UrbanSwirl.com - Lifestyles of Color

In May 2008, California Law have given same-sex couples the same rights and responsibilities of marriage as straight couples. Proposition 8 is a November ballot measure which eliminates those legal rights and created a system where some people have more rights than others.


Keith Olbermann of MSNBC gave this poignant message concerning the Question of Love - because everyone deserves the same chance at permancence and happiness!

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them—no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble.  You'll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967!

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage.

How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

I know that the majority of people who supports Prop 8 are doing so because of their religious beliefs. I always believe that religion is an individual's 'personal' walk with their God. Religion promotes Spirituality for oneself and brings closeness to their God. Religion is also a Constitutional Right for every American citizen.

Freedom of Religion has been a Fundamental human right. It is freedom of an individual to worship, practice, teach and observe their religion without fear of persecution, prohibition or government interference.

However, the creation of Prop 8 is a major contradiction to the Fundamental human right. Religious leaders and their followers (who embrace their fundamental right to worship) are actively revoking existing fundamental rights of gay couples. Prop 8 will disavow all gay unions and the State will not recognize their relationship.

To Protect the Sanctity of Marriage is the rhetoric used by the Church at every argument - but I cast that sanctity out the door when I see divorce, annulments, polygamy, pedophilia, marriage consent begins at puberty - all practice by the church!

Such Hypocrisy is unfathomable! Such hatred and evil expressed by these Religious Believers!

Say No to Prosposition 8!