Here's a little political/legal/human rights news to go with your fair trade Sunday morning coffee.
So, Prop 8, as you know, was a proposition brought before the Californian public in 2008 to add an amendment to the state constitution to read "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." No more gay marriage.
The public went to the polls, they voted as is both their right and their responsibility, and a slim majority of them chose to vote yes and restrict legal marriage in the state to that between a man and a woman. This sucks, is unfair to a minority in our country, and is, unfortunately, now law. California is not the first state to do this, and I am tragically sure it will not be the last.
However, California's significant and very vocal gay population and its supporters have chosen to exercise their constitutional right to take part in boycotts, pickets, and protests against companies and societies who donated to the Yes on Prop 8 campaigns. The information about who gave money to those campaigns (and to the No on 8 campaigns for that matter) are a matter of public record under the California state campaign-finance disclosure act.
Which, you can imagine, has made gay marriage opponents a little bit nervous.
So the Prop 8 guys called in their lawyers to protest the disclosure law, stating that if donors were to be publicly named, they would be subject to "harassment" from gay rights groups.
(In case you're wondering? Yes, you are legally allowed to picket, boycott, and peacefully assemble against any person or entity in the United States of America. And in California, too.)
This past week, I was pleased to hear that the district judge hearing the case in Sacramento dismissed it, commenting that donors' requests for anonymity should not trump California's authority to require "full and fair disclosure of everyone who's involved in these political campaigns." [HRC article and San Francisco Chronicle article]
I'm amused by this ruling because, as the HRC article states, it is kind of funny that the Prop 8 proponents (P8Ps?) are crying foul because they're being "harassed" by the very people whose rights they've just helped to take away.
And this, my friends, is why I both love and hate democracy. I love that we all have a chance to have our say (let's pretend that there really is fair access to voting in this country for a moment), but I hate that that sometimes means there will be more people who disagree with my vote than agree.
I now return you to your Super Bowl Sunday.
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