I mailed my No on 8 vote a couple weeks ago…
I don’t believe the protection of minority rights can be left up to majority vote or politics. I’m content to let some decisions rest with the judicial branch.
I also don’t think a constitution should be amended by a simple majority vote. There should be higher hurdles to amend such an important document.
Hey went past the same corner in concord the other day and an equally large crowd of people (mostly younger) who carried big placards saying NO TO 8.
But polls show YES vote still leading although most tv and radio ads have been saying to vote NO .
Most people are just afraid. They are medieval peasants used to a simple life of farming all their grandparents’ lives. For century upon century, nothing ever changed for anybody. We all lived the same lives as our great-great-grandparents for millenia. It’s only in the past 200 years and the Industrial Revolution/Capitalism/the Englightenment that things have actually progressed in any meaningful sense for the mass of humanity. Most people still have a medieval peasant mentality and yet are trying to exist in the frightening, confusing technological age of the 21st century. My grandmother was as decent a human being as it gets, and she grew up a cotton-picking sharecropper in rural Mississippi. As poor as it comes - no running water, no electricity, nothing. Much poorer than any person in America could understand it today. When my father watched Boyz in the Hood, his reaction was, “They grew up in better houses than I did.” My grandmother lived most of her life without a TV, telephone, air conditioning (this was the hot, hot South), or most modern conveniences that we all now take for granted since birth. How could she understand the modern world? In 1984, she told me that she would vote for Jackson because he made sense about what he said about poor people in America, but she could never vote for him because, “He’s a colored fella”. A hell of a lot of old people in the South - and all over America - are thinking exactly that way. I understand exactly why a lot of older people are uneasy about gays, and gay rights. It’s the way they were raised. You aren’t going to change years of learning when you were a child. It’s the way they were brought up.
Change scares people. And who can blame them?
I am just trying to explain, not condone.
Ugh. That “medieval peasant” line makes me sound uneccessarily elitist and snotty. But please put all that in context. My grandparents in the American South, as sharecroppers, were identical to Irish potato farmers and Russian serfs and Sicilian harvesters. I was just trying to put all that in a historical context. And believe me, I am proud of my roots, both being working class and Southern. That doesn’t mean that I can’t criticize my roots. That’s all part of living in an alleged democracy, ain’t it? That if something is wrong, it’s not just your right but your duty to criticize.
Just to clarify things. My grandmother lived in a world that was vastly alien to my experience. “The past is a foreign country” as they say.
[quote=“tommy525”]Hey went past the same corner in concord the other day and an equally large crowd of people (mostly younger) who carried big placards saying NO TO 8.
But polls show YES vote still leading although most tv and radio ads have been saying to vote NO .[/quote]
Really? I’ve been reading ON SFGate.com that “NO on 8” has been ahead by between 8% and 5%
[quote=“CraigTPE”][quote=“tommy525”]Hey went past the same corner in concord the other day and an equally large crowd of people (mostly younger) who carried big placards saying NO TO 8.
But polls show YES vote still leading although most tv and radio ads have been saying to vote NO .[/quote]
Really? I’ve been reading ON SFGate.com that “NO on 8” has been ahead by between 8% and 5%[/quote]
Fivethirtyeight.com says that No is slightly ahead (49 No -44 Yes), but so close as to be a toss-up. The Yes polling was ahead for a couple weeks when the Yes assholes were saturating the TV with lie-filled ads, but the No people have been fighting back big time since then.
I agree with this statement as it relates to Prop 8 (not sure about the medieval peasant stuff, but it makes for an interesting read just the same). Many of the TV ads supporting Prop 8 (i.e., opposing gay marriage) focus on how schools will be required to teach about gay marriage. My sister and her husband are fundamentalist christians and they use this point to justify their position on Prop 8 - the old “What about the children?!!” argument. Their thinking is that if gay marriage is taught in the schools, it will encourage more children to be gay. To them, being gay is a choice, a choice against Christ, but a choice nonetheless.
They are friends with a christian couple who are having a problem in their marriage. The problem being that the husband keeps having extramarital affairs with men. Each time he is caught, they go to christian couples’ therapy where they pray really, really hard, he promises not to do it again, they make another baby and all is well for a year or so until he does it again. Then they go through the same steps again and make another baby.
I heard this tragic story over dinner one night with my sister, her husband and some of their other christian friends, all of whom cannot seem to understand why the husband has sex with other men, despite all the therapy, promises, and praying. The thing that struck me about their discussion of this topic was the fact that they believe the husband, who was raised as a christian fundamentalist, is choosing to be gay. The suggestion that perhaps he is gay, has always been gay, and is “choosing” to be heterosexual to fit within the demands of his religion was completely foreign to them.
I sensed a real fear in their concerns about this marriage. That fear being it could happen to any marriage, especially if society recognizes gay relationships as equal to heterosexual ones. They truly fear that if gay marriage is legal, heterosexuals will just start turning gay left and right.
Personally, I think they are insane. Unfortunately, if more than 50% of Californians are equally insane, Prop 8 becomes part of the state’s constitution.
[quote=“smerf”]
I heard this tragic story over dinner one night with my sister, her husband and some of their other christian friends, all of whom cannot seem to understand why the husband has sex with other men, despite all the therapy, promises, and praying. The thing that struck me about their discussion of this topic was the fact that they believe the husband, who was raised as a christian fundamentalist, is choosing to be gay. The suggestion that perhaps he is gay, has always been gay, and is “choosing” to be heterosexual to fit within the demands of his religion was completely foreign to them. .[/quote]
I feel just so sorry for this guy. But he’s an adult and despite the fact that kids are involved he’s gonna have to make a decision, or I think there’s suicide or a deep-festering resentment that’s going to replace any civility in that relationship coming in the future.
That’s the misconception.
The truth is that those men were gay in the first place but social and family pressure pushed them into marriage. This phenomenon is rampant in Taiwan, too. I know many, many gays who are married with children because they believe society and their family leave them no choice. A very dear, gay Taiwanese friend of mine whose family moved to South America when he was young recently flew him back here to meet a girl his relatives found here for him to marry. He’s dating a married man in South America, where the culture is equally unaccepting of gays.
There is no question that gays who are struggling with the social stigma of their sexuality try very hard to “be normal” and figure if they get married and have children it will help. If society were accepting of gays, this wouldn’t happen. Straights would be straight and gays would be gay and everyone would live happily ever after.
The real victims in these sham marriages are the children. You would think that genuine Christians would be a little bit concerned about that little fact - that these innocent children are being warped by this sham, non-loving relationship between Mommy and Daddy, where Daddy screws men on the side. Gay men should never pretend that they are heterosexual and fuck women for that reason - they may accidentally produce children. How is a child supposed to feel in such a situation?
Yes, the children are the real victims, but the blame is on the shoulders of society.
If you are not gay, you can not possibly know the internal struggle one goes through when society is beating it into you that what you are is disgusting, abominable, despicable and reason for going straight to hell. For being gay, it is legal in most places in the US to discriminate against you for housing, jobs and anything else they want to. It can even be used as justification to beat you to death, a la Matthew Shepard. That’s scary. Society generally believes it’s a choice, although that may be changing slowly, and as such gives added pressures for gays to try to change.
If society truly accepted gays, there would be no pressure to try to be straight. These marriages wouldn’t be happening.
Interesting story about a similar situation with an ironic ending. I was a member of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and there was a lesbian who came out to her parents. The irony is that her parents were BOTH closeted gays. Unknown to each other, they were both getting married to TRY to be “normal”. When their daughter came out to them, the dam burst and the whole, gay family came out.
What do you mean “genuine Christians”? 
The real deal here IMO doesn’t have to do with Christians although they are generating a great deal of attention in the press for being anti-gay, as IMO it’s convenient and clearly defined antagonist for the often lazy press.
Looks like 55% YES on Prop 8 and 45% NO. But that’s only 14% of precincts reporting as of 9.20 PM.
The big deciding counties - San Francisco and Santa Cruz - are yet to report. Once the results come in from these two counties, everything could change.
Here’s to hoping!
Now that would be the icing on the cake!
HG
At work yesterday there was quite a heated discussion on PROP 8 and all the married men were adamantly voting YES.
Only me and 2 other people spoke up for human rights and that the vote should be NO>
We got called a few choice names.
I was very homophobic growing up in Taiwan but became less so when one of my then GF’s best buds was a gay guy and he turned out to be a really nice guy. He even spent many nites at our place with my GF and I and him and his ““baby””. It was all cool.
Iv since found out that gays and lesbians are just like us. Only thing different is their choice of sexual partners. And its not a disease you can catch.
They should be able to marry a person they love under the laws of man if they want. Is it ok with their Creator? Thats between them and Him.
Good man, Tommy!
I guess married men have a wistful and jealous eye on the prospects of being a roving single gay man in a place like California, and SF in particular. I could imagine a horn dog like you enjoying the freewheeling gay life there, Tommy. Pity these things aren’t readily changeable! 
HG