Passage of Proposition 8 Sets Stage to Take Away Rights of Other Minorities

Marriage for same sex couples will add dignity and increased financial and legal security to their lives and benefit them and their families. Whether Christiaists like to admit it or not, many gays DO have children and families and prohibitions against gay marriage harm these children. Does this matter to our opponents? Sadly, no. They do not seek to "protect marriage," but rather to forever keep same sex couples as less than full citizens under the civil laws. Worse yet, the efforts by those who seek passage of Proposition 8 represents an effort to use mob, majority rule to determine who will and will not have legal civil rights. If Proposition 8 passes, then applying the same reasoning of the "Yes on 8" crowd, Blacks, Asians, Mormons - now that their usefulness to Christianists will be over - and other minorities can be stripped of their civil legal rights if a majority of voters can be stirred up and incited against them. This is exactly what was done to the Jews under the Nazi regime.

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With Proposition 8, we see religious extremists seeking to impose their anti-gay religious views on the civil laws of the State of California (as well as in Florida and Arizona under the initiatives on the ballot in those states) and overturn a ruling of the California Supreme Court. This flies in the face of how government is supposed to work in this country and will set a precedent where an unrestrained majority can subjugate minority groups. The so-called "separation of powers" devised by the framers of the United States Constitution - and emulated in the state constitutions - was designed to do one primary thing: to prevent the majority from ruling with an iron fist and trampling on the rights of minorities. This reasoning was based on the framers' experience under the British monarchy where minorities, be they religious or otherwise, had suffered often at the hands of the majority. Thus the framers deliberately avoided giving any branch of the government too much power.

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Among the powers given to the the Federal Judiciary are: the power to try federal cases and interpret the laws of the nation in those cases; the power to declare any law or executive act unconstitutional. Under state law, the respective state supreme courts perform a similar function. In In Re Marriage Cases, the California Supreme Court recognized the inherent and unchangeable nature of sexual orientation which justifies treatment of LGBT citizens as a minority. The California Supreme Court then properly held that discrimination against same sex couples was unconstitutional.

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Proposition 8 is both wrong in terms of seeking to abrogate the proper functioning of the role of the judiciary and in terms of pretending that gays are not a minority who deserve constitutional protections and equal treatment under the civil laws. Worse yet, Proposition 8 is an attempt to impose religious beliefs on other citizens and represents behavior akin to the Taliban and other Islamic extremists.