{"id":5386,"date":"2008-11-07T14:33:38","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T21:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5386"},"modified":"2008-11-07T14:33:38","modified_gmt":"2008-11-07T21:53:26","slug":"the-next-california-marriage-initiative-take-their-best-guns-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5386","title":{"rendered":"The Next California Marriage Initiative: Take Their Best Guns Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timothy at Box Turtle Bulletin writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I propose that we, as a community, consider the following strategy:<\/p>\n

We place a constitutional amendment on the ballot of every statewide election until Proposition 8 is overturned. Such an amendment would be written to do nothing other than reverse the language that was inserted on Tuesday night. […]<\/p>\n

I propose that beyond the cost and effort to collect and submit signatures that we do nothing towards passing the amendment. Nor should we go in with any expectation of success. Our community cannot well afford either the financial or emotional cost of a battle like the one we have just gone through.<\/p>\n

But we should make it clear to the voters that we can and will continue to place this issue before them until they side with equality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that’s a great idea. I’d only suggest one change: Why not write the ballot measure to undermine all the horrible lies “Yes on 8” people tell to persuade swing voters?<\/p>\n

One intriguing (and hopeful) wrinkle of the “Yes on 8” campaign is that they never showed a same-sex couple in their ads, nor did they ever talk about lesbian and gay couples. This is because many “swing” voters on gay ballot initiatives don’t want to think of themselves as bigots. So “Yes on 8” told them, again and again, that this isn’t a vote to hurt gay people; it’s a vote to protect the children! It’s a vote to protect churches!<\/p>\n

If there’s no legal barrier, then a ballot measure — or a series of ballot measures — could call for:<\/p>\n

1) An explicit constitutional right for parents to opt out of having their children taught about same-sex marriage in public schools, and<\/p>\n

2) An explicit constitutional right for religious institutions, and religious officiants, to decline to host or perform same-sex wedding ceremonies, without any legal penalty or any loss of tax status.<\/p>\n

3) Removing proposition 8’s language from the California constitution.<\/p>\n

The down side is, it’s pointless, legally — all those rights already exist<\/em> in California. The “Yes on 8” people are lying when they say otherwise. And let’s face it, it’s galling to have to defer to this garbage in order to have justice. But politics are like that.<\/p>\n

The up side is, it would cut the anti-marriage movement’s most powerful arguments off at the knees. Yes, they’ll switch to other nonsensical arguments — but the reason they chose these arguments is that they’re the most powerful arguments they’ve got<\/em>. If they had anything better, they would have used that instead.<\/p>\n

Remember, we only need to peel off 3% of voters or so for a victory, so every voter pealed off their side counts. If there are a lot of swing voters who were persuaded to vote for proposition 8 because of the “protect the children\/churches!” argument — and that’s certainly what the “Yes on 8” organizers believe — then taking those arguments away could change the outcome.<\/p>\n

At the very least, the more the “Yes on 8” proponents are forced to argue that gay couples are bad, the more their true natures will be revealed. That’s worthwhile in and of itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Timothy at Box Turtle Bulletin writes: I propose that we, as a community, consider the following strategy: We place a constitutional amendment on the ballot of every statewide election until Proposition 8 is overturned. Such an amendment would be written … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}