We took James (and his Grandma) to his first protest rally on Saturday, making him officially a part of the civil rights movement.
Peter and I were very saddened by the passage of Proposition 8, which took away the legal rights of many of our friends, colleagues, neighbors and students to marry the person of their choice. We feel this is a major setback to the civil rights movement, and we hope that with the passage of time, more will come to see and understand how equality is a fundamental right promised by our constitution, and that separate will always be inherently unequal.
When Pete and I were married on June 12, 2004, we promised to love and honor each other in front of our friends and family. Our ceremony was presided over by a police chaplain, and it was a spiritual event filled with love, something no law can ever touch. After the ceremony, however, we signed a marriage license for the state of California, witnessed by our best friends, so that our partnership would be legally recognized. Now we file a joint tax return, fill out joint customs forms when we travel abroad, and have joint insurance policies for our house, cars and health. We are each other’s next of kin in a medical emergency, and should some terrible tragedy strike, we have the right of inheritance, crime victim’s recovery benefits, and judicial protections and evidentiary immunity should one of us be asked to testify against the other. If we decided to leave our great state of CA, these rights would not change just because we crossed state lines. These are the legal rights we, as spouses, enjoy under California state law.
The passage of Proposition 8 took these legal rights away from a specific group of people, those who wish to marry a person of their same sex. Thus, California law now discriminates against this group by providing rights for some people but not for others. We understand that for many, including ourselves, marriage is a spiritual covenant, something to be celebrated before family, friends, and one’s higher power of choice. And sometimes this spiritual covenant discriminates – although Pete grew up Catholic, we were not married in the Catholic Church because I was not raised Catholic. We could not have been married in the Mormon Temple, or in a Mosque, because these also are not a part of our faith. However, our laws do not concern themselves with spiritual unions, but rather constitute legal partnerships.
Unfortunately, the arguments for Proposition 8 conflate these two unions, spiritual and legal, with no thoughts for the equality clause of the 14th Amendment: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. We have faith in our legal system, which consists not of “activist judges” but of scholars of the Constitution whose job is to protect our civil rights, even when the majority disagrees. Equality in our country has always come at a cost to the majority’s will, and history proves time and time again to be on the side of equal rights, no matter who may have wished otherwise. It is our sincere hope that Proposition 8 be repealed, so that James may grow up in a world that is a little more equal, and a little more free.
