that affects so many people's personal lives and those of their families. It's really quite offensive and extraordinarily foolish.
When you say "we're MARRIED" people know immediately what your rights are.
Yeah, Of course, if, God forbid, my wife and I were to get into a car wreck somewhere up near Shasta or wherever, we don't keep our marriage certificate with us to prove anything to ER nurses or whoever. All we have is our word (she doesn't always wear her ring and we have different last names). Same with gay couples who have civil unions. Difference is, of course, we as a hetero couple get the benefit of the doubt. Doubtful that gay couples always will. The protections should be there, but at the ground level, people's way of thinking needs to change.
Also, I'm wondering where exactly in that article that was linked twice it says the proposition "came from out of state."
I'm not saying its roots aren't indeed from out-of-state, and certainly not that I agree with it, but all I saw there was that a church denomination, which is headquartered in Utah, supports it (shocker).
I thought whatshisface, Hollingsworth, the state senator, was the big dog pushing it.
We've covered the out-of-stateness before -- about four times as much money has been donated from outside of California: http://sfist.com/2008/09/11/foreigners_attempting_to_seize_cont.php
Also, according to the Church of LDS, they're not getting much support from anyone else: http://wikileaks.org/leak/lds-proposition8-notes-2008.pdf
I should have linked to both of those things in this post.
I do agree that at the ground level, peoples' way of thinking needs to change. But California didn't wait for that to happen when it overturned its ban on interracial marriage; that was very unpopular with voters at the time.
A couple of Kos links regarding this including a very funny video commercial from Courage Campaign
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/8/103654/876/604/623852
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/8/134035/767
To restate what has already been said by Bluecanary and Angrybat: the fact that CA voters once voted to ban gay marriage in the state is of NO relevance when it comes to the judicial system. Legislature over there...judiciary over here. Yay for branches! The judiciary deals in the courts of law, not in the court of public opinion. Meaning, if they find that a ban on gay marriage offends and violates the CA Constitution, that ban is void--even if 100% of Californians had voted for it.
Thus this proposition. These out-of-staters and Big Government/Big Brother Republicans are trying to ban gay marriage through the back door (snicker) by actually changing the California Constitution; if it's in the Constitution, it can no longer be unconstitutional.
This is crazy. This isn't something silly like renaming a sewage plant. This is changing the frickin constitution. Once that's done, it's done and almost impossible to reverse.
Whether you're against the ban on gay marriage or for the ban, you should vote against this proposition. This is NO way to run a government or to enact law. Imagine if federal elections had propositions and the US Constitution was as maleable as ours. What if the "will of the people" changed the US Constitution to prohibit alcohol once again? Reverse the ban on slavery? A bit extreme? Maybe, but this is the country that RE-ELECTED W. People in this country genuinely love Palin!
Sometimes, fuck the will of the people. Sometimes enlightened thought brought about by deliberate discourse HAS to trump the tyranny of the majority. Because, like it or not, sometimes we're the mob and we've been distracted by our bread and our circus and sometimes we need to be saved from our own damn selves.
No on 8, and no more frackin propositions. I'm looking at you, 13.
Worth reading
http://www.connorboyack.com/blog/religion-and-politics-the-lds-church-and-proposition-8
Yikes. I especially like the comment at the end that praises the article, and then calls Martin Luther King a "deplorable individual."
It's not "legislating from the bench" when a court declares a law to be unconstitutional. That is a major function of the courts as determined by Marbury v. Madison which established the concept of judicial review in our legal system.
The initial law may have been passed by voters, but, despite my personal views, those voters were passing a law that was not legal under the California constitution. Prop 8 is specifically designed because some people have decided that they don't like the constitution if it's going to actually have any bearing and tell them what can and cannot be done.
It's kind of like the recent Supreme Court decision regarding D.C.'s law banning handguns. It conflicted with the second amendment and was struck down because the law was unconstitutional.
Changing the constitution like this is the legal equivalent of saying that you're going to take your ball and go home when you lose the argument. The reason we have a system like this is because it allows the constitution to provide protection from a tyranny of the majority. It doesn't matter what the "will of the voters" was. They can't have their way because it's illegal.
I'm really upset that this passed. I knew it was polling fairly close but I suppose since everyone I know and associate with was against it I just assumed it wouldn't pass. It did. Depressing.
On the bright side, if you look at the demographics of who voted for what you see that young people were strongly against it (64% against in the 18-24s, 59% against for 25-30s), middle aged people were very slightly pro 8 and people over 65 were strongly pro 8 (61%). Those old bigots won't be around forever and the younger generation has a better outlook.
Another interesting fact is that African-Americans were overwhelmingly for prop 8. (%70!) They were out in droves to vote for Obama. If that demographic had been split 50-50 prop 8 wouldn't have passed. I find that terribly depressing. The parallels to the fight to legalize interracial marriage are so obvious and so long fought for. Its not that often you find 70% of African-American voters on the same side of an issue as the KKK but they were together on prop 8.
Anyhow, looking forward....
How do we get an initiative to change the state constitution on the ballot? Its not that huge a disparity between pro and against. If at first you don't succeed....
Don't give up.
Cheers,
Greg
Oh, yeah, I meant to put in a link for the statistics I put out there. They are from an exit poll done by CNN (or put online by them, anyhow.)
Here it is:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#CAI01p1
Cheers,
Greg