Of all the progressive steps forward taken by this nation last night, there was one giant leap backwards taken by Californians. A majority of registered Californians have spit in the face of the thousands of same sex couples who have tearfully and joyfully gotten married in the last few months. These Californians have bought into lies, distortions, and scare tactics, such as “gay marriage will be taught in schools,” and “priests will have to perform gay marriages,” which we have thoroughly corrected, clarified, and debunked in our previous articles and their preceding discussions. These Californians have claimed they consider marriage “sacred,” completely disregarding the fact that many homosexuals consider it sacred as well.
But is there an underlying cause of their overwhelming willingness to accept, give enormous sums of money to, and vote for this bigoted proposition? Is there a reason they are not stating directly, one that goes beyond the obviously false talking points? In the CNN exit polls, we can see gradual increases towards the No camp going up the scale of higher education and down the scale of age, but overall, most of the answers given are relatively split down the middle, making them close enough to possibly make their relation to the issue coincidental, given the margin of error. But there was one question asked in which there was an unmistakably large divide between the Yes and No camps – the vote by religion. Roughly 65% of Protestants and Catholics voted yes, while about 35% voted no. But where the poll becomes telling, and where we suddenly see a much sharper divide, is among those who practice no religion. An overwhelming 91% of those who practice no religion voted no on Prop 8, with only 9% in support of it. I don’t think it’s any secret that, without the backing of dogma, a position in support of denying another person basic freedoms is nearly impossible to justify.
The real reason Californians are using to rationalize this condemnation of homosexuals is clear – they believe their God considers homosexuality an abomination, because it says so in the Bible. Of course, they could never say this outright during their campaign, as it would shed light on a clear violation of the separation of Church and State, but anyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills knows that this is assuredly what they believe. This discrimination has been taught from pulpits for centuries. So, for this next portion, let’s turn to the Bible, the “Good Book.” And what better place to start than Sodom and Gomorrah, one of the most commonly cited Bible stories Christians use to demonstrate that heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality. Gather round, children. It’s story time.
In Genesis 19, we hear the story of two angels who, in the form of human men, were sent by God to the home of Lot, a Sodomite. Lot invited the angels to stay the night, but before they went to sleep, the men of the city of Sodom gathered around the house and yelled, “We know you’ve got some juicy men in there, Lot! Bring them out here, because we want to rape them!” Lot, being the righteous and holy man that he was, told the men, “Please do not rape my guests. Here, I have two virgin daughters which you are welcome to. I’ll bring them out so you can rape them any way you please, but these men are off limits.” Apparently, this wasn’t good enough for the evil gay men, and they tried to break down the door. But just in the nick of time, the angels struck all the men blind. The next morning, the angels told Lot that God was going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and that he needed to take his family, escape to a mountain, and never look back. Lot replied, “I don’t want to go live in a mountain. There’s a city nearby, Zoar, and since it’s very small, maybe God could pretty please not destroy this particular city?” The Lord okayed it, and Lot took his family and left. God then rained fire and brimstone on all the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah because, as we all know, every single one of them was evil, every man, woman, baby, fetus, puppy and kitten. Lot’s wife got a bit curious and looked back, so God turned her into a pillar of salt. (Apparently, the “don’t look back” rule was not quite as negotiable as the “head to the mountain” rule.) So, Lot and his daughters arrived in Zoar, but apparently it wasn’t as nice as Lot hoped it would be, so Lot took his daughters up to a mountain (that’s right, a mountain) to live in a cave. One night, the daughters, the very same daughters who were earlier offered up as rape sacrifices by their own father, decided to get their father drunk and rape him. Each of them bore a son, and they lived happily ever after. The ACLU, Lambda Legal, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have filed a petition charging that Prop 8 is “invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone by eliminating a fundamental right from just one group – lesbian and gay Californians.” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, and Santa Clara County Counsel Anne Miller Ravel also filed a petition for a writ of mandate with the California Supreme Court to invalidate Prop 8. Finally, Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred is representing Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, the first same sex couple to be married in Los Angeles last summer, who are filing a lawsuit against the measure. Tyler and Olson were one of the original couples who filed the lawsuits that led to the Supreme Court decision last May which declared the ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. It’s surely a long and difficult road ahead, but these groups are to be commended for their strength and determination.
In other news, several protesters were arrested last night, November 5th, as they demonstrated against the passage of Prop 8 in Hollywood. According to LAPD spokesman Officer Jason Lee, a citywide tactical alert was issued, requiring all available officers to respond to the protest. Lee said that protesters tried to cross a line of officers as they moved along Hollywood Boulevard and that, at one point, a demonstrator jumped onto a police car. However, Lee said that despite this and the arrests made, the protest was mostly peaceful.
UPDATE 2:
According to the CivLib Blog, “By making the passage of California’s Proposition 8 a substantial part of its activities this year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has violated nonprofit law. Because it has broken the law, it should be stripped of its 501(c)(3) non-profit tax-exempt status. This law will not be enforced unless complaints are filed against the LDS Church for its illegal activities.” The blog lists all the individual documents required for filing a complaint, but our own JNTB has compiled all of these documents into one PDF for convenience. Per JNTB:
This document, IRS Form 13909 LDS.pdf, is the official form to submit to the IRS completed with the information offered by the CivLib.com blog. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 installed, it should allow you to open the PDF, add your own personal information (name/address/date of complaint) and then save the PDF to your own computer for use in an email later. If for some reason your version of Acrobat doesn’t allow the entering of info, just print, write it in, then scan back into an email to send to the IRS. Or, you can fax and snailmail, but beware …
This document, IRS Form 13909 LDS Supporting Documents.pdf, contains all the supporting documents (57 pages) that are required to file Form 13909 with the IRS. Email would be easier because faxing and snail-mailing can be annoying and costly. It’s up to you!
UPDATE 3:
Yesterday, November 19th, the California Supreme Court voted 6 to 1 to review three of the six lawsuits which have been brought forth challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8. A hearing on the lawsuits may be held as early as March, and it has been suggested that the court intends to resolve all the legal issues surrounding this proposition in a single ruling, including the validity of existing same sex marriages.
-Laura
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[Pro's Notes:
NPR's Alex Cohen interviewed UC Berkley law professor Jesse Choper regarding whether the 11,000 same sex couples who legally married in California will be in jeopardy of losing their marriages to nullification.
SFGate asks the same question (but indicates that there are about 16,000 couples).
This isn't a new thing for many California couples. In 2004, the California Supreme Court nullified marriages held in San Francisco. Watch this YouTube recap, and read the New York Times article that details how the court held that the 4,000 couples had no standing, and then ordered the removal of the marriage records from the books, and the nullification of the marriages.
Paul Hogarth, at Huffington Post, writes that the attempt to reject Prop 8 failed due to complacency and distraction, but that there's still hope of it being overturned with the help of younger voters in California's future. Organize now, and do it right.]
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