Sacramento small business owner Lisa Prunier is a Republican Against Proposition 8. Listen to her explain why:
I am the mother of a gay son and I am a Republican. To me gay marriage like heterosexual marriage represents the best of what Republicans stand for: Love, honor, commitment, monogamy, becoming a stronger unit together than a part. Having gay marriage legal is about equality for individuals, regardless of sexual orientation. Gay couples strive for the same things we all do. Love is love; commitment is commitment these things care not of gender. Neither should we.
Regardless of how you feel about marriage as a religious construct, civil marriage is a right that should not be taken away from any Californian.
Scott Macdonald of West Hollywood, California, is a Republican against Proposition 8. Here’s why:
I’m not interested in getting married. In fact, someone recently said to me,“You’re what they used to call a bachelor.” LOL Maybe I am. But for me and the vast majority of people voting on Proposition 8 it isn’t about them, it’s about fairness. It’s about equality. It’s about “liberty and justice for all.” It’s hard to imagine that we should change our state constitution so we can keep two people who love each other from getting married.
Republicans Against 8 was formed “to complement the efforts of the No on 8 Campaign by reaching out to persuadable and undecided Republican voters with the message that opposing Proposition 8 is the conservative thing to do,” campaign manager Scott Schmidt told IN Los Angeles magazine.
That message is, “Proposition 8 violates the core conservative principles of limited government, personal responsibility and individual liberty. … The right to marriage is a deeply personal choice—not one that should be left to the long arm of big government to say when, whom and whether one can marry.”
With your support, we can take this message to Republican voters across the State of California.
The state constitution should never be amended to limit Californians’ right to their own personal and religious beliefs. It should scrupulously uphold equal rights under the law. That is what it now does, based on a state Supreme Court ruling this year affirming a right to same-sex marriage. Voters should not take the extraordinary step of amending the constitution to take a right away. They should reject Proposition 8.
Those who would impose their own intensely personal or religious feelings about marriage ignore the word’s equally important secular and legal definitions. Marriage confers a whole range of rights and responsibilities around inheritance, parenthood, medical decision-making, tax benefits and liabilities, and on and on. In American law, all of these are affected by marriage.
To tell some Californians that they cannot have these rights or take on these responsibilities is an example of big government interfering in the lives of the little guy at its worst.
Public television station KQED has a polling feature called “You Decide” which asks participants to consider various arguments on hot topics of the day.
They ask the question, “should gays be allowed to marry?” But the arguments they present against protecting the right to marry show a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between civil and religious marriage.
Civil marriage is a contractual arrangement of rights and responsibilities entered into by two persons and the government. Religious marriage is defined by a church, mosque or synagogue however they see fit.
Even before the right to civil marriage was granted to all Californians, gays and lesbians were entering into religious marriages in California, and they will continue to do so even if Proposition 8 passes. The question is whether it is fair for the Government to recognize only some denominations’ marriages while not recognizing others’.
These are major distinctions that appear to be overlooked in the debate over marriage equality here in California.
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders is a Republican for Equality, Fairness and Freedom.
In 2007, Mayor Sanders bravely stood up for equality for all Californians and is now defending this basic right. But written words cannot express Mayor Sanders’ position as well as his own words:
I’m a moderate in some degree because I have wildly swinging opinions but through some sort of ideological feng shui they end up in the middle. Some swing far to the left, others to the far right. I’m for the war, but I’m also for gay marriage…
You’ll have to read the rest of the interview to find out what he said next. But wouldn’t you rather sign up and join Republicans Against 8?
In other words, the very act of denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry — traditionally the highest legal and societal recognition of a loving commitment — by definition relegates them and their relationships to second-class status, separate and not all that equal.
To be sure, the court overturned Proposition 22, a vote of the people. That is the court’s duty when a law is unconstitutional, even if it is exceedingly popular. Civil rights are commonly hard-won, and not the result of widespread consensus. Whites in the South vehemently rejected the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools. For that matter, Californians have accused the state Supreme Court of obstructing the people’s will on marriage before — in 1948, when it struck down a ban on interracial marriages.
Fundamental rights are exactly that. They should neither wait for popular acceptance, nor be revoked because it is lacking.
Sacramento small business owner Lisa Prunier is a Republican Against Proposition 8. Listen to her explain why:
