Proposition 8 in California

As many know on May 15th 2008 California became one of few states that not only recognized gay marriage, the state supreme court overturned a ban on gay marriage, allowing thousands of gay couples to be able to share that which many straight couples get to take for granted. Sadly on election night Tuesday November 4th 2008 California voters voted "yes" on proposition 8, a state ballot to amend the California state constitution to specifically define marriage as between a man and woman. This proposition now law, bans gay couples from the right to get married.

No matter your personal views on gay couples, this amounts only to one hateful thing, institutionalized discrimination and an attempt at "separate but equal" views which in other forms has already been struck down (not that long ago sadly) as unconstitutional . 52 percent of voters in California voted to take away the rights of gay couples and to strip them down to second class citizens. This is wrong, we in America sit in our Ivory Tower telling the world how to act, telling the middle east to give women equality, when Iran's leader said on TV he wished to wipe all Jews off the face of the Earth there was a tremendous public outcry. Telling those in China to Free Tibet and let Taiwan alone,the US government has said if China were ever to invade Taiwan that the US would protect them. We tell dictators in Africa and South America, stop these massacres of your people. Yet all the time we sit here and continue to segregate and discriminate against our OWN CITIZENS.

Americans, we can not let this happen, we can not continue to sit and say we defend democracy abroad when we do not do it here, we can not tell misguided countries to follow our lead when we do not follow it. There was a time when the United States was a beacon to the world as a sign of what could be done if a people worked hard enough and, while we certainly had our problems then, we can not continue to allow ourselves to slide back to institutionalizing discrimination. Yes there will always be those who feel their own narrow view of the world should be imposed on others but, we can not allow them to dictate that anyone should be discriminated against.

The speech delivered by President Roosevelt incorporated the following section:

“	In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want--which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.	”
	— Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941

== United Nat

These where what FDR considered universal rights, for all people not just what some decide is right.

Thank You,

Chris

Peace... One Love

member of the Human Rights Campaign since 2007, believer in total human equality since 1981