Vote No on Prop 8!

Political battles are often nuanced fights, in which an issue is wrapped up with personal history, racism, sexism, mysterious backstories, internal power struggles, party politics, and more.  “Sides” are seldom clearly distinguishable as purely right or wrong, true or false.  Politics is a muddled business in this way.

But one fight going on in the U.S. – most notably in California – is really quite simple.

Proposition 8 is a constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that, if passed, “eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry”.  Voters of that state will cast ballots on November 4th to determine whether they wish to revoke a right for a segment of the population.

There is little nuanced about California’s Proposition 8 (and Florida’s Proposition 2 and Arizona’s Proposition 102).  These are refreshingly clear fights for full human rights of folks who happen to belong to the GLBTQ community.

The fight is about whether fear is going to continue to drive how we live, how we see each other, how we interact as a people.

The fight is about whether hatred is going to be the lesson taught to our youth, whether we’re going to teach them how to shun, whether we’re going to instill injustice in their hearts.

The fight is about whether religion will again be used, in an all-too-familiar way, to create an “other” who we can point our fingers at.  Christians will have to demonstrate whether they actually have read and understand the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, whether they accept or reject spiritual decay.

The fight is about whether the United States is a place where there exists a separation of church and state, whether we wish to become a theocracy, or whether our values truly are better than the foreign religious fundamentalists so often decried.

The fight is about whether citizens who proclaim the virtue of “small government” will actually realize that principle, whether they will respect a person’s right to privacy, or whether they will thrust a lengthened arm of the law into their own bedrooms.

Write to Marry Day!

The fight is about whether we will maintain the bondage on the dignity of each individual, whether we will repudiate our own civil rights, or whether liberty for one means liberty for all.

In essence, the fight is about whether we will be a civilized people, that uses our institutions to learn how to live together in peace, or use those institutions to create divisions and foster discrimination.  Rarely are people given such clear choices in the voting booth that will declare their equitableness, or their iniquity.  There is no nuance here, only the opportunity to embrace our own humanity.