Tolerate this

Followup to: California: Four legs good, two legs bad

When California passed Proposition 8 and banned gay marriage, Ron Prentice of the Yes on 8 campaign said "We trust that this decision will be respected by all Californians." If he honestly thought nobody would fight back when an established right was repealed, he vastly underestimated the enduring power of America's spirit of liberty. Prop 8 was a wake-up call, and the movement for equal marriage rights is out in force and stronger than ever. The first gay marriages took place in Connecticut on Wednesday, protests against Prop 8 have been held continuously throughout California, and thousands demonstrated at the Mormon temple in New York City. The media finally noticed that Mormons had been planning to join with the Catholic church to destroy marriage rights since at least 1997. Comprehensive boycotts are being organized against businesses that donated to Yes on 8.

The ACLU, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed lawsuits with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn Prop 8, and 43 Democratic state legislators filed a brief encouraging the court to invalidate the measure. The city and county of Los Angeles (the nation's most populous county), city and county of San Francisco, and county of Santa Clara also joined the suit against Prop 8. And the Supreme Court seems interested in handling this sooner rather than later. Even Gov. Schwarzenegger took a stand for gay marriage, telling supporters to "never give up", hoping that Prop 8 will be overturned by the court, and stating "It's the same as in the 1948 case when blacks and whites were not allowed to marry. This falls into the same category." And by all indications, the nationwide protests (and in Canada, too) planned for today will be massive. Make no mistake, this issue is not going away.

Evidently, many who endorsed Prop 8 thought they could quietly fade into the background after providing material support to an amendment that openly violates the civil rights of a minority and soundly rejects our nation's ideals of freedom and equality. They are now finding out just how wrong they were. And they are not happy about it.

• Dave Leatherby, a Sacramento business owner, Catholic and father of 10, donated $20,000 to Yes on 8 for religious reasons. Dismayed by the ongoing protests, Leatherby said "Let's move on. I always told my children that once a rule was made, you have to abide by it. I think it should be the same in this circumstance." Apparently he was unable to move on after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, nor was he willing to abide by that ruling once it was made. Responding to calls for boycotts of businesses that supported Prop 8, Lisa West, spokeswoman for the Sacramento Mormon church, stated "We had hoped there would be more tolerance for different viewpoints." I would love to know where she found the nerve to ask for tolerance after her church rendered a state constitution legally intolerant of a specific class of citizens.

• Responding to a protest outside the Mormon temple in University City, Mormon Scott Bennion said "Christianity as a whole is being picked on." Maybe I'd be inclined to take him seriously if his right to practice Christianity had been revoked by popular vote. But the separation of church and state is a foreign concept to Bennion, who supported Prop 8 because the Bible defines marriage as a union between a man a woman. I assume he'd also support banning the consumption of shellfish and "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth"—after all, they're defined as an abomination unto you. Bennion further added "It was not our intention to hurt them" and "It was to protect the integrity of marriages and families." So why would you vote to force the government to discriminate against them if you don't intend to hurt them? This is the ridiculous doublethink you'll find among people who believe the best way to protect the integrity of marriages is to destroy 18,000 marriages.

  The Mormon church issued a statement saying "It is wrong to target the church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the Democratic process", which raises the question of why anyone would aspire to participate in a "democratic process" of voting on whether people can retain their civil rights. There sure doesn't seem to be anything sacred about that! Pastor Chris Clark of the East Clairemont Baptist Church said "It is appalling that churches are being singled out and persecuted for standing for their convictions, standing for what they believe to be true". Well, when someone decides to start throwing Christians to the lions again, I'll concede that they're being "persecuted". But as long as Christians comprise 78% of the US population, and the majority of them continue to oppose the legal recognition of equal rights, the idea of persecution will be seen for what it is: the product of unsound minds. Believe all you want, but if you think your convictions are so strong that they define truth and supersede our rights, that is appalling.

• Mormon church spokesman Michael Otterson parroted the lie that "This was a very broad-based coalition that defended traditional marriage in a free and democratic election," when Mormons working for Yes on 8 privately acknowledged that the Mormon church played a significantly larger role than other churches. Otterson also said "This is not about being anti-gay. This is not about being unfair to another minority". How is it not anti-gay to repeal the marriage rights of gay couples? How is that not unfair to a minority? Continuing, Otterson said "This is about protecting an institution that has been the bedrock of society for millennia, and the idea of having that redefinition of marriage on the part of a minority forced on the majority of our society was just not palatable to many people in California, including our own members." What, exactly, does marriage need to be protected from? The legality of same-sex marriage has no impact on the legality of opposite-sex marriage. If marriage is such an essential component of our society that it needs to be protected, why don't we ban divorce? Try finding the popular support for that one.

  As for the "redefinition of marriage", in every era there was a majority of society that opposed redefining marriage to allow interracial marriage, or marriage between slaves, or marriage in which the wife wasn't considered the husband's property—it just wasn't "palatable". Would Otterson speak out against the Mormon church for redefining its marriages from polygamous to monogamous? That's something he'd rather gloss over:

  "Well, let's not fudge the issues here. We're not talking about what kind of marriages that Mormons were involved in, in the 1800s," said Michael Otterson, a spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. "That's not the issue. Let's keep focused on where we are with marriage today."

  Redefining marriage: totally unacceptable, unless you're Mormon.

• Ron Prentice, chairman of Yes on 8, says "Proposition 8 has always been about restoring the traditional definition of marriage." So, would he work towards restoring the many traditional definitions of marriage mentioned above? Or could it be that our definitions as well as our cultural institutions adapt throughout time to suit our ever-changing society? If there were any validity to "tradition" as an argument, we'd still live as pre-agrarian nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers. Prentice then proclaims "It doesn't discriminate or take rights away from anyone." Well, except for discriminating against same-sex couples by taking away their right to marry—but who cares about them, anyway?

  Prentice further said that those engaging in protests and boycotts are "unabashedly trampling on the rights of others". Which rights would those be? The right to freedom of expression does not entail a right to freedom from criticism, and we have no obligation to patronize businesses that will use our money to support eliminating our rights. But if it bothers you this much, why don't you start a proposition to remove our right to protest and boycott? You can do that sort of thing in California now.

  Then again, maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas. Frank Schubert, director of Yes on 8, went so far as to say "They don't have a right to blacklist and boycott our supporters", claiming this is "over the line", "wrong" and "intolerable". It seems the passage of Prop 8 has inspired him to keep telling people which other rights they don't have. But he and his campaign truly stepped over the line when they successfully lobbied to overturn equal protection under the law. That's intolerable, and we refuse to tolerate it. Schubert added "It's a political mob as bad as McCarthy was", exhibiting his complete ignorance of McCarthy's allegations that homosexuals had infiltrated the federal government. In a time when being gay was still considered a mental illness, this "Lavender Scare" sparked widespread investigations of employees and applicants, and thousands of suspected homosexuals were fired.

  While in the throes of this total reality inversion, Schubert wrote a letter supporting a man whose business was boycotted after he donated $1,000 to Yes on 8, saying he is "the victim of what appears to be a systematic attempt to harass and intimidate anybody who had the courage to stand up and support traditional marriage" and "There's nothing about supporting traditional marriage which is anti-gay." But if you support your "traditional" marriage by using the government to destroy anything that doesn't fall within the narrow concept of marriage you've defined, that is anti-gay. And if you want to talk about courage, courage is exemplified by every soldier throughout our history who fought and died to protect the rights we enjoy today—there's absolutely nothing courageous about taking those rights away from our fellow citizens. That's cowardly and un-American.

• Jeff Flint, a campaign strategist for Yes on 8, thinks "the No on 8 forces have devolved into mob justice". It's understandable that he would object to mob justice—he's made it abundantly clear that he prefers mob injustice. Yes on 8's general counsel Andrew Pugno, obviously upset that anyone would dare to challenge a repeal of equal rights from a group of citizens, says "Their position is absurd, an insult to California voters and an attack on the initiative process itself." You know what's really an insult to California voters? Overturning their equal protection under the law. I bet most Californians wouldn't be very happy about that. Continuing, Pugno says "We will vigorously defend the People's decision to enact Proposition 8". Good luck upholding the right of the people to repeal... the rights of... the people. I'm sure the founding fathers would stand with you on that.

  From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

  —James Madison, Federalist No. 10 (1787)

  It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

  —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state — it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.

  —John Witherspoon

• Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles, said "Proposition 8 is not against any group in our society. Its sole focus is on preserving God's plan for people living upon this earth throughout time". This is completely disingenuous and obviously contradictory. You can't support an amendment to eliminate the rights of a group, and then claim it's not against any group. Even applying all the logical contortions of religion, that still doesn't jive. Moreover, "God's plan" (a concept which should always be considered suspect, as it just happens to precisely match the agenda of God's followers) deserves no place in our secular government. Not all of us believe in your god or share your vision of its ethics. We don't need to be ruled by an invisible and most likely imaginary deity, and "God" is never an acceptable reason to interfere with something as important as civil rights. If you disagree, consider moving to a theocratic nation like Iran.

This is what we're up against: people who espouse an ideology in chaos, so flagrantly self-contradictory that a mere moment of actual thought, an honest and reasoned consideration of the issues, threatens to send the whole house of cards tumbling down. And that's what leads to these bizarre and plainly absurd objections; that it's acceptable, even "democratic" to take away people's rights, but if anyone protests about this, they're "intolerant" and "trampling on the rights of others"; that we must defend and uphold the right of the people to repeal the rights of anyone and everyone by simple majority vote; that marriage should be "protected" by legally dissolving marriages; that marriage is the "bedrock of society" in a country with a 50% divorce rate; that a handful of verses from ancient religious texts are an accurate plan for contemporary society; that boycotting businesses lending their support to persecute homosexuals is comparable to a senator's efforts to persecute homosexuals; that exercising our right to protest is "mob justice" but stripping people of their rights is not.

To the seething masses of hypocritical dimwits whose rights were not repealed: You earned this. You worked hard for it, you gave your time and money to support it, you even won. Your proposition passed. No more gay marriages have taken place in California, at least for the time being. But you didn't think about what would happen next. Were you really so devoid of foresight that you actually expected us to give up and "move on"? Did you think that when confronted with such an outrageous abuse of our rights, we'd just get over it? What would you do if your rights were repealed by public vote? How would you react to being told you no longer had equal protection under the law? Would you sit quietly at home, unwilling to stand up for yourself? Would you leave your rights behind because you didn't want to make a fuss? And if you did fight for your rights, how would you feel if you were called "intolerant" and "disrespectful" and accused of "persecution" by the very people who took your rights away? I would love to hear an honest answer to this.

In the meantime, we're going to keep fighting for the heart and soul of our nation. Either we all have equal protection under the law, or we do not. Either our rights can be obliterated with a vote, or they cannot. We're taking to the streets to stand up for the traditional values of freedom, equality and self-determination. And if you can't deal with that, here's how to stop it: Give us our rights.

Also, Marriage Equality USA mirrored my previous post on this topic. You guys rule (and use the color pink very effectively). Feel free to use any articles you find suitable, they're public domain.