While I risk being branded a homophobic ignoramus on the wrong side of history, I feel compelled to explain what my feeble mind was thinking when I voted yes on Proposition 8.
I breezed through most of the ballot with my loyalty to the Democratic party rather untested, and when I got to Prop 8, I was ready to vote no and cement the full equality of homosexuals. But something happened. I recalled the succinct words of Vice President-elect Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate.
“Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage... That is basically the decision to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths,” he said. I realized then that the term “gay marriage” implied more than just equality, and I could not support it.
Let me make this clear — I fully support the rights of gays. To me, our cultural acceptance of gays is one of the last obstacles in truly making this country what it falsely claims to be, a land of the free. Yet, as past movements have demonstrated, our government spearheads the effort to conquer this final frontier of inequality.
While the California Supreme Court’s acceptance of gay marriage appeared to grant complete equality to gays, it undemocratically undermined another pillar of our Constitution: the separation of church and state. The decision could have led to a dangerous rift between religious institutions and our government, possibly putting patriots at odds with the religiously faithful.
Currently, many sects of Christianity still object to homosexuality. Forcing ministers of these institutions to act against their faiths would certainly leave a bad taste in the mouths of millions of religious Americans.
Marriage is not a legal concept. It is a central part of every current religion, and in this country, it is up to the religions to redefine their respective understandings of marriage in terms of homosexuality.
No on Prop 8 unfortunately looked at the matter through the proverbial eye, and I could not allow the government to overlook its mistake of what had not been first resolved in society, even though our country has never been able to comprehend the term “separation of church and state.”
Two years ago, Rep. Keith Ellison’s (D-Minn.) decision to swear his oath on the Koran rather than the Bible brought up controversy. In fact, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) remarked that Ellison’s actions were a threat to “the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America.” But those who agreed with Goode failed to see the hypocrisy in the tradition for people in every branch of government to swear oath on a book of religion.
Although our nation has always struggled to live up to the high standards laid out in the Constitution, it has made significant strides over 200 years. But as history has proven, there is a wrong way and there is a right way.
The right way maintains the integrity of the Constitution, something that a no vote on Prop 8 could not do. In time, maybe the Supreme Court will declare the term “marriage” unconstitutional. When that moment comes, it will be a victory not just for equality, but the separation between church and state.
Like the movement to remove the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, this decision would be highly unpopular, but it would be a step in the right direction.
Kartik Sreepada is a junior majoring in neuroscience.
Pro-gay rights and pro-Proposition 8
Voting for Prop 8 was not about equality, it was about legal precedent — gay marriage undermines sep
Published: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Updated: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
civil marriage as distinct from religious marriage.""Finally, affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the
designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any
religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to
change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no
religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his
or her religious beliefs."This is why you do your research and make your decision before you enter the voting booth, because the facts are freely available to you and to vote in ignorance of them is a dereliction of your civic duty. The entire argument made in this article is invalidated by the fact that it has no factual underpinning. There were only two assertions in the entire piece, first that marriage is not a legal concept and second that a failure to pass prop 8 would result in states dictating to churches who they had to marry. Both were explicitly and unambiguously contradicted within the text of the decision itself. Had the author bothered to read it at any point before voting or writing an article on the subject, perhaps we could have been spared this piece.