(no subject)

[usernamenumber]

Re-posted from jodisays:


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esp. if you are in a solid blue state and obama doesn't need it, consider helping out the no on prop 8 in CA. out of state muckaluckas are giving the anti gay marriage folks a huge influx of money, and hey...we could try to do that too! there is a matching going on October 19th (Sunday) on the no on 8 website, so consider it, even if you aren't in cali.
also, if you can't donate, add a post like this to your lj (or twitter, or facebook, or whatever) and consider writing to the bloggers, webcartoonists, etc that you read regularly and ask for a plug. we have got to start doing to external bush beating like the right wing.
noonprop8.com
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Comments

[predundant.livejournal.com]

Amen.

I just spent the afternoon in Dolores Park signing people up for phone banks for No on 8. If you're out of state, you can sign up on http://www.noonprop8.com/action/phone-bank to phone bank at home.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

I was actually wondering about that. Money is one thing, but isn't having callers from out-of-state for a CA ballot issue likely to backfire?

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

I agree with that. However I also agree that if larger, much more organized institutions from out of state are sending money (if not volunteers) to the other side, then taking the high-ground and not soliciting help from other states for your side will only cause you to lose.

So while I tend toward agreement with you that it is important, both for practical reasons and on principal, for the actual face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) advocates of a local cause to be local, I do not have as much of a problem with donating to an out-of-state cause, or to a nationwide organization whose local chapters engage in local causes (be it a PAC or a church), when I know that the other side is getting the same. In a perfect world it would be different, but alas...

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

And when you have the perspective that this life is merely a test, and that in the real endgame, the good guys DO win, you can afford to live and act off of principle.

Your steadfastness on this issue makes more sense now, as I hadn't really thought of it that way before. As you know, I don't share your certainty about everything getting worked out in the end, so I'm much more concerned with what I can do right now.

To this I would add that, not to put too fine a point on it, you yourself support a national organization that uses its funds to engage in out-of-state political fights via its local chapters every time you pay tithing. See the official page of supporting religious organizations on the pro-prop8 website.

And, to be clear, I'm not even convinced there's really anything wrong with that. When groups with common values and goals support one another, more gets done. Ultimately it comes down to which side can persuade more voters, and as long as only Californians get to make that final call in the voting booths of California, the worst out-of-state influences can be blamed for is making what was once a minority into something with enough visibility to become a majority. Again, I have some mixed feelings about that myself, but not enough to allow national groups on just one side of an issue to use their resources to give a disproportionate amount of visibility to their perspective on principle.

Bottom line: The important thing is that the final decision is left to the people of California to make what they will of what both sides are saying, and at least no one (well, except those in favor of amending the national constitution) is questioning or threatening that.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

That was very much like where I stood for a long time, but there's a fundamental problem with that line of approach as I see it: there actually are Christian, Jewish and, possibly, Muslim sects that will marry same-sex couples. The reasoning that ultimately brought me to the side I'm on with regard to issues like prop8 is not the usual (at least, I assume it's the usual) "people shouldn't be allowed to discriminate" line so much as "churches should be allowed to discriminate or not as they please". I would oppose any effort to force churches to marry same-sex couples just a strongly as I oppose prop8. The court decision that prompted prop8 by finding its predecessor un-constitutional (so, of course, the solution is to change the constitution) explicitly protects the rights of churches to not marry same-sex couples if they so choose, while protecting the rights of those faiths that see it differently. The one exception to this rule in my eyes, which I hope we can agree on, is the state, which in its civil ceremonies simply cannot be allowed to discriminate.

As such, my ideal would also be to differentiate between the religious ceremony of commitment that is marriage and the legal contract that is a civil union, but not quite in the way you describe: The government would grant civil unions (not "marriages") without discrimination, giving couples legal recognition and benefits, and churches would grant marriages, for whatever purpose and benefit their beliefs assign them, at their digression. Everybody gets equal treatment under the law and no one gets to claim ownership of the term "marriage". Sometimes in fits of optimism I even wonder whether the church might support such an initiative, since it already differentiates between eternal marriage and temporal marriage anyway.

[rhosyn-du.livejournal.com]

Agreed, agreed, and agreed.

Quite frankly, I'm rather appalled that religious institutions are legally allowed to upfront donate to political campaigns at all. Individual members of various religions? Sure. Religious institutions themselves? Uh, whatever happened to that crazy "separation of church and state" idea people were throwing around, huh?

On a more personal level, I'm pretty disgusted that in this particular case so many religious organizations that claim to value honesty are donating to a campaign that has taken to outright lying in their advertising and cold calls about the consequences of the proposed law (after a socially conservative judge ruled that they couldn't put those same lies in the voter information packet because they were legally complete BS, no less). I realize it's naive to assume that people are always going to act in accordance with their own stated morality, but this level of disconnect was not something I expected to run into, and I can't help feeling very saddened by it.

In general, I think that decisions about state law should stay within the state, but in addition to agreeing with you on taking the high road on that point being a bad idea (at least when it comes to civil rights issues), there is absolutely no denying that Prop 8 has national consequences. The US Constitution guarantees that each state shall recognize and respect the property rights granted in every other state. The Defense of Marriage Act grants every state the right to refuse to acknowledge marriage other than one man/one woman performed in another state. CA's joint property laws mean that as long as gay marriage is legal in CA, the DoMA is in conflict with the US Constitution, and it's only a matter of time before that issue is raised. None of the other states where gay marriage is legal have property laws that would cause the same conflict. So, yes, this is a state measure, but it has some rather substantial national consequences, so it's hard to argue that this is a cut-and-dried state-only issue.

Also, point of linguistic pendantry, "marriage" has only been around as a term for about 700 years, so it's doubtful that it's had it's religious meaning for thousands of years.

[predundant.livejournal.com]

There are already thousands of anti-gay activists in Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico who are calling California voters to get them to vote Yes on 8.

I'm still not sure if I have a problem with out-of-state calling in principle, since one thing that's great about having a union of states is that we can care about each other's shit. But in this case I see no problem in fighting fire with fire.

*points at Utah* "They started it!"