{"id":10942,"date":"2010-01-17T03:37:35","date_gmt":"2010-01-17T03:37:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-01-17T03:37:35","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T03:37:35","slug":"whats-at-stake-in-the-prop-8-trial-for-them-and-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/17\/whats-at-stake-in-the-prop-8-trial-for-them-and-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s at stake in the Prop 8 Trial. For them and for us."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is cross-posted from the Courage Campaign’s Prop 8 Trial Tracker site<\/a>. Be sure to check that out as the trial proceeds.
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<\/i>
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Before the Prop 8 trial started, Yes on 8 general counsel Andy Pugno wrote a blog post<\/a> (with comments disabled of course) about what the case meant to them.  A snip from them, and then I’ll decode it for you.<\/p>\n

What is at stake in the Perry<\/em> case is not just the right of California voters to reaffirm the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman; a federal court decision overturning Proposition 8 could also ultimately nullify the people’s vote on marriage in 45 states and the federal Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress in 1996.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, what is at stake for them is a last grasp to hold on to the past. A past involving raids upon bars, closets that enveloped the LGBT community, and a fear of telling the truth. If Prop 8 is upheld by the Supreme Court, the LGBT community will have to live under separate but equal while the federal government gradually matures. For them, they must win, for a loss would mean the end of the road for the politics of scapegoating and fear that have served the right-wing so well over the last twenty years.<\/p>\n

For us, what is at stake is the immediate future.  The next ten to twenty years.  A loss would be devastating, of course. To see discrimination against our community adjudicated acceptable under the Constitution would be a slap in the face.  But, as Martin Luther King, Jr, said, and was repeated by President Obama, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”<\/p>\n

See, the thing is that demographics are really rough on them.  At the polls, young voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop 8. Voters under thirty opposed Prop 8 by over sixty percent. These, and voters not yet eligible, are the voters who will ultimately end this debate in the favor of justice.<\/p>\n

I am a lawyer, and I have faith in the judicial system. But I also understand that sometimes courts can mistake popular anxiety for justice. I understand that our courts can hand down rulings, such as Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em><\/a> that cast doubt about whether our Constitution is really a living document. But our Constitution, and the American spirit, yearns for justice.  And here, as Brown v. Board of Education<\/em><\/a> proved, justice has a way of winning out.<\/p>\n

What’s at stake for them is a small world that is getting smaller. Ours is only getting bigger, no matter which way this case goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is cross-posted from the Courage Campaign’s Prop 8 Trial Tracker site<\/a>. Be sure to check that out as the trial proceeds.
\n
<\/i>
\n
Before the Prop 8 trial started, Yes on 8 general counsel Andy Pugno wrote a blog post<\/a> (with comments disabled of course) about what the case meant to them.  A snip from them, and then I’ll decode it for you.<\/p>\n

What is at stake in the Perry<\/em> case is not just the right of California voters to reaffirm the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman; a federal court decision overturning Proposition 8 could also ultimately nullify the people’s vote on marriage in 45 states and the federal Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress in 1996.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, what is at stake for them is a last grasp to hold on to the past. A past involving raids upon bars, closets that enveloped the LGBT community, and a fear of telling the truth. If Prop 8 is upheld by the Supreme Court, the LGBT community will have to live under separate but equal while the federal government gradually matures. For them, they must win, for a loss would mean the end of the road for the politics of scapegoating and fear that have served the right-wing so well over the last twenty years.<\/p>\n

For us, what is at stake is the immediate future.  The next ten to twenty years.  A loss would be devastating, of course. To see discrimination against our community adjudicated acceptable under the Constitution would be a slap in the face.  But, as Martin Luther King, Jr, said, and was repeated by President Obama, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”<\/p>\n

See, the thing is that demographics are really rough on them.  At the polls, young voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop 8. Voters under thirty opposed Prop 8 by over sixty percent. These, and voters not yet eligible, are the voters who will ultimately end this debate in the favor of justice.<\/p>\n

I am a lawyer, and I have faith in the judicial system. But I also understand that sometimes courts can mistake popular anxiety for justice. I understand that our courts can hand down rulings, such as Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em><\/a> that cast doubt about whether our Constitution is really a living document. But our Constitution, and the American spirit, yearns for justice.  And here, as Brown v. Board of Education<\/em><\/a> proved, justice has a way of winning out.<\/p>\n

What’s at stake for them is a small world that is getting smaller. Ours is only getting bigger, no matter which way this case goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Qu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}