growing baby

Trying to have a baby is a time of reflection on your family. It’s a time to get closer to your spouse and to start transitioning from just you and her and on to a family unit. It is also a time of falling even more in love with your wife, as you see this wonderful transformation that she’s undergoing.

For me, the notion of family is built on the idea of love and support that is inherent in a relationship between spouses. These are also the same notions that drive me to be so absolutely opposed to the California State Proposition #8.

For those of you in California, you already most likely know that the proposition aims to write into the State Constitution a further statement of discrimination. It attempts to circumvent the action of the court that found that having the State of California deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry is discriminatory and is unconstitutional. For many months now many homosexual couples have been able to create formal unions of marriage that are no different from the heterosexual union that I have been able to have with Linda.

In my view, society and civilization changes and liberalizes over time, by and large. Something like slavery, which was acceptable with little question just a few hundred years ago, is now universally condemned and hard to imagine being re-legitimized by any significant portion of human civilization. The ability of women to participate in the working world and to pursue their own political and personal goals was similarly once shunned — and now embraced. With this proposition, we are ultimately operating within the same realm of changes: our world is slowly realizing the benefits of recognizing people with non-majority sexual orientations as full-fledged members of society.

The proposition on the ballot, however, and the people backing it, are attempting to stuff the genie back into some bottle — a bottle that they’re conjuring out of thin air to suit their argument. They bring up arguments about traditional marriage — would this be the same traditional marriage that for thousands of years allowed one man to marry many women? Or the traditional marriage that relied solely on arranged marriage at the age of 13? Or the traditional marriage where the wife was property of the husband? The argument is based on some idealistic, fundamentalist vision of marriage as a movie experience — not what marriage really has been as a personal or social institution.

The proposition and its proponents are rooted in feelings of homophobia, and attempt to frame the discussion in terms of a scare that children will be taught about homosexual behavior in school. To make this claim is preposterous, and deeply discriminatory at its core: the argument implies that homosexuality is something to be hidden and suppressed and never taught to children because it’s shameful. The claim is similar to the implication, sometimes cited by conservative punditry, that Barack Obama is a Muslim — without stopping to consider that one sixth of the world is Muslim and that there would have been nothing wrong with this if he was.

One issue that the proposition and its proponents do not discuss, however, is just how similar this discussion is to the mid-20th-century stance on interracial marriages. In some 17 states, as recently as 1967, interracial marriage was not legal. People of different races living together — even if legally married in another state — had been arrested and charged with a felony. In one of the key cases of the time, a judge even proclaimed in a decision that “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” The current religion-grounded push to prevent a fair application of laws to people of different sexual orientations is no different: it is a decision by a majority to apply a religion-affected view of a fundamental human right to the entire population, unfairly. Just like we now, in 2008, see the judge’s quote from above as irrevocably racist, the attempt to pass proposition 8 will be seen as utterly wrong and offensive when history catches up and starts looking back. Regardless of one’s religious feelings, we do not have the right to form a legal system whereby two adults with strong feelings of love and devotion for each other are not allowed to be recognized as spouses solely due to the shape of their genitals.

This is a baby blog; I am bringing politics into it. It is mainly because as I await the birth of our child I cannot help but think about the kind of family that Linda and I are hoping to become. And through this I can’t but think also of the many loving, strong families who are likewise trying to grow and become something new — but cannot do so because of the layer of hate and fear instilled by this proposed constitutional amendment. Personally, I consider defeating this proposition to be the most important issue I have ever voted on.

If you are a Californian, I ask you to please vote No on Proposition 8. The proposition is rooted in hate and fear-mongering, is unfair, and tries to write discrimination into the heart of our constitution. Please do not let that happen.