The 2010 ballot? What's next for California LGBTQ rights?
On the evening of the November 2008 election, I was sitting by my 81 year-old mother's hospital bed, holding her hand as we watched the election results trickle in. We were in Prescott, Arizona, where only an hour before, McCain had held his last presidential campaign rally.
Throughout the evening, a parade of hospital staff members peaked into our room in order to learn how the election was going. All would ask how we felt about the election. My mother, never reticent, would reply, “We’re pleased as punch!!!”
For most, this unapologetically gleeful comment would turn a forlorn "I just lost my dog" look to one of shock or repressed rage. Two nurses snuck in when no other staff were looking to tell us, secretly, how elated they also were with the results. I took pride in the fact that, before my mother took ill, I had contributed to Obama’s election victory by spending my weekends campaigning for him in Nevada.
The one thing that marred our not-so-private family celebration was seeing Arizona’s anti-marriage equality initiative, Prop 102, win by a landslide. However, I felt comfort in the early California election results, which indicated that Proposition 8 would go down to defeat. While the vote was close, I went to bed confident that my fellow Californians would acknowledge my full humanity.
To say I was shocked the next morning would be an understatement. It would have been one thing had LGBTQ folks fought and lost a battle to gain a right that we’d never been granted in the first place. It felt like a robbery, a violation, to have a basic human right ripped away from us. My grief was compounded by what I felt was my own culpability – what would have happened if the queer activists and allies I met along the Obama campaign trail had dedicated some of our time to work against Proposition 8?
I am not surprised by the Supreme Court ruling. I decry a constitution that allows a simple majority to rip away the rights of a minority. However, this is another political battle. After reading the court’s opinion, available for download here, I understand the reasoning behind their decision. Now it’s time for the real work to begin.
The Courage Campaign has just announced its support for a 2010 ballot measure to restore marriage equality in California. California LGBT rights groups are divided as to whether to launch a campaign in 2010 or wait until 2012. I believe that now is the time, in the Courage Campaign’s words, “to be fearless.” Not only did I just make a donation to buy television airtime for their “Fidelity” video (below), I am rolling up my sleeves and jumping into the fight.
(NOTE: Title edited after after a valuable lesson from the OS editors.)
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Comments
http://www.eqca.org/site/pp.asp?c=kuLRJ9MRKrH&b=5153675
You write, “It felt like a robbery, a violation, to have a basic human right ripped away from us.”
In a sense, that seems to sum up that past 8 years. I can’t help but wonder, in light of the past few months, what sort of stance the Obama administration will incorporate regarding this issue, if any. His pandering to the religious in this country is a huge disappointment, and certainly a disadvantage to any forward-thinking progressive agenda.
RATED
Decisions like this make me weep for all those who deserve to live their lives free from the scorn of political insanity. --rated--
Regarding his stance on the gay marriage issue, he made it clear in his campaign that while he supports a national policy of domestic partnerships for same-gender couples, he believes that the issue of gay marriage should be left to the states, and so I don't expect him to move on this stance. The question for me is, if Prop 8 opponents take the issue to the Federal Supreme Court, will his administration stand back, or file a brief, and in whose behalf?
The bigger disappointment for me is his stance on DADT, where I think he is being overly cautious in not issuing a stop loss order - if the Prop 8 decision hadn't come down today, I would have blogged on Admiral Mullen's interview on This Week...
Mr. Mustard, thank you. We all deserve the life you describe!
I live in the Central Valley in California, and we do have a healthy equal rights movement going on here, especially now.
I was a charter member of the first GLBT organization on the California State University, Fresno campus in 1986. We had a booth in the free speech area that was vandalized and burned to the ground on several occasions, but we rebuilt a larger (and more flamboyant) booth each time. I was in charge of the speaker's bureau on campus, which set up visits to classrooms at professors' request to answer questions and introduce more people to the lives of the sexual minority here.
We hosted a Western States Lesbian Gay Bisexual Student Alliance in the late 1980s which attracted KKK to the campus and brought campus and metro police to protect our people.
I don't want anyone to believe that progress has not been made here. It really has. But it will take more work, more outreach to rank and file community members, and we are working on that, canvassing in the community each weekend, and organizing marches and rallies all the time.
More voices, more rallies, more jockeying for press, and more political figures standing up for the civil rights of all people, that is what we're working on now.
Get involved. We need everyone to stand up and be counted.
Regarding the Central Valley, mea culpa if I seemed to suggest that there was no political activity there. Also, I would I never broadly paint people there with the brush of "bigot." I cut my political teeth on the Anti-Prop 26/Anita Bryant campaign in Stockton and have nothing but admiration for the fortitude, persistence and courage it takes to continue doing progressive political work in that portion of the state. I also acknowledge the ultra-progressive bubble that is San Francisco.
As to the fight, yes! Yes! Yes!
I don't understand how one person's happiness is supposed to come a the expense of someone else's. I don't understand why it is anybody's business if two people who love one another want to get married. Love is a precious thing. Why would anyone deny that to a loving couple comprising consenting adults?
It makes me weep with frustration and shame.
I'm so so so so so sorry. So damn sorry.
Come to Iowa. I'll get licensed and officiate.
So sorry.
My guess is that any attempt to reverse Prop 8 in 2010 would be defeated by an even larger margin than what Prop 8 received. Asking voters to vote against what they just voted for tends to be seen as an insult -- in effect saying "we think you're all a bunch of dolts for voting that way, and now we want you to vote the other way."
Here in Oregon that's happened before. Physician-assisted suicide was approved by a majority of the voters, then put on hold and referred again to the voters by the legislature. The second time around it passed by an even larger margin.
Keep in mind also that a large number of liberal voters turned out to vote for Obama, who won in California with 61 percent of the vote, at the same time that Prop 8 won with 52 percent of the vote. And if you look at the counties, a lot of counties that voted for Obama also voted for Prop 8.
In a 2010 vote, with Obama not in the equation, you're going to lose a lot of liberal turnout from people who don't think the world will end if gays have civil unions instead of marriages. On the other hand, yet another gay marriage vote will energize conservatives and bring out the votes for them and their causes.
But it's a free country, and y'all can put it on the ballot again. But don't be surprised if the attempt backfires, and you end up worse off then when you started.
"It appears that this is a blockbuster pro-gay-rights decision, restricting the effect of Prop 8 to the effect of removing the designation of gay civil unions as 'marriage,' but upholding all equal rights previously declared by the Court; and, suggesting that if the opponents of gay rights were to try to restrict equal union rights for gays by constitutional change, such change would be an Amendment (not a revision) and thus would be procedurally much more difficult to accomplish."
In addition, the court decision upheld the legality of the marriages of those 18,000 couples who had already "tied the knot." Their relationships and families will not only demystify LGBT lives, but will serve as a strong examples of why the marriage of Adam and Steve or Marla and Eve are not a threat to heterosexual marriage, as Pro-Prop 8 proponents claim.
One other point, which I already mentioned in my post, a number of post-election polls found that a significant proportion of those progressives who voted for Prop 8, later expressed regret at their decisions. It is up to activists to ensure that these voters turn up to the polls in 2010. I think that enough of us are fired up to guarantee a large progressive turnout.
@ Fingerlakeswanderer, thank you for the tears. My hope is that this is truly the beginning of the end for such discrimination.
@wakingupslowly, I promise, that if you get that license, you will be able to officiate at California weddings! :)
with love!
Regarding your comment about our financial mess, have you read zumalicious' recent post on California's financial crisis, "It's Not About Prop 8?" http://open.salon.com/blog/zumalicious/2009/05/26/its_not_about_prop_8_right_now
Further, the younger generation is much more accepting of gay marriage than the older, meaning as time goes on, the pro-gay-marriage side will grow and the anti shrink.
The real import of this decision is that in the state of California, the word "marriage" no longer has any legal meaning as to the rights and privileges pertaining to couples who choose to formalize their unions. The earlier decision stands, no couple can be denied equality under the law, the state just can't call it "marriage" if it's not between one man and one woman.
I expect the effect of these two decisions to be that in every California law in which the word "marriage" occurs, its meaning will effectively be changed to read "civil unions", that's the only way the law can be brought into agreement with today's decision while retaining the state's constitutional guarantees of equality under the law, which were in fact affirmed in today's decision.
In California today, marriage became a religious rite devoid of legal consequence except insofar as it incorporates a civil union. And with that understanding I think there's a case to be made on the basis of religious freedom that the state cannot deny a church's right to perform a marriage ceremony for any couple deemed fit for marriage by that church. From that point of view, Prop 8 is an unconstitutional interference by the state into what is properly a strictly religious matter.
All of that said, let's get it back on the ballot and kick those fundamentalists' asses, 2010, 2012, whatever, they're on the losing side of history.
Roy, I've done a lot of reading today on this issue, but your post is the first time I've encountered this interpretation. Does this mean that the anti-equality folks, who maintain that Prop 8 was necessary to maintaining the sanctity of marriage actually undercut themselves? Wow!
Cartouche, maybe, just maybe ads like the one above will move the majority of California residents towards your view. I hold out high hopes.
I live in Los Angeles and am bit surprised that I never once saw a persuasive commercial on television like this video.
'Proposition 8 does not entirely repeal or abrogate the aspect of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right of privacy and due process that was analyzed in the majority opinion in the Marriage Cases — that is, the constitutional right of same-sex couples to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage” (Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 829). Nor does Proposition 8 fundamentally alter the meaning and substance of state constitutional equal protection principles as articulated in that opinion. Instead, the measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term “marriage” for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law, but leaving undisturbed all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection of the laws.'
The "Marriage Cases" referred to in the above excerpt is the judgment that made same-sex marriage legal in California last year. According to the six justices who concurred on yesterday's opinion, upholding Prop 8 has no effect on the fundamental right that was upheld in the previous judgement, viz. " . . .officially recognized, and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage . . ."
This decision is a very narrow one that only limits the state from using the word "marriage" to describe such unions, which continue to enjoy all legal protections afforded to opposite-sex marriage in the state of California.
It's not trivial to deny the use of the word "marriage" on official documents, it's a stinging reminder of prejudice and hate, but this judgment re-affirms the substance of the judgment that made same-sex marriage legal last year. I don't think the Christianist Right realizes how little they actually won yesterday.
I'm surprised that mine is the first analysis you've that points this out.
Consenting adults should be able to marry each other, regardless of the pairing.
Having said that, if this is too be changed, the voters need to step up and do so: the people of CA need to bring about this change, not the courts.
@Roy, actually it wasn't so much the portions of the decision that you quoted about which I was speaking. Rather, it was your comment that, since the decision still grants all of the rights of marriage to same-gender couples, the ruling at some level eviscerates marriage in California, at least as far as civil institutions go. Now THAT is a great irony - that the very thing the radical right claims they were trying to protect, "the sanctity of marriage," they have destroyed with Proposition 8. And that is something I'd not read in any of the analysis, but I think you're right.
@Lady Miko, thanks for stopping by - and I agree, that convincing California voters that Prop 8 needs to be repealed is our next step!
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