7 million voters chose to deny loving couples the protection of marriage. 7 million voters chose to TAKE AWAY a right and to deliberately hurt people they didn't know. 7 million voters chose to interfere in something that affects them not at all.
“I think the point came into focus when Charles Cooper,” the lead defense lawyer, “said that to overturn this law, the court would have to essentially accuse seven million voters of ill intent,” Mr. Pugno recalled. “That really stands out.”
As a gay married Californian, I know exactly what 7 million voters intended. They intended to hurt me and mine, and my broader GLBT family. Whether driven by ignorance, bias, fear, dislike, or hatred, the intent, and outcome, was clearly ill.
They may not LIKE the truth. Mr Pugno may be all indignant. But at his behest, they voted to hurt other people. Sounds like ill intent to me. And if they don't like being told so, they shouldn't have voted that way.
QED.
As this writer said in the HuffPo,
How can taking away my family's rights and recognition be a "family value"? How can telling children of same-sex couples that their parents are less-than and abhorrent in their anti-equality campaigns be protecting families? Why do they still get to claim any sort of family values at all?
The Prop 8 backers and those like them have never been able to provide any proof of harm to their marriages or the institution of marriage by allowing same-sex couple to join in. Their arguments boil down to personal distaste or outright bigotry- hardly sound legal reasons.
The dishonesty of their stance needs to be challenged by everyone around them. They need to be forced to answer how they claim the are for "saving" marriage while trying to destroy legal, existing marriages like mine. They need to answer how they are "pro-family" while demonizing our families and children. They need to be pushed and pushed until the world sees them for what they are: small-minded people with deep prejudice, not some crusading do-gooders who "just have political differences" with equality for all.
5 comments:
Pugno's comment is interesting in light of the defense's only expert's statement that we will be "more American" when marriage equality is finally a reality. Though Blankenhorn didn't really say the voters had "ill intent," he certainly implied that they were un/less-American.
To me, it's not even a question of intent, but of consequences and the fact that whatever they intended, those seven million voters need to own the consequences of their actions regardless of their intent. And given the lies these people have been fed, I can honestly believe they didn't "intend" to hurt gay people -- or even realize that it WOULD hurt gay people. I think that makes them incredibly naive and foolish, but I can believe that. But whatever their intent, their actions have hurt us, and it's time to own that fact, "intended" or not.
To use an analogy, I don't think that the children playing baseball in the street intended to break my bedroom window. However, their baseball still sailed through my window and broke it regardless of whether they actually intended for that to happen. That means I'm getting my window replaced and the children (or their parents) are responsible to pay for it.
But how could they imagine that they weren't doing harm?
I know people who voted pro-8, even though they know me and my wife, even though they know we had married. It was a religious thing. My wife and I argue about this a lot. To me, intelligent people (which this couple is), CHOSE DELIBERATELY to take away rights. If that's not ill-intent I don'tknow what is.
Jarred, that is an excellent analogy!
thanks for keeping us up to date, IT.
And guess who my State Senator will be, if he wins (in the predicted GOP deluge), and I'm still living at my dad's?
Andrew Pugno!
}-X
[I'll try to get y'all contact (i.e., fundraising) info on his Democratic opponent, soon...]
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