Repealing Proposition 8 in California
by David Atkins
One of the few bitter disappointments on election night in 2008 was the passage of Proposition 8 in California, enshrining legal discrimination against minorities in the California Constitution. It was an issue my brother, my fiancee and I had done a lot of work on: we wrote and produced an anti-Prop 8 ad that, after much ado, was aired by the Courage Campaign in a few markets on election day. To this day, I believe that had the ad played earlier, it would have caused a big firestorm, but the conversation would have changed from the bogus issue of teaching about gay sex in schools to the real issue, which was the intrusion of an outside religious organization into the lives of Californians. And I believe that that change of conversation would have doomed the proposition to defeat. Here’s the ad:
Anyway, the legal challenge to Proposition 8 is successful so far, but appeals are still winding their way through the courts. Still, the best and sweetest rejection should ultimately come from the voters themselves. And there’s a group trying to do just that:
A gay rights group was cleared by the California Secretary of State to begin collecting signatures for a repeal of Proposition 8, the state’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
The group Love Honor Cherish has to collect 807,615 voter signatures by May 14th in order to qualify for a ballot measure in the November elections, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
If passed, the initiative would change Proposition 8 to say “that marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.”
“This is severely impacting people, loving couples who cannot get married. It has severely impacted me not being able to get married,” Tom Watson of Love Honor Cherish said. “It’s been more than three years since Prop 8, and a majority of California residents have realized that it is a mistake to deny loving same-sex couples the right to marry and are ready to reverse the mistake that was made at the ballot box. We should give them that opportunity.”
Here’s hoping the effort is successful. Human rights and love are universal.
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