Discrimination still lives
By
Bill Press Read Spanish Version
LOS
ANGELES — While the rest of the nation celebrates Barack Obama’s
triumph on Nov. 4, there’s a dark cloud hanging over election night
returns here in the Golden State.
The
success of Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage in California, is
a huge disappointment and a huge contradiction. On the same day 60.8
percent of Californians voted for Sen. Obama, 52 percent voted for
Prop. 8. Even more shockingly, while over nine out of 10
African-Americans voted to elect the nation’s first African-American
president, seven out of 10 voted to discriminate against gays and
lesbians. The anti-gay marriage initiative also won 53 percent of the
Latino vote. Go figure.
Prop.
8 is the latest chapter in the California’s long-running saga over
same-sex marriage. Long simmering on the back burner, it was first
forced onto the front burner when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom,
sitting in the House gallery, heard President Bush use his State of
the Union address to declare that marriage should be allowed only
between a man and woman.
An
outraged Newsom, as he related it to me, stormed out of the Capitol,
turned on his cell phone, called his office and gave orders to draw
up documents for making same-sex marriage legal in San Francisco.
Just one month and some 4,000 happily-married gay and lesbian couples
later, the California Supreme Court ruled that Newsom had violated
state law limiting marriage to same-sex couples only.
Then
on May 16, 2008, that same conservative court stunned everyone by
declaring California’s anti-gay marriage law unconstitutional. People
have a "fundamental right to marry the person of their choice,"
the court ruled 4-3, and existing gender restrictions violate the
"equal protection" guarantees of the state constitution.
(And by extension, one might add, the U.S. Constitution!)
That
should have resolved the issue, but gay-haters were not willing to
give up so easily. They ran out, rounded up signatures and put
Proposition 8 on the ballot, which, in theory at least, overruled the
Supreme Court decision. But opponents of Proposition 8 are already
back before the court, asking them to reaffirm their previous
decision and invalidate the measure on the plausible theory that only
by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature can a constitutional
amendment be placed on the ballot, not by signatures on an
initiative.
However
the court rules, there’s no doubt that Proposition 8 is just the
latest form of discrimination. That’s what’s so maddening about the
support it received from blacks and Latinos. In effect, what they
voted for is replacing one form of discrimination with another. There
is no difference between denying people the right to eat at the same
lunch counter because they’re black or brown and denying them the
right to get married because they’re gay. Either way, it’s
discrimination, pure and simple.
But
Proposition 8 is something else, too: It’s religious bigotry. The
initiative’s two main sponsors were the Catholic Church and the
Mormon Church. Mormons, in fact, pumped in 77 percent of the funding
for the "Yes on 8" campaign, even though they make up less
than 2 percent of California’s population.
Given
that churches were in no way obliged to perform gay marriages — the
Supreme Court decision applied to civil ceremonies only — there is
no excuse for Catholic and Mormon officials to wage war on gays. If
we are all God’s children, then surely we all deserve the same rights
and opportunities. And besides, religion is supposed to be about
love, not hate.
The
Old Testament ban on homosexuality in Leviticus has no more relevance
today than its ban on shellfish, which everybody ignores. And aside
from several comments attributed to St. Paul (and of questionable
authenticity), there is no mention of gays or gay marriage in the New
Testament. If homosexuality were so evil, don’t you think Jesus would
have said something about it?
Actually,
Jesus had a lot to say about helping the poor. But the Catholic and
Mormon churches chose to do very little about poverty, war, torture,
health care, the environment, or so many other issues on which they
should be out in front. They’d rather target gays instead.
The
ultimate irony is that, while rejecting equal rights for gays and
lesbians, 63 percent of Californians also voted to approve
Proposition 2, which requires that chickens and pigs may only be
confined in cages big enough to "allow them to lie down, stand
up, fully extend their limbs, and turn around freely."
Welcome
to California, where chickens and pigs get more sympathy from voters
than lesbians and gays.
Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "Train
Wreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too
Soon)." You
can hear "The Bill Press Show" at his Web site:
billpressshow.com. His email address is: bill@billpress.com.
(c)
2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
