Rallies and rage opposing the passing of Prop. 8 come a little late

By Jenny Rodin

Hollywood rally photo by Judith Orr

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 11/9/08 – The growing statewide rallies may have come a proverbial day late and a dollar short to oppose Proposition 8, which passed, banning gay marriage in California.

Yet streets were still blocked at parades from obvious locations like West Hollywood and San Francisco to less obvious central California locales like Modesto. Protesters held out hope that courts or a new election could overturn what the majority of voters pulled the switch on.

The colorful rallies and “No on 8″ parades after the election was voted against the participants, were a curiosity for that reason. Perhaps gay and lesbian organizers felt the parades before the vote would turn off the electorate, but throngs turned out even in Sacramento and San Diego after the gay Internet community organized public meets, indicating at least some statewide support for gay marriage.

Much of the failure of the voters to sanction gay marriage, which is not considered any great offense by many in the fairly liberal state, may have been due to a negative “fear” campaign from conservatives that said very young children would be taught in schools about gay relationships if the proposition passed – which was incorrect and not even addressed in Prop. 8. And parents in San Francisco would have a significantly different opinion about what age to teach their kids about homosexuality than in more rural areas. Yet both areas apparently agreed it was their choice, not the government’s, as the conservative campaign implied would happen.

“People were made to live two-by-two.” So says Mrs. Gibbs in Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” a classic of modern drama which celebrates American family life. On November 5th, California voters took to the street to protest the passing of Proposition 8, which denies homosexual couples the right to live two-by-two in marriage.
5,000 citizens gathered in protest Wednesday night on San Vicente Boulevard in West Hollywood. The street was closed betwen Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose. Earlier in the day signs were posted to divert traffic. Officials reported only a handful of arrests relating to the protest, including three arrests for public drunkenness.
About 500 people broke away from the main protest and crossed police lines. One person was arrested for dancing on the hood of a police car.
One protester, a heterosexual woman, said, “This is not about homosexuality, it’s about equality. It’s about non-discrimination.”
In July of this year, the California Supreme Court overturned a previous ban on gay marriage, making room for 18,000 loving couples to be recognized in marriage under God and law. The ban on gay marriage effected by Proposition 8 resumed immediately on November 5th however, leaving the validity of these marriages hanging in the balance, and in some counties encouraging officials to interrupt marriage ceremonies as they were being performed.
Perhaps most frightening to these protesters is that Proposition 8 allows for the California State Constitution to be amended and discrimination to be written into law. Because of this, Proposition 8 is now being challenged in the courtroom as well as in the community.
The American Civil Liberities Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights are among the groups contesting Proposition 8. They assert that a ballot inititative and a simple majority do not have the legislative power to change the underlying principles of the California Constitution. California law requires such changes to first be approved by the state legislature.
The ballot initiative to ban gay marriage is largely supported by the Mormon Church of the Latter Day Saints, the very same Church that fled to Utah over a hundred years ago in order to protect its right to polygamy.
The protesters in opposition of Proposition 8, like the narrator in Wilder’s “Our Town,” seem to want only to underscore the universality of human experience: the desire for love and partnership and recognition as we each live and grow and die. And what would three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Wilder think of all of this? Although he never discussed his homosexuality, his close friend Samuel M. Steward is generally acknowledged to have been Wilder’s life-partner and lover.