Don't Ban Gay Marriage

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Prop 8 and Bullies:Today I was enjoying my breakfast at a sidewalk eatery along Milpas Street when I noticed a scuffle between a "well-heeled" man and woman in the parking lot nearby. She was trying to eat her bagel while clutching her small dog and pleading with him to leave her alone. He, apparently intoxicated, struck her in the face knocking a perfectly good bagel to the ground. He then grabbed the helpless Pomeranian and tossed the yelping pooch at least five feet through the air into the open window of their nearby SUV.

Unlike the few other passive observers, I could stand no more. I asked the women if she needed help or if I could call the police to settle the dispute. He immediately (as I expected) turned his rage on me. He threatened to "F" me up if I didn't mind my own business. The woman then said that he only drank too much and meant no harm, while massaging her bruised cheek. He then started roughing her up again demanding the car keys. I took out my cell phone and said that I was going to call the cops if he did not stop threatening me, her, and her little dog too. And, that I would definitely call the cops if he got behind the wheel of his car.

That's when he started his hate filled tirade about how "faggots like you" should mind their own "faggot business" before they get hurt (I guess my stylish chapeau was just “so gay”). As he kept coming at me, I took his photo with my cell phone, which seemed to stop him for a second. He said, "Oh, faggot has a camera, well I got a gun, we'll see who wins," and headed toward his car. That was when I ran away fast, knowing too well, from experience, how this might end.

I feel bad that I did nothing in the end to stop this man. It all happened in less than a minute, which is just how quickly this type of indoctrinated hatred can escalate into violence. I should have called 911 immediately, but I have learned the hard way that at some point, self-preservation is paramount. However, with the current tenor of politics, it is not surprising to me that in trying to stand up against just plain meanness, I ended up having my life threatened.

Prop 8 is just plain meanness that does not protect the sanctity of marriage. Rather it sanctions the beliefs and actions of individuals like this man. I cannot do anything to change this man's opinion of me. I still even support his right to that opinion, but I do not support his right to bear hate along with his arms. I realize that this individual may have threatened anyone who interfered, even someone of more "masculine stature," but he made it clear that I had no standing simply because I "must be" gay.

I also realize that this story represents a lot more than issues of accepting gays. In fact, it highlights just about every messed up thing about some extreme people. Nevertheless, they take their cues from what we are willing to tolerate and they do the harm, everyday in little scenarios like this one. Behind closed doors and right in our faces. -Christopher Williams, Santa Barbara

Prop 8 and Civil Rights: I teach history at a community college in Southern California. With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, a history lesson for California voters is in order.

My modern U.S. history class just finished their unit on the civil rights movement—no doubt the most important domestic development of postwar American society. In addition to their reading, the students watched excerpts from the award-winning PBS series “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement.” Although every student had been made to read some version of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech in grade school, few—I suspect none—had ever encountered actual film footage of this struggle. Their incredulity was palpable as the film rolled.

Never before had they seen the fire hoses and police dogs turned on junior high school students; the college students beaten off stools at Woolworth’s lunch counter (only to be replaced by another wave of students ready to take their turn being beaten); the screaming and writhing of white segregationists as a black kindergartener made her way into a previously all-white school; and, of course, the 1963 inaugural address of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace wherein he famously proclaimed: “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” My students were impressed and appalled in equal measure: impressed by the tenacity of the movement’s foot soldiers and appalled by the intransigence of white segregationists.

Outside my classroom, if Americans think of the civil rights movment at all, they usually think of it as something that unfolded exclusively in the South and long ago at that. In fact, the segregation battle may be over but the war for civil rights continues unabated. California’s Proposition 8 gives witness to this fact.

Like the struggle over racial segregation, the seeds of Proposition 8 were sown in the courts, not on the streets. And just as Arkansas’ Governor Orval Faubus determined in 1957 to resist the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, so a segment of California’s voters have determined to resist the California Supreme Court’s May 15, 2008 decision that California’s citizens have a fundamental right to marry the person of their choice.

Regardless of how individual voters may feel about the “rightness” of same sex marriage, the civil rights movement offers us an object lesson in those truths that Americans hold to be self-evident: liberty, equality, fair and equal protection under the law. These protections are no more the exclusive province of heterosexual Americans than they are the exclusive property of white Americans. Civil rights and equal treatment must be extended to every single one of us.

Those who would deny something so basic as the right of individuals to marry the person of their choice will end up—like Governors Faubus and Wallace—on the wrong side of history. We will read their words and watch their rallies in future years and shake our heads in shame and disgust.

Whether you approve of same sex marriage or you despise it is of little consequence. As the great Sojourner Truth predicted of black America on the eve of the Civil War: “We'll have our rights; see if we don't; and you can't stop us from them; see if you can. You may hiss as much as you like, but it is comin’…” The only question is whether Californians are going to keep their dignity or go out kicking and screaming like the segregationist South. Colleen M. Coffey, Ventura




Marriage and Religion: A series of events this month caused me to reflect on my stand on Proposition 8. I was heartened when I read that several interfaith clergy of Santa Barbara were working phone lines urging a No vote on Proposition 8.

Secondly, the Unitarian Church posted a large sign reading, “This Church votes NO on Proposition 8.” However when I arrived home I had received a brochure with a statement by the California Catholic Bishops supporting Proposition 8. I have always been proud of the history the Catholic Church concerning outreach to the marginalized. Sadly where proposition 8 is concerned the church has chosen to look upon gays and lesbians as not being equal.

In this same time period, the Knights of Columbus and Mormons held a meeting. Several couples said their marriages would be diminished if same sex couples were allowed to marry. As a widowed woman who was married for 52 years, my experience has been that no one could diminish our marriage other than ourselves through not providing life to our relationship. I realized this during the 15 years my husband and I facilitated Catholic Marriage/Engaged Encounter weekends.

Many have said that gays should use a word other than marriage. Catholics use “matrimony” to describe a sacrament or covenant. A civil union using the word marriage is not infringing for Catholics.

The Constitution was written to provide protection for all people, not the exclusion of specific groups. Prejudice toward any group diminishes each of us. -Harriet Burke, Santa Barbara