I've been trying to figure out how I feel about what happened on election day. What started out as an evening of celebration and joy of electing Barack Obama quickly became soured when the results of the California election started rolling in. What should have been a great day for a lot of people was soured by a poor choice that 5 million Californians made. Millions of people were shocked and surprised by the outcome. We knew the vote would be close, but we didn’t expect it to favor intolerance and discrimination. At the same time millions of people celebrated a victory over what they see as an aberration to God.
How could this happen? How is it on a day where we elected the first African American President of the United States, we also elect to take rights away from a group of citizens? There are many other states that have amended their constitution to include a definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, but California was the only state to have given that right to gays and have it taken away.
Who is at fault for this? Many allegations are being thrown around at various groups. Here are my opinions on this, in no particular order.
The Mormon Church
Should we be surprised that the Church of Latter-Day Saints was the major financial backer of Proposition 8? This is a group who has always had their nose in government business, and even spoke out against the Equal Rights Amendment (An amendment, I might add, that still has not been ratified in the past 40 years and would prevent discrimination based on sex. Why that hasn’t been passed I don’t know, and is a whole different issue).
Mormon culture centers around the family. They enter into marriage for eternity (even after they die), and believe that a man/woman marriage is the only form of marriage. As most people know they have a history of practicing polygamy, which constitutes a man having multiple wives. They have denounced this practice for years, though it still occurs in secret (something they’d deny).
I don’t have any problem with the Mormon faith. I don’t have a problem with
any faith, they are welcome to believe what they believe, as long as you don’t try to impose your beliefs on others. That is where you start getting into trouble.
The Church claims they did not fund any of the Yes on 8 campaign, but preaching in your sermons about the “evils” of gay marriage and encouraging individuals to donate to the campaign is pretty much the same thing. The fact is that Mormons donated almost 70% of the money to the Yes campaign, and most of that was from outside California.
Without the millions and millions of dollars that flooded the Yes on 8 campaign from the church, they would not have so easily been able to outspend the No campaign and get their lies and untruths out into the public. So when people say it’s the Mormons’ fault that this passed, it’s not entirely untrue. They funded a campaign to strip people of rights that they enjoy are entitled to as Americans. That is not fair and completely and totally inappropriate in 2008.
But they're not the only faith-based organization to have backed the Yes campaign. The Catholics were major backers too. Priests and members of the clergy all over the state preached the gay marriage was bad and encouraged their congregations to vote in favor of it. They are just as much to blame for their intolerance as the Mormon Church.
Minorities
According to some polls, 70% of African Americans voted for the amendment. Though we can be quick to blame because that is a dramatic statistic,
This article from Daily Kos is a very interesting look at the voting statistics. The author gives an incredibly detailed analysis about how the African American vote actually affected the race. The black population accounts for only 9.6% of the California electorate. Take out people under 18, and the (unjustly) disproportionate number of African American felons who aren’t allowed to vote, and the number drops. She notes that if even if the African American vote was proportionate to how everyone else voted, the measure would still have passed by 81,000 votes. Interesting, right?
I understand that a lot of these people go to church and are devout Christians, so I understand why they have an issue with homosexuality - it's being preached to them as an evil. But I feel like they should also take account their own history.
A little under a hundred and fifty years ago, our nation became more divided than it had ever been. Abraham Lincoln had emancipated all slaves and slave owners all over the south revolted. Civil War broke out over this issue of whether or not black people were just that: people, or objects to own. They were considered 3/5 of a person. They had no rights whatsoever. One hundred years after that there was another revolt, this time from African Americans to fight for their civil rights. These were god fearing men and women from all over the country who finally said “we have had enough” and began to fight for their rights to be treated equally under the law.
So it’s ironic then that forty years after the Civil Rights Movement, where segregation became illegal, and any practices preventing African Americans from voting were abolished, that they would then use that power to take rights away from other minority groups.
I don't want to make it sound like African Americans are the only ones to blame. Latinos and Asians also voted for this amendment in larger numbers. i really have trouble understanding how groups that have been discriminated against in their own way (Japanese internment, immigration laws against Latinos) can justify discriminating another group.
The one thing these groups all have in common? God.
There are ministers who claim that it is unfair and inaccurate to compare the LGBT struggle for equal rights to the movement of the 1960s. They’re nowhere near the same, they say. They’re probably right, because we’re certainly not doing the same thing they did in the past: fighting against the majority to earn equal rights under the law. Fighting to be treated the same as everyone else. Fighting not to be discriminated against because of who we are. Nope, not the same at all. (There was sarcasm dripping all over that, in case you missed it.)
California Law
When I was researching all the propositions last month, I did some looking into the California Constitution. It’s a completely messed up document, and a ridiculously abused system to amend it. Between the years of 1900 and 1986, It was amended over 500 times.
Five hundred times, mostly by voter initiatives. This is a system that drastically needs to be fixed.
What I find infuriating about the state is that it allowed this initiative to be put on the ballot. Who puts people's civil rights up for election? We have a representative democracy in this country. We elect people to protect our interests as well as the interests of the whole. The state is supposed to protect minorities from the majority. We do not have direct democracy where people can directly affect things because the public is easily swayed by propaganda and is not as educated about these things as we expect our leaders to be. That's why we elect them - to deal with our issues for us. The fact this moral issue was brought up to vote by the public was a huge mistake.
I also find it infuriating that altering the California Constitution is so easy. You only need 51% of people..no,
voters, to pass an amendment? But then you need 2/3 of voters to overturn it? What?? So in this election, in a state of 36 million people, where 18 million can vote, and 60% of them did, just over 5 million people passed this initiative (numbers are approximate).
5 million out of 36 million. So just 14% of Californians voted to strip rights away from us.
Oh, and just so you're aware, it takes a 55% majority to pass a school bond. And a higher percentage to pass a tax. So essentially people's civil rights are less important than their money.
Non-Voters
This section will be short, because the fact of the matter is I do not understand non-voters. In a country where we value democracy and we claim to fight for it and have people overseas dying in its name, there is absolutely no reason for you not to vote, if you are able to. I understand some people can't based on their situation, but I absolutely refuse to believe that 40% of Californians this year were unable to vote. The process is very accessible - you register, you can get an absentee ballot so you don't have to even leave your house to do it, you can go to the poll near your house and it just takes 20 minutes in an average election. If someone can explain why we never have 80% or 90% voter turnout, please let me know because it is something I will never understand.
And if you didn't vote, if you didn't make your voice heard (unless there were justifiable circumstances), you have NO right to complain about what is happening in this state, in this country, and you have yourself to blame for not showing up on election day and letting other people speak for you with their votes.
The Campaigns
The Yes on 8 campaign was despicable. It was full of lies and deception. Prop 8 was not about protecting our children. They wouldn't be explicitly taught about gay marriage, they're not even going to learn about regular marriage unless it is brought up in a sex education class. And even then, parents have the right to opt their kids out of that class. The campaign used the example of kids being taken to a lesbian wedding because it was an "educational moment." Just for the record: field trips require permission slips. And it was on a Saturday. And a lot of the parents were there themselves! Lies!
Using children as a weapon was so inappropriate. Even if it was brought up in school, the parents are capable of teaching their children what they think is right. The kids are going to find out there are gay people in the world one way or another, you're just as capable of teaching them as the schools are, if not more so. If you're that intolerant that you want complete control over what your kids learn, then you need to send them to a private school or keep them at home lest they be exposed to the evils in the world!
Using Barack Obama's words about how he doesn't support gay marriage was also misleading. I got a mailer a few days before the election with a big picture of Obama and the words "I do not support gay marriage" on it, and on the back were four African American ministers stating that gay marriage is not what God intended and is wrong for the world. It's a sick twisted tactic to sway voters.
The No on 8 campaign had a rough time competing. In the beginning they tried to appeal to people's emotions and when that didn't work they had to start defending their position against the shameful ads the Yes campaign was putting on television. They immediately had to go into a defensive position and since they weren't being flooded with money, they had to pick one message and stick to it. Could it have been better? Yes. Could it have used more help? Yes. But they did what they could with what they had.
The Gays Themselves
The gay community feels victimized by the result of this election, and rightfully so. But we are not innocent victims by any means. I've seen a lot of people at the protests these past few days here in Los Angeles. Over ten thousand of them were out in force on Saturday night. It's really great to see all this passion and anger that is coming out.
One question though: Where were all of you people the past month? I got daily emails from the campaign asking for help phone banking or raising money or doing something to get word out about this issue. I phone banked, I talked to people, I did what I could. I could have done more for sure, but at least I did something. A lot of people were overconfident that this proposition wouldn't pass and were very apathetic towards the whole thing, and that came back to bite us in the ass.
In conversations I've had with people, people who I tried to go with me to phone bank or help out in some way, when I mention that the gays are at fault, they tend to get mad about it. "Bullshit" some have said. Bullshit that the gays had anything to do with this loss, it's all the religious people's fault!
Well, I disagree. The fact is we didn't do enough. We didn't educate people about the issue. We didn't go door to door explaining to people the stakes involved. There's a lot of people who don't understand what being gay is, and we need to reach out to them.
Whether you agree with it or not,
we are as much to blame for our inaction as Yes campaign was for their action.Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. Maybe our generation finally has something to unite around and become activists for. Maybe we finally have something to care about and this was the event that kicked us off our asses and will force us to really fight for ourselves. If we don't do it, who will?
So what do we do now?
The issue is now with the courts. Does this violate the equality clause of the constitution? Was this a revision instead of an amendment? Is it in line with the current law? These are all questions that need to be answered in the courts.
In the meantime, for the rest of us, we need to unite. I was reading a comment someone wrote on a website the other day about how the rally last Wednesday was the first time in all his decades in Los Angeles that he felt there was a gay community here. 12,000+ people came together in Silverlake on Saturday night to march in protest. We need to stand united and we ALL need to participate in outreach and and education of those who might not understand what it is we're fighting for. This is our livelihoods that we are fighting for, and no one should be apathetic about that. We're not going to convince all of them, but at least we can try to help them comprehend why we want to be equal.
At the same time, we need to respect those people as well. I know everyone's angry and I've seen a lot of hostile signs at these protests towards Mormons and Catholics. We need to be careful not to be as intolerant as they are, because then we are no better than them. We need to not come off as people who hate religion because that is not the way to win allies. We have to take a hard stance with our foes, but be careful not to look like sore losers.
Whatever happens, I feel like this is going to be a huge Church vs. State issue, something that is going to be a tough battle. The Churches have near unlimited resources to fight something like this, and we need to be prepared for a long slow battle. Even if we win in the courts here in California, it will go to the US Supreme Court. It's going to be rough, it's going to anger a lot of people. But one thing is for sure.
We will prevail.
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