As someone who votes in California but who is not able to vote on state offices or questions, I wasn’t able to vote against Proposition 8. However, I feel its passage keenly. My friends in California have had a right granted by their Constitution removed from them, and have become, yet again, separate but equal. I cannot tell you how this makes me feel. As you might imagine, this move is profoundly un-American, mean spirited, bigoted, and just plain wrong.
While this battle has been lost, I hope to live to see the day where every person, everywhere, has the right to marry whomever they love deeply. Our own Civil Partnership should be a marriage, is called a marriage by most people, and IS a marriage, as far as I am concerned. HWMBO and I are very lucky indeed. Every person, no matter their sexuality, should be so lucky.
I truly believe that this vote will come to be seen as shameful and wrong by a majority of Californians, and I look forward to the day when Prop 8 is repealed.
I do hope that some effect on the tax-exempt status of churches that agitated for Prop. 8 might occur.
Is it true that the black vote tended to vote for it? If so, what irony!
what irony!
On the contrary, the principle that people who are oppressed tend to pass their oppression on to other groups of people is well-known. Besides the tendency of black people to show homophobia, there are cases where tones of skin colour among “black” people tend to divide them into different groups, the lighter of which look down on and sometimes actively discriminate against the darker ones.
Many gay men pass their oppression on to women (how many gay man have you heard referring to women as “fish”? When a former bf of mine did that, I asked him, “How would you like it if I referred to you as ‘cheese’?”). Cubanos often look down on Puertorique
I’m afraid I don’t buy that argument. South Africa’s constitution for example recognises that the oppression suffered by blacks must never be a taint on other minority groups. Thus, given that background, it isn’t surprising that S Africa became the first African nation to legalise gay marriage.
If US blacks “passing on their oppression”, and is something that is “well known” (but seemingly tolerated) – that is shocking news to me.
Well, if it is shocking news to you, perhaps you might want to wake up and smell the coffee. South Africa has a very different history to the United States of America and other countries around the world. Constitutions can’t enforce laws upon the human heart. There is no way other than education and experience to stop this passing along of oppression.
Well the kind of “coffee” that you serve up sure stinks, that’s for sure! Pity black Americans haven’t woken up and smelt that particular brand of “coffee”. They of all people should know better, and perhaps learn from their fellow South African black brethren.
Well the kind of “coffee” that you serve up sure stinks…
I couldn’t agree more. The election of Obama may help to begin unravelling this history of passing oppression down the line.
Oh, and it’s not just African-Americans that have done this. The Germans arrived in the U.S. in numbers in the mid-1800’s. The Germans looked down on (and discriminated against) the Irish, who arrived next. The Irish weren’t too happy about the Italians, who followed. The Italians (and all the rest of them) weren’t thrilled about Chinese and Japanese immigrants who came to work in constructing the railways and doing laundry for the other groups.
This skein of passing along oppression needs to be stopped. I hope it will be. If the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency helps to stop it, I would be extremely happy..
Just like with anything that deals with society, change happens slowly. Too slowly for my taste.
I do hope that some effect on the tax-exempt status of churches that agitated for Prop. 8 might occur.
I concur.