Dear Californians,
Prop 8 is un-American. It's as un-American as the Taliban and the Nazis. I urge you to reject it, whether you want gay marriage or not.
Prop 8 was written by people who object to homosexuality, but Prop 8 isn't about sex, it's about civil rights.
In fact, marriage isn't about sex, it's a contract between two people that defines a set of responsibilities and rights. According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are over a thousand federal laws that treat married people differently from single people. Want to see some of them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of_marriages_in_the_United_States
Think for a minute: How important are *your* civil rights?
If you are female, you're lucky to have been born after 1920, because before then American women did not have the right to vote! Less than 100 years ago, your opinion on Prop 8 would have been *irrelevant*, because society didn't think women's opinions mattered. How do you feel about having the right to vote? Think it should be decided by men's feelings about women? Do you know that women went to jail because they demanded your right to vote? Perhaps you'd prefer to live in Saudi Arabia where you're not even allowed to drive because men don't think you should.
Well, perhaps you're concerned because marriage is based in religious tradition and your religion thinks homosexuality is bad. The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Fantastic! You are free to practice your religion as you wish because you live in America! Read history to see what used to happen when people disagreed with what the government-establishment said God intended for you. The Thirty Years War. Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Holocaust. How about the Islamic extremism we see today? How do they feel about religious freedom? Taliban. Al Qaida. How about ethnic cleansing?
So, you think it's okay (you think it's American?) to stop other people from practicing something religious in which they strongly believe, say, gay marriage, that doesn't agree with your beliefs? Really? Is that a two way street if some day the majority just happens to think your religious beliefs are wrong?
What about inter-racial marriage? Want to ban that too? Too late. In the 1967 Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), which focused on an inter-racial marriage statute, Chief Justice Warren wrote: "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."
You may have heard that phrase before, pursuit of happiness. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The Declaration of Independence, the essential American document. You buy that pursuit of happiness stuff? Freedom?
So, are you an American or what? Uphold civil rights for *everyone*, not just the people with whom you agree. Know why? Because some day, it may be your beliefs or your children's that someone's written a ballot initiative to prohibit.
Vote No on Prop 8! Vote No because you believe in everything good about being American.
