So tomorrow is the big day. I’ve sent in my absentee ballot. I’ve made a ton of phone calls. Now I am writing on my blog.
My favorite phone calls about Prop 8 were the ones where when I asked them how they were voting they would say, “Oh I am definitely voting yes, my granddaughter is a lesbian and we support her in all that we do.” Then I would respond “well that is great!” There were those other ones. I would politely ask if they were going to vote yes on prop 8 and they would get really mad. As they talked about rights I would get all excited and would want to tell them why they were wrong, but what I eventually learned on my mission would kick in and I would simply respond, “Well have a nice day”.
It seems to me the most common reason given against Prop 8 is to allow equal rights. This frustrates me because I don’t see this having anything to do with allowing rights to homosexual couples. Every homosexual couple has access to any and all rights afforded to those who are married under a civil union. This is about forcing social acceptance.
Rights is a word that is just thrown around way to often for me. I don’t know how many people this is common knowledge for but, the Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments to the constitution. Meaning they were not in the original constitution but were added after the the document was complete. The reason why they were not originally included was not because the founders had forgotten about them, preserving rights was at the forefront of there mind. They did not want to include a list of rights because they were afraid that if they were to enumerate (specify) rights then it would be assumed that rights would be constrained to those listed. On the other hand they wanted to limit the government itself. From this bit of history we understand that there is no finite list of rights afforded to persons as far as the founders were concerned. So then the question arises were do ones rights end, for surely people do not have the right to do certain things(i.e. killing, stealing, ect…). From phrases in the constitution like that which says we have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness “, I come to the following conclusion. That my rights end were someone else’s begin. For example: I may have the right to free speech, but I do not have the right to an audience.
It may appear that what I have just written would be against Prop 8, but it is just the contrary. Let’s examine this “right to marry”. As far as the government is concerned marriage is a legal contract between two individuals that awards them certain benefits and places certain obligations upon those two individuals. Some of these benefits are only applicable to those who are able to independently bear children. What has already happened is that the government in California has awarded all those same contractual obligations and benefits to civil unions despite the lack of applicability of many of those rights and obligations, opposed to hand picking what is applicable and what is not. As a result as far as those two individuals are concerned they have the same rights. So why does it appear in some instances that these unions are not equally regarded? Because organizations independent of the actual contract choose to regard these contracts differently, by choice. By including homosexual unions under the umbrella of marriage this no longer permits organizations the right to treat these two different contracts as different, when they technically are. So whose rights are under attack?
As a disclaimer I would like to note that all day I study, physics, math, structural analysis, and other things, but never political science. As a result the statements and claims previously mentioned are not cited and supported the way in which I would prefer. It also is not an exhaustive discussion of why I feel prop 8 needs to pass it is just part of one aspect of how I see things.
