A sad day for equality

In all of the awe that was the election of Barack Obama, let us not overlook that while one group was seeing a major milestone in their long fight for equality, another group was being pushed back. Three states voted to alter their constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. I must shake my head in shame at the thought of this.

Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, discrimination must never be written into any constitution. This country has spent more than 120 years chipping away at discrimination and slowly bringing about the equality that we are so proud of. It is an ongoing struggle to make sure that no one in this country is left behind, yet the vote for Proposition 8 shows us that we still have a long way to go.

I am especially dismayed at the exit polling which showed that 70% of African-Americans that voted in California voted in favor of Proposition 8. Now the African-American turn-out was not large enough for this to be the deciding factor in the decision, but I am very disturbed that a group that has had such a long, hard fight for their own freedom and equality would so easily vote to take such things away from others.

Back in the 1960's, after the Civil Rights Bill was signed, Virginia had laws forbidding interracial marriage. It was actually against the law for a black person to marry a white person. Mainstream society now looks back on this and thinks how crazy it is that there was a time where such laws could exist. But what if such discrimination wasn't stopped? What if such laws continued and spread to other states? Would it have been just a matter of time before Virginia proposed an amendment banning interracial marriage? I am glad we didn't have to find out.

And now here we are in the middle of another battle for equality. This time it is the homosexual community that is wanting equal marriage rights. I have heard arguments that racial equality is different from homosexual equality. As soon as you start to categorize and rank equality, we all lose. Some will argue that gay couples can have civil unions. But does that not just smell an awful lot like 'separate-but-equal'? Are we not risking going down a road that we have already been down?

I am not gay, but my church, Unitarian Universalist, is proud to have gay members. I am proud to be part of a church that has gay members. And, I recognize how dangerous it is to start making laws and amendments that take away rights.

I understand that many people have strong opinions about gay marriage. I am not writing today to try and sway your opinion on that point. My only concern right now is the idea of writing such discrimination into a constitution. When you are faced with such a decision, just try to imagine yourself in 50 years time. Think how far we have come in the last 50 years and think how far we will go in the next 50. Then ask yourself if you want to be remembered as being part of the generation that wrote discrimination into a constitution for the first time ever.

And remember this. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it is a noble thing to fight for one's rights, but it is a far nobler thing to fight for someone else's.