The Sad Irony of Who Voted For Prop 8

The true irony is that for the first time (that I am aware of anyway) a state constitution is being used to take away rights rather than to preserve them...

Truly sad commentary on today's religious zealots.

I'm not surprised by it but it's still disappointing. What gets me is why is takes 50% + 1 vote to change our state's constitution.

I was dumbfounded, initially. But then it made total sense, unfortunately. What I'm seriously pissed about is the continued intrusion into our personal lives.

I think anybody should get married or have a civil union, I really do. But current laws make marriage and incentive. You get tax breaks for being married "heterosexually" because that is what the government wants to encourage. If anybody can get married, then everybody gets the "incentive". So then it isn't an incentive, it's a handout. Change the marriage laws.

Don't fret...I'm sure the new Democratic administration will remove the current Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 and reinstate the Marriage penalty so married people will end up paying more taxes to support the continued unbalanced budget. Then all married couples and civil unions will be treated equally. Oops...was that out loud?!!??!

This "problem" has existed for quite some time. I am not the least bit surprised because blacks have overwhelming been anti-gay for a long time. Even MLK's daughter is a staunch opponent to gay rights.
One thing people fail to take in to consider is that the black population is highly religious and quite conservative. The Republicans are making a grave mistake at their own peril. They have everything they need to have the black population on their side, all they have to do is stop by not-white-aphobes. Once they reach their arms out just a little big (yeah, it kinda tingles the first time you do it) the Democratic party will be in deep shit.

It's common knowledge that black voters and Latino voters are religious and that high church attendance and anti-gay views go hand in hand. Yet you talk about support of Prop 8 as if the race of the voter were the deciding factor. Race is a confounding variable here, and the suggestion that blacks and Latinos are against gays because of their race is a classic false positive.

You write, "That’s just wrong–white voters supporting the rights of gays, while the blacks and hispanics team up and remove those rights. On the day the first black president is elected no less…"

Why the indignation toward racial minorities, but not toward others who voted for Prop 8? Do they have some obligation that other voters don't have? It's as if you're suggesting that society did blacks a favor by "giving them" rights and blacks have a special duty to pass on the favor to the next oppressed group. The truth is that blacks were always entitled to equality--they were just denied it. Just like gay people are equal, and we are entitled to equal rights; we're just not yet treated like we're equal. If everyone who has ever been mistreated refused to mistreat others, well, the world would be a very different place, wouldn't it?

Frankly, I would hope that no voter would choose to take away someone else's rights, regardless of whether that voter was historically the oppressed or the oppressor. Wrong is wrong.

Also, here's a very incisive post on this issue: http://www.racewire.org/archives/2008/11/prop<e...>

Jamie,

The point of this is that less than 50% of whites voted for it, and more than 50% of non-whites did. In other words, the people struggling for equality were struggling to keep others from having it, while the whites voted to help them.

See the irony?

If irony means: "incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result," then no, I don't see the irony. It's sad, but it's not ironic. I guess logically it's ironic, but like so many things in this world, politically and practically it is not ironic. (What do people who are abused as kids have a higher likelihood of being when they grow up? Abusers! That too might seem ironic, but it's a well established fact, so we have no business acting surprised when it happens. Saddened, yes, but not surprised.)

I obviously think that a voter's level of religious participation, though not dispositive, tells us a lot more than the voter's race, and race is a confounding factor in this, but even if I think about it in terms of "shared racial experience" alone, I don't see the irony. This is why: when equal rights are treated as a scarce resource reserved only for the privileged, when a group finally "gets equality" after having been denied it for years, unfortunately a magical transformation does not occur. That group doesn't automatically identify with every other oppressed group. The world would be very different if the oppressed and downtrodden banded together. But they don't. Instead, they're busy trying to rise in the societal hierarchy. Identifying with some other despised group doesn't help them achieve that goal.

Here's another example: Wasn't this country founded by people who fled England because they didn't share the religious beliefs of the governing class? One might think that it would make them interested in separating church and state. Unfortunately we've been at this nationhood thing for 232 years, but the masses still haven't gotten the secularism memo. But no one is flabbergasted that religious people often want to oppress others.

I just don't understand why black voters are being singled out for their homophobia as if it were more atrocious than anyone else's. I'm not saying that you're doing that, but across the mainstream media and the blogosphere there's a particular indignation about the black vote that I think is undeserved. 52% of women voted yes. Women didn't have equal rights (and I'd argue still don't). But where are the outraged posts about women, as an undifferentiated clump of voters, supporting Prop 8?

@Jamie, That is an interesting thought I hadn't heard before. Blacks (and now more recently Mormons) are being blamed for Prop 8 passing. I suppose the Mormon church really did fund a big campaign for it, but they do have the right to do so.

But what I would like to hear is why you (or anybody) defines Marriage as a right. And I mean the type of gov't recognized marriage. Same sex couples can live together, share funds, have a big ceremony. Why (besides tax status) do they need to be recognized by the State?