Still waiting

A while back, I asked for some rational arguments against Same-Sex Marriage.

I'm still waiting.

I still have yet to hear one - just ONE! - rational reason why Californians should pass Proposition 8 - which is an attempt to alter our State Constitution to define "marriage" as a "only between a man and woman".

I've heard lies.

I've heard misdirection.

I've heard ignorance.

I've heard fear.

But I have not heard one logical, legal argument as to why Citizen A should be allowed to enter into a legal contract with another consenting adult of his or her choice but Citizen B should be denied that same right.

Your church will not lose it's tax-exempt status. Your pastor will not be arrested for preaching about homosexuality. Your Bible will not be banned. Your kids will not be forced to learn about homosexual intercourse. Your own rights will remain unchanged.

Oh, and Prop. 8 won't "restore" marriage to any previous definition overturned by "activist judges legislating from the bench."

What it WOULD do is endanger our Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights - not just for gays, but for EVERYONE.

Those judges were doing exactly what they are sworn to do: Interpret and uphold the Constitution. And the most basic premise of our State and Federal Constitutions - the very foundation of our whole Nation - is that ALL people are EQUAL under the law.

How can anyone possibly reconcile that deeply held American value of equality with the intention and consequence of this Proposition?

So, I'll say it again: Prop. 8 is thoroughly UN-American.
Proposition 8 puts discrimination INTO our Constitution. It requires the government to treat it's citizens differently under the law. And THAT undermines the very foundation of equality and civil rights we ALL enjoy as Americans.
Whether you personally approve of homosexuality or not is irrelevant. The real question we are deciding next week is whether or not the Government can pick and chose which of its citizens may have certain civil rights and which may not.
Is that really a slope you want to start travelling down?

They first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.-- Albert Camus
A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.-- Justice William O. Douglas
The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life. -- Justice William O. Douglas
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.-- Albert Gallatin
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.-- William James
Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.-- Thomas Jefferson
The best principles of our republic secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights. -- Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson
The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms -- A Nation of Finger Pointers.-- Lance Morrow
From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own." -- Carl Schurz
We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.-- William Reece Smith, Jr
The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.-- Wendell L. Wilkie