California gone ideological!
The California Supreme Court results upholding Proposition 8 to ban ‘Same Sex Marriage’ received with mixed reaction. Those behind the Prop 8 success were jubilant over the verdict, while the victims of flawed ballot initiative disappointed at the highest judiciary’s ruling against its own decision legalizing “Same Sex Marriage” a year ago.
Society has different forces working for and against various causes. Whenever certain members in the society isolated for reasons considered obviously discriminatory by the fair minds,
Remaining @ http://www.padminiarhant.com
Thank you.
Padmini Arhant
Having created this, my first blog, I had nothing in mind to write. Therefore, I am pasting in a modified version of a response I submitted to another blogger just to kick things off…
We are coming off eight years of having hard-right fundamentalist Christianity as the touchstone of the last would-be theocratic administration. So what is the first thing we will hear at the inauguration of our new president? A hard-right fundamentalist preacher. A preacher who just happened to be at the spear point of the successful campaign to strip California gays and lesbians of their constitutional rights. I am from California. Some non-Californians may not understand that the wounds from the Proposition 8 battle are still fresh and open, and this was like rubbing salt into them. And it is not just a small minority of Obama’s gay and lesbian base here in California that feels this way. If sticks in the craw of every free thinking individual that believed in and fought for those constitutional rights—regardless of sexual orientation. This issue goes to the very core of what our constitution stands for. My wife and I are heterosexuals and I believe there are thousands of other families in this state, and elsewhere, that feel as we do. We are still glad that Obama will be our next president. We don’t plan to take our Obama/Biden yard sign down until after the inauguration ceremony. But I think Obama wants to hear how Americans feel about his decisions, and I’m here to tell him how I feel about this one. He can add this to the aggregate of opinions expressed and do with it as he pleases. Some tell those of us who do not support Obama’s selection of Pastor Warren that we should “take a chill pill”. But tell me this. If he had scheduled a white supremacist preacher, who nevertheless supports the fight against global warming and helping to alleviate the suffering of the people of Darfur, would y’all still be telling us to “take a chill pill”?
We are coming off eight years of having hard-right fundamentalist Christianity as the touchstone of the last would-be theocratic administration. So what is the first thing we will hear at the inauguration of our new president? A hard-right fundamentalist preacher. A preacher who just happened to be at the spear point of the successful campaign to strip California gays and lesbians of their constitutional rights.
I am from California. Some non-Californians may not understand that the wounds from the Proposition 8 battle are still fresh and open, and this was like rubbing salt into them. And it is not just a small minority of Obama’s gay and lesbian base here in California that feels this way. If sticks in the craw of every free thinking individual that believed in and fought for those constitutional rights—regardless of sexual orientation. This issue goes to the very core of what our constitution stands for. My wife and I are heterosexuals and I believe there are thousands of other families in this state, and elsewhere, that feel as we do. We are still glad that Obama will be our next president. We don’t plan to take our Obama/Biden yard sign down until after the inauguration ceremony. But I think Obama wants to hear how Americans feel about his decisions, and I’m here to tell him how I feel about this one. He can add this to the aggregate of opinions expressed and do with it as he pleases.
Some tell those of us who do not support Obama’s selection of Pastor Warren that we should “take a chill pill”. But tell me this. If he had scheduled a white supremacist preacher, who nevertheless supports the fight against global warming and helping to alleviate the suffering of the people of Darfur, would y’all still be telling us to “take a chill pill”?
I am giving PE Obama the benefit of the doubt on all of his decisions but Warren giving the invocation at the inauguration has me troubled. Here is some background on Warren...
http://www.americablog.com/2008/12/obama-picks-homophobe-pro-prop.html
Funny Star Studded Musical video on Proposition 8 - Jack Black and many more
Hosted on Funny or Die
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c0cf508ff8/prop-8-the-musical-starring-jack-black-john-c-reilly-and-many-more-from-fod-team-jack-black-craig-robinson-john-c-reilly-and-rashida-jones
SAN FRANCISCO — California officials will investigate accusations that the Mormon Church neglected to report a battery of nonmonetary contributions — including phone banks, a Web site and commercials — on behalf of a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/us/politics/26marriage.html?_r=1&nl=pol&emc=pola1&oref=slogin
The vast majority of Americans are very excited about the possibilities of an Obama Administration with a Democratic Congress. However, for those of us who were against Prop 8 in California it is a bittersweet victory. We all know that the economy is going to be the priority, as it should be, but I am hoping that action can also be taken on the national level to stop the discrimination of the homosexual minority. As a Senator, Obama spoke out against the Defense of Marriage Act and said he thought it should be repealed. At that time, the political climate was not right, but that is no longer the case. So, I have hope that this discriminating piece of legislation can soon be repealed. As a married heterosexual, my wife and I are appalled that our homosexual friends and neighbors can not enjoy the same benefits and recognition that we do. History does not look kindly on discrimination and I believe our children will look back on this period as we view Japanese internment camps, woman's suffrage, and black segregation. In contrast, the leaders that are brave enough to bring change and equality will be celebrated in the history books.
It was exciting to see President Obama (I love to write that) win in a landslide, along with Democratic Congressman and Senators. I had to celebrate! Oh, but wait, that very night we had dscrimination written into the California Constitution with Proposition 8, which prohibits gays from getting married.
The religious right spent well over $25 million to convince the good people of California to vote against the civil rights of one group. They successfully convinced voters that gays are somehow a threat to society. No hard facts here, just a lot of scare tactics.
The hard facts are that gays and lesbian are also Americans. They pay taxes, have children, mothers, fathers, relatives and friends. They want love and stability and they even want the same rights as other Americans. So many even participated in President Obama's election. Somehow, we have made them villains.
It is ironic that voters that have been the most oppressed in our society's history (African Americans) were also the strongest supporters of Prop 8. The oppressed took no time to become the oppressors. Gays and Lesbians have been active civil rights supporters. They get it! Discrimination is NOT AN AMERICAN VALUE!
I am hoping that President Obama means leadership. We need a leader who will educate the American people to not single out a minority group for discrimination. A leader who can bring us together so that all will benefit.
With the excitement President Obama and new Dems in office, I am optomistic. I only hope that we can come together and give all American their due civil rights
Aided by a few hours sleep, energetic music, and my ever-present cup of coffee, I feel the need to commemorate this moment personally, beyond just tears or shouts of joy. Perhaps it will be a rough-draft manifesto of sorts, a kind of social New Year Resolution, a longer declaration of what this all means to me.
So what does this day mean to me? A lot of things, trivial and sublime. There’s having a young black man in the highest office, and I feel no shame in admitting my intense pride in that, but it’s more than that: it’s having a person of his caliber. In an age of culture wars, especially between populists and Ivory Tower types, we have a person who is intellectual, relatable, and empathetic. As I said before, Barack Obama is an American for all Americans. We’re talking about the man who gave the best assessments and reconciliation of the issues of faith and race in this nation; someone who can acknowledge the truths in different, and even inflammatory, perspectives without creating more division.
And when I say we can be example for the world, I don’t mean by strong-arming, covert ops, or unfair trade agreements. We can do it fairly.
I also believe American Christianity has a chance to be turned back to the light of peace and justice. I have watched as what began as a movement for the uplifting of all became the idolatry of a very narrow view of “Family Values”. I refuse to give back my baptism, because it is mine and under no one else’s oversight, but it has been most torturous to see the Pharisaical spectre raised as never before and have to wonder if even calling myself a Christian by the most liberal of definitions could be morally correct. As an American and a spiritual person, to say that my heart bled is an understatement.
Now, I will take a moment to mention abortion, since this is has been, and will continue to be, a divisive issue. I will state it plainly: I do not like abortion. No one does. I called my own children babies, not fetuses, from the moment the EPT stick had two lines. However, abortion is a desperate choice, and people will only be more desperate if more choices are taken away. I agree wholeheartedly with McCain’s concept of “a culture of life”, but you can’t say that you want to encourage adoption and then oppose same-sex couples adopting. You can’t pledge to support families after defining “family” in a very narrow way. This is what I want: Adoption to be normalized in our culture to the point that it is part of the family-planning discussion of most couples, for adoption to be normalized to the point that the process is quick, clean, inexpensive, and open for all sorts of alternative relationships for the birth parents. Remove the stigma, plain and simple. I want marriage and adoption equality. I want a basic, good, standard of living to be a human right. I want comprehensive sex education, and cheaper and safer birth control. I want unwed, poor, or young parents to be treated with respect and love. I want this culture to take a stand and assist against domestic violence. I can guarantee you, that if these things are fixed, abortion will take care of itself; it’ll become obsolete except for medical necessity. You give people better accessible choices, they will make better decisions. In fact, that to-do list will fix a great deal of social ills: they are all connected.
I am pro-choice because I am pro-life; All lives.
So many Obama supporters aren’t just walking with heads held high because “their candidate won”, but because those last shreds of fear are melting away. Yes, there is the social-psychological aspect of being on a “team” and winning. But look at the campaign, look at the people and their motivations, listen to their stories:
We didn’t wait for someone to come and unchain us; we unlocked the shackles with ourt voice and our vote.
It looks like Proposition 8 passed in California. I would normally be very angry, and indeed I am irritated. It is in my nature to gripe and rail against injustice, I will admit it. I can be quite the curmudgeon. However, in this moment, I have achieved the state of soul that is perhaps the ideal for my type, which is a nose for injustices buttressed by motivation and hope. My real reaction: “Game On”. I’m not itching for a fight anymore; I’m itching to get to work. The work of healing, fixing, and reconciliation. Let’s face it, we can be as angry as we want, and we deserve to be, but we also need to be multi-lingual in Hope. People vote for things like Prop 8 out of fear, just read the stories. Never has it been appropriate, never more affordable, never more necessary, to be Peace-Mongers.
I won’t pretend that this is all going to get fixed in one term, or even two.
Barack Obama is not a Hero because he will save us; he is a Hero because he will inspire and represent us. It is a very meager sampling of people that cannot see themselves reflected to some degree in him, his family, or his campaign. The bonus is that he did it by appealing to our inner-angels, not our inner-demons. He decried policy without demonizing people. For me, Barack Obama represents even better something that I’ve been complimented on before and what I really want to be: he’s a True Liberal. I differentiate this because it means that a person will seek the path of the most responsible freedoms, without dismissing tradition just because it’s tradition. When I know that someone won’t be an ideological genuflector, my trust in their leadership increases exponentially.
This election season brought us to the social edge, and an Obama victory was our deliverance. What do I mean by this? I suppose the best example I can give is an anecdote that Mary gave about local commissioner Kathleen Hudson several years ago. She said things about Jews and the LGBT community that were so vile and inflammatory, it brought people “to the edge” and made them peer into the ideological abyss. People could no longer be neutral, and they saw the slippery slope of what they could become by allowing such bigotry to masquerade as normalcy. Maybe these were things people thought at one time or another, but when they saw it take shape in a public forum, they shuddered at the reflection. That’s what this election was like for me to watch: I saw some of the most bigoted, racist, xenophobic, homophobic (not just heterosexist), and anti-Muslim spectacles in my lifetime. On this precipice, I was angry, but I knew that these undercurrents needed full exposure, so that people could look over that edge before unwittingly falling into that abyss. Those were the birth pains for this part of our history. Barack Obama’s election is the midwife to a new age.
There will still be pains, but we can no longer go back. We not only saw a battle between base-minded fearful populism and the empathetic examination of justice and mercy, we saw the victory of the latter. This may not be THE Mountaintop, but it is one of them.
Look at the vista spread before us: this is America. My parents promised me this day would come. Someone told me that nothing would change except their taxes. If that becomes so, then I swear it will not be because of a lack of effort on my part.
I believe.
We will have justice.
We will have freedom.
We will have mercy.
For all.
Yes We Can.
Go sign the Courage Campaign's letter to President-Prophet Thomas Monson. It takes less than half a minute. It requests that the Mormon Church stop funding the Proposition 8 campaign in California. Particularly in light of the lies being used in their advertising. The more signatures they can get for the letter, the more publicity the letter will generate. This publicity will act in two ways. First, drawing attention to the lies in the the advertisements will embarrass the church. Second, the more Proposition 8 is associated with a single, out of state church, in the minds of voting Californians, the more it will seem like meddling and the less likely they will be to vote for it.
This is a very easy task. You just fill in your name, your email and your zip code. Just go do it.
Have you signed the letter? Good. If you want to learn more and/or do more I recommend starting at this Daily Kos diary. It links to much of the recent news and activity.You can also donate to Equality For All on my ActBlue page or phone bank with the help of No On 8's web tool.
Proposition 8 is a California Nov. 4 ballot measure aimed at changing the California Constitution so as to eliminate the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry in California, and to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
In May 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that previous statutes limiting marriage to heterosexual couples violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution, and held that individuals of the same sex have the right to marry under the California Constitution. As of this date, consequently, the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry in California is constitutionally protected. Proposition 8 would effectively overturn the California Supreme Court's decision, writing discrimination into the California Constitution.
Prominent Californians including Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, and Jerry Sanders of San Diego, and California Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell, have all expressed opposition to Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is opposed also by every major newspaper in California, including the the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union-Tribune, Orange County Register, Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Redding Record-Searchlight, Riverside Press-Enterprise, Napa Valley Register, Palm Springs Desert Sun, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and Fresno Bee. Barack Obama has called Prop 8 "divisive and discriminatory."
California voters should visit the No On Prop 8 website, contribute if possible, spread the word, and vote NO on Proposition 8.
IT ISN'T OVER! California's "No On Proposition 8" campaign is now losing in California! I've been in politics since a teen in Iowa in the '80s, and I've seen MANY campaigns and causes lose at the ballot box because of last-minute over-confidence among progressives!
PLEASE help "No on Prop 8!" Donate at: https://secure.ga4.org/01/equalityforall
PROP 8 (a Nov. 4 referendum) IS AHEAD IN THE POLLS for the first time in 2008 AND WILL BAN MARRIAGE EQUALITY IN CALIFORNIA and OVERTURN the state court's ruling that same-sex couples be given access to the same rights (and responsibilities!) of the domesticating, life-long, legal commitment of marriage. PLEASE help "No on Prop 8!" Donate at: https://secure.ga4.org/01/equalityforall
