Proposition 8

Little more than a week away from Election Day, much of the national focus is directed towards the presidential race, and much of our national dialogue involves whether or not a black candidate can really write history and be elected to the country’s highest office. With national polls that show a commanding lead for Senator Obama, it seems that there is a real likelihood that it will happen. But still, we ask questions.

Will there be a significant anti-black vote? Can Obama win votes among rural, blue-collar voters? What percentage of blacks will go to the polls to vote for the first black president?

The conversation is so consumed by the topic of prejudice and race that I wonder sometimes whether or not we are fully able to move beyond it. Whether or not a minority candidate could ever not only win, but win without race playing a real role. Still, the fact that we have even reached this point suggests that we have significantly progressed as a society when it comes to our own underlying prejudices. Right?

And then I look to my home state and I am not so sure.

While the state of California seems all but certain to cast its share of electoral votes for an African American candidate, it is also taking part in another dialogue: whether or not it should pass Proposition 8. In essence, Proposition 8 seeks to overturn the state Supreme Court’s ruling to allow gay marriage, and would add an amendment to the state constitution that defines marriage as solely between a man a woman.

This measure has ignited passion from a predominately conservative base of support. It has been advanced by religious leaders who have equated the issue of gay marriage with “Armageddon”, and who have warned that if “we lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion” (Charles Colson). As a result, evangelicals and other faith-based communities have sent numerous volunteers to the state of California and have raised over $25 million to date in order to get the measure passed. They have touted it as a question of societal values and family empowerment, but to me it seems more a product of two less commendable forces: hypocrisy and ignorance.

Supporters of the measure argue that recognizing gay marriage will lead to an erosion of the system of religious freedom. They claim that churches will be sued if they refuse to marry gay couples, will have their tax-exempt statuses revoked, and that religious leaders will be faced with potential imprisonment if they refuse to recognize these couples. In order to prove their case, they have aired numerous commercials featuring a Swedish pastor, Ake Green, who was jailed for one month in Sweden because he made a speech that vehemently condemned homosexuality. However, these arguments, although they serve as effective vehicles of fear, lack any credible precedent within the American judicial system.

The fact is that, within the states that currently allow gay marriage, no religious groups have been forced to condone or recognize any same sex couples. Furthermore, Catholic churches have never been forced to recognize remarriage for divorcees, and Jewish synagogues frequently refuse to marry cross-religious couples, without any legal repercussions. Our legal and governmental institutions have consistently reinforced, not lessened, religious freedoms. In fact, under the Bush administration, the Federal government has even supported funding for religious-based groups that discriminate during their hiring processes based on a person’s religious affiliation. And, lastly, Mr. Green’s case is a question of freedom of speech rather than discrimination. And I highly doubt that our country is going to move to limit the freedom of speech ensured under the first Amendment of the Constitution any time soon.

So if this proposition isn’t really about threatening freedom of religion, then what is its appeal? Maybe it’s simply because of our deeply engrained homophobia. Homosexuals represent a relatively small minority of the broader population, and society’s tendency is therefore to ostracize the pariah. But doesn’t this stand against the identity and purpose of the concept of America in general?

Those same conservatives that are most prone to support this proposition are also often the group that most aggressively defends the right to bear arms provided by the second amendment to the Constitution. While moderates and liberals might support restrictions on gun ownership because they feel that the amendment was not intended to provide a blanket, all inclusive prohibition against gun laws, these conservatives argue that we must read and interpret our founding document at face value. What is said is implicitly what is meant. So then what is the meaning of the statement that “All men are created equal”?

Trying to construe or modify the intent of this last statement has led to the most significant flaws in our union: slavery, segregation, and gender discrimination. In due time we have found each of these to be, in one way or another, forms of gross hatred and illegal in nature. Still, we once again try to modify the words in order to justify and make way for our own engrained prejudices.

The other interesting component of this bill is that it has found support among many minority religious groups. Conservative Jewish groups, as well as Hispanic Catholics, African American evangelicals, and Mormons alike have all pushed for its passage. But do these minorities remember that they too were once victims of similar discrimination? It was only through progressive changes to our set of values that they were even bestowed the right to now stand on the corner of a street and publicly preach their own opinions, regardless of what they may be.

The potential use of the constitution as a tool for limiting the rights of any group is in and of itself disturbing. At the time of this nation’s creation, the Constitution served as a catalyst and a protector for those individual rights that we saw to be inalienable. Its purpose is to support personal freedom, not to limit it. Such an interpretation of the document’s intent is inherent within the title of the pages within which the aforementioned liberties are contained: the Bill of Rights.

Similarly, state Constitutions serve as guarantors of individual freedoms. They create a basic framework that outlines and limits governmental action against individual rights. Therefore, to use such a document for the purpose of constricting such rights undermines its most fundamental purpose and confuses our most fundamental understanding of its relevance within our political discourse.

Lastly, and this view is mostly a by-product of my own personal opinions on the matter, who is gay marriage really affecting? Assuming that we accept my assertion that it in no way threatens to encroach on religious freedoms (which it does not), then who does it really impact other than those that directly benefit from it? Let churches refuse to recognize such unions, and let bigots make the decision to not interact with homosexuals if they so choose. In the end, one need not be in any way exposed to the effects of gay marriage if they do not want to be. Some may argue that it erodes the concept of family values and threatens to negatively impact our future children. But I argue that it no more impacts our children than the father that chooses not to engage in his child’s upbringing, the sixteen-year-old who has a child while in high school, the parent with a drug addiction or tendency to abuse their child, or a foster care system that is wholly inadequate to address the needs and emotional concerns of those children placed within it.

Our society is far from perfect, but it is no more ruined by gay marriage than by the plethora of other forces at work within it.

So, I foresee the significant likelihood of waking up next Wednesday to a national conversation. We will tout the election of a black president and will discuss its representation of a new era of racial relations and understandings. And in many ways it would represent just that.

And the proponents of Proposition 8 will point to its passing as a success for family values and ideals, although it stands as a direct contradiction to those values and ideals that created this union and that in the end allows for those families.