Voters in California are voting on a proposed constitutional amendment that would consider valid only a marriage between a man and a woman in California (the so-called Proposition 8).
Such an amendment would institutionalize, in effect, discrimination based on sexual orientation. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's statement (one of the few statements by the Senator that this blog would wholeheartedly subscribe to) casts the problem in its correct scope. By voting in favor of Proposition 8 a majority of voters (presumably straight voters) officially and unreservedly decides that a minority (gays) should be relegated to second-tier citizen status. That entails a very dangerous exercise of the majority's (any majority's) rights.
This blog is against discrimination in all forms. It is not in favor of gay rights per se, since it considers that there are no "gay" or "straight" rights. It is against labeling people based on their sexual preferences. Defeating Proposition 8 is not a matter of preferring gay people's rights to straight people's rights; in actuality, no straight person's right is breached by the official recognition of the bond between two partners of the same sex. Defeating Proposition 8 is a matter of defeating discrimination in its most heinous, institutionalized form.
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