Prop 8's passing has pissed off a lot of people, since 48% percent said they wanted gay marriage to be allowed (I'm still confused why this is even a question). Shouldn't all the American people have the same rights? And isn't it considered discrimination if you eliminate the rights to one specific group of citizens? Isn't that why slavery and the holocaust were all about...discrimination? One of my biggest pet peeves through out the election was when prop 8 supporters kept saying that they have gay friends and that they love them to death...well, it seems to me that if you have friends that are gay you would want them to have the same rights and happiness that you have?
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I definitely agree that Prop 8 shouldn't have ever existed, and the "gay friend" excuse is ridiculous. But I have to disagree that slavery and the Holocaust are comparable. I feel like in those situations, "discrimination" doesn't even begin to cover it. I know the issues that many queer people face, but I feel like people sometimes rush too quickly to connect events together. I'm all for struggles being connected, but I think it's also important to examine things individually...
Anyway, hopefully Prop 8 won't come to pass...
I don't understand how something like Prop 8 could even have been put on the ballot. It is fundamentally unconstitutional.
It is not possible to be legally married without obtaining a marriage license from the state. Simply going and having a wedding at a church is completely ceremonial and has no bearing on whether or not two people are recognized as married by the government. In other words, it is possible to get married without the church. It is NOT possible to get married without the state. Therefore, the act of marriage as a legally binding contract is a CIVIL RIGHT. And under the Constitution, the government cannot make a law that infringes on any citizens' civil rights.
Prop 8 is illegal. Any act that bans gay marriage is illegal. And unless the conservatives manage to change the constitution, illegal it will stay.
I'm 17 years old. How come I know this, but the people in charge of our government don't? Why hasn't a Democrat called a press conference and told the Republicans that they can go fuck themselves, because gay marriage is LEGALLY PROTECTED.
Jesus effing christ.
They have a different interpretation, in which marriage is a very specific (restricted, limited) thing. They see marriage as a fulfillment of Divine Will and Social Something, not as something any two people can do for love (and they still generally see homosexual love as a disorder). Republicans see marriage as an institution that by definition includes a man and a woman, and thus gays aren't being denied the same right to marry someone of the opposite gender that straight couples have - remember, these people are Stephen Colbert writ small. To a Republican, you do your duty and marry a woman and knock her up and pretend to be a happy family, and if you absolutely must you can have your gay life in the bathroom of MSP International Airport or in a hotel room with a gay masseuse/hooker/meth dealer.
Slavery was about owning millions of people, and their children, and their children's children. The Holocaust was about murdering 6-12 million people in an effort to exterminate most members (including gays) of the human family. A little more than "discrimination" there. The cause is not helped by such ridiculous hyperbole.
Prop8 is a filthy piece of vicious and pointless vandalism, destroying something that makes someone else happy just to smirk at their pain. The Anti-H8 movement is analogous to the Civil Rights movement, even if most beneficiaries of the later are fierce opponents of the former. Prop8 is nothing like slavery or the Holocaust, and making the comparison is both offensive and a sure way of ruining your own credibility as an advocate by announcing that you've lost your mind.
I used the comparison to Slavery and the Holocaust as a reference for discrimination. Slavery discriminated against black people, and the Holocaust discriminated against Jewish people. So not allowing homosexuals to get married is discrimination against gays. That's all I meant. I wasn't saying the three were equally devastating. Not allowing someone to get married is no way near as bad as slavery or the Holocaust.
Well it's a terrible comparison and it's going to do you much more harm than good. Jews were furious at McCain and Palin for casually batting around the Holocaust, and if you think African-Americans resent (unfairly in my view) comparisons of the Gay Rights movement to the black Civil Rights moment, wait and see the reaction you get mentioning Prop8 and slavery together.
Honestly, I don't think it's going to do any harm because all I'm doing is saying they are all discrimination. Am I wrong?? Are they not based on discrimination??
Yes, they are based on discrimination. Do you really not see why it's a hideous and counterproductive thing to say anyway? When I was a kid Honeywell laid off a ton of its American union workforce, including my dad, and sent the jobs to Mexico where they could employ people at low wages under unsafe conditions. Should I compare this to the Rwanda genocide, since they both were based on treating people badly?
This isn't a ridiculous comparison. In fact I've heard several people reference Prop 8 to the Holocaust. Because these are both punishing a group of citizens and forcing them to stand out by not allowing them the same Constitutional rights. That's the only similarity between the two; these are completely different things having to do with two different ideas. I was simply saying they are similar.
Things can have something vaguely in common without being rational or appropriate items for comparison. There's a reason it's usually people like Sarah Palin and the Neo-Cons who compare everything to Hitler and the Holocaust. There's a reason Barack Obama doesn't compare his challenges to slavery. You can't compare every injustice to the greatest crimes in human history.
I share your disgust with Prop8 and the bigotry and injustice it represents. I am confident it will be repealed and I hope relatively soon. But talking about it along with slavery and the Holocaust is ridiculous and offensive hyperbole. You're just going to turn people off, or enrage them.
I apologize if I've turned anyone away or enraged anyone. When I made that comparison (one that I've heard many others use) I wasn't trying to make it an issue. I was simply trying to compare two tragedies, but apparently I didn't think how it would affect people. You're entitled to your opinion and I am to mine. I just started posting on here and don't want to start out on the wrong foot. But I know what I said wasn't as insulting as you're making it.
Let me try to simplify this. Prop8 is about whether or not gays can legally own their share of the word marriage. It's a fight over definitions and semantics, and while those are VERY important, and a fight that must be fought and will be won, it's also a pretty advanced place for a civil rights movement to be at. The Holocaust was about wiping large chunks of humanity off the face of the earth. Slavery was about owning millions of people over hundreds of years. Being told your marriage is actually a civil union just doesn't compare to being sent to a gas chamber or that you and your family are property, divisible at the whim of your owner, and that your fate is to pick cotton while being beaten until you die. There's a reason it's Sarah Palin and Bill Kristol who compare everyone to Hitler and everything to the Holocaust, and it's not that they're informed, rational people making logical good-faith arguments.
If you think I'm just picking on you, you can start telling African Americans that Prop8 is a bit like slavery and Jews that it's similar in some respects to the Holocaust, but I wouldn't recommend it.