My appeal to everyone I know for voting NO on heinous Prop 8!!

[pink-o]

Also posted in General Discussion, but if anyone wants to send this to friends and family here in Callie, it probably belongs in this forum.

Kind of a journal, kind of a blog.



I travel a lot, and send blogs back to my friends and family about my trips. They find them amusing, so I'm encouraged to write more. This time, I wanted to address a more serious issue, so this is what I wrote regarding that heinous Prop 8 in Callie. I'm hoping it'll become viral, so if you want to copy and send it to anyone in my state, consider it public property!!

Hope it's good enough!

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I've heard from many of you that you enjoy reading my travel blogs. So here's me travelling into a whole 'nother blog which I hope can hold your attention. If not, please blame the writer, not the concept!

Thanks!



This is a reminder that the last day to register to vote in California is October 20th. Now, before your eyes roll up into your head and you say "Oh, here goes Anja" be advised: this is indeed a political plea, but it has nothing to do with Democrat, Republican, Left or Right. It's about human rights. I want to appeal to all of you to please help defeat California Proposition #8.

This is the prop that wants to strike down the California Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. If this proposition passes, many couples who've wedded in the last few months will find their marriages nullified, and they'll be back in some shadow world where their commitments to each other are not as "valid" as those of heterosexual couples. Now, the Pro-Eight people have put out a new ad that tries to scare us, saying Churches will be forced to marry same-sex couples, and regardless of one's opinions, schools will teach kindergarteners about gay marriage in California.

Not true! The statute as it is in California only gives equal rights to people in love.

Some say that gays already had "domestic partners's rights" in California--so why would they want to appropriate the concept of marriage, and all its tradition? Well, remember during the days of segregation, African-American students were offered "separate but equal" education--which was anything but, of course! Thurgood Marshall fought that all the way to the US Supreme Court--and that got the ball rolling re civil rights.

So here we are, 54 years later--and still we have a part of the population who aren't being treated equal! California has always been the state that effected major social change--we just can't go backwards on this one.

Now, for anyone who wonders why it's even an issue--who wonders why gay couples can't just be happy living together, here's the story I promised you. A story, sadly, that is not unique.

I have a friend named Rob who's an Alaska Airlines Flight Attendant--someone many of you know as well. Rob started his Alaska career in the mid-nineties, working behind the SFO ticket counter with me . Those were the days when AIDS-related complications were still fatal, and Rob's partner Todd became ill. When Todd realised he was dying, he hired a lawyer to draft a will, leaving everything to Rob. Todd's family lived back in Tulsa, and hadn't had much contact with him. But after Todd's death, his mother hired another lawyer, who found a loophole in her son's will, and it was declared it null and void. Which meant, of course, that everything Todd owned would now go to his "family".

You couldn't meet a nicer, more caring man than Rob. He doesn't have a mean or judgemental bone in his body, and he looked after Todd till the end. Now suddenly, Mom and Sister swoop down on him, plunder and pillage everything belonging to Todd and take it. So not only has Rob lost the partner he loved, he now has nothing to remember him by. No mementos, no possessions to help him through his grief.

Marriage would have made that will-contesting impossible.

It's easy to view same-sex couples as different from us, living a life that we might not agree with. But only from a distance. Once you know the Lesbian couple who are raising a child, maybe they'll tell you that if the birth mother becomes ill, the state can take away that child from the only other parent it has ever known, if a family member seeks custody. Seeing how much both moms love their child--and each other--makes it a little harder to separate them from us. Or when one man is ill in the hospital, and the man he loves can't even visit him because his parents might not approve, then only someone with a heart of stone wouldn't shed tears for him. If we bring it down to individuals, to people who love each other and aren't hurting anyone--people who don't want to see heterosexual marriage be debased, but want the same rights for themselves--well, most of us are compassionate and fair, and want to do the right thing. And that's enough to overcome any discomfort and vote against Propostion 8 November 4.

The Framers of our Constitution guarantee equal rights to all Americans. Fifty-Four years ago, Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court agreed: Separate is NEVER equal. Please register by October 20th and give all Californians the right to marry the person they love.

Thank you for listening,
Anja