Open Letter to the Yes on 8 Campaign

November 6, 2008

An Open Letter to the Yes on 8 Campaign:

I received sad news through my radio today, when the No on 8 campaign resigned themselves to the difference in votes tallied thus far and conceded defeat. In March of next year, my lover and I had planned to wed in this state, but now we are not so sure. Though we do fit the narrow ‘definition of marriage’ your proposition sought to enshrine in our state constitution, we are not so sure we want to enjoy a right that is now exclusive to us. We are not sure we want to participate in an institution which we might previously have believed to represent the right of two human beings, equal under the law, to share in the joys and pains of life together; but now we come to know it is the privilege of only some human beings, held separate and apart under the law. We are not sure we want to celebrate under the auspice of a state whose constitution is now disfigured by the worst kind of bigotry and perturbation of equality.

You may think you have done me a favor by securing me this exclusive privilege, but when 5 million people living in this state of 36 million decided for all current and future generations that only some of them were fit to be treated equally under the law, you did me a great disservice. You claim to have protected my family, but in fact you have discouraged me from even starting one, knowing that I would have to explain to my future children that, while they live in a constitutional democracy, founded on the highest ideals history has yet furnished, a small minority of people can still find a way to usurp the rights of others. You claim to have protected children, but what have you done to protect children who are gay or lesbian, who suffer inordinate violence, depression and suicide? In fact, you have reaffirmed the second-class status that makes gays and lesbians, and especially gay and lesbian youth, acceptable targets for violence and discrimination, as surely as the Dred Scott decision subjected African-Americans to continued race violence for decades to come.

I am letting you know all of this because it occurs to me that you may not know what you have done. In your rush to have your values and your politics affirmed by voters at the polls, you may not have realized that, standing beside the millions of voters who spoke up to say that do not want the rights of people to marry whom they choose usurped, there a millions who cannot speak at the polls, because they are too young, or not citizens, or incarcerated or perhaps unaware that a vocal minority can change the legal rights of all of us: to marry exactly who we choose, to share a life with that person and to know that no one can legally disparage that life, regardless of whether or not they understand it.