In a somewhat unusual move, Google has announced that it opposes California Proposition 8 and hopes that voters will defeat the discriminatory measure. In a larger sense, Proposition 8 represents a battle between knowledge and reason on the one hand and ignorance and bigotry on the other. The Christianists and the Mormons who are disproportionately funding the effort to pass Proposition 8 reject (1) modern medical and mental health knowledge on homosexuality, (2) equal application of all Bible passages and instead pick and chose what they will apply literally and ignore the ones that condemn them, and (3) the separation of church and state which traces back to Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the preamble of which rips apart those who would seek to impose a test of compliance with a set of religious beliefs as a precondition to civil legal rights. Here are highlights from Google's statement:*
As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.
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However, while there are many objections to this proposition -- further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text -- it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.
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