Ryan ChartrandProposition 8, one of the most controversial measures on the California ballot to date, has sparked heated debate locally, whether it be during Thursday night’s Farmers’ Market or on the proposition board in the University Union, which allows students to pen their thoughts directly onto it.
“I was out at Farmers’ Market for hours with one of my good friends who happens to be in a heterosexual relationship and she and I were pounding the pavement for No on 8 the whole time,” said Associated Students Inc. President and openly gay student Angela Kramer. “It’s not just gays and lesbians who care about this proposition.”
Kramer, a political science senior, is among the many students who feel they will be personally affected if the proposition passes.
“I plan on getting married in the state of California and regardless of where I become a resident after I graduate, I would hope that when I came back to California, my marriage was still considered legal,” said Kramer. “It is very personal. This is my life. This is somebody’s life.”
Seth Winkenwerder, a biology junior and member of Prism and the Speaker’s Bureau, which aims to help students with issues like coming out and self-identity, has been working with the No on 8 campaign to inform students on campus. He too said he would be negatively impacted by the proposition.
“I would be really disturbed because I feel like for me this is an issue of civil rights and this is an issue of my civil rights,” said Winkenwerder. “This is an issue of the law seeing my life and my relationships as equal to anyone else.”
After the legalization of same-sex marriage in California in May of this year, no one could have accurately predicted how those against the Supreme Court ruling would fight back in the upcoming November election.
Proposition 8 is a proposal that would amend the California Constitution to only recognize marriages between a man and woman in the state. Same-sex couples would not have the right to legally wed as a result.
In domestic partnerships – unlike marriages – couples may need to undergo lengthy legal processes to gain benefits given to married couples such as hospital visitations, change of name, next of kin, adopting children and inheritance if someone were to pass away.
On May 15 of this year, the California Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 decision that same-sex couples could marry as early as June and the ban that went into effect in 2000 – called Proposition 22 and almost identical to Proposition 8 – was lifted and deemed unconstitutional and invalid.
Since Proposition 22, suppProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0
ters have attempted without success to get similar measures on tProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0
ballot in order to re-establish what they say marriage originally symbolized; the partnership between a man and woman. Only now have supporters again been successful in qualifying for a place on the November ballot, compiling over one million signatures to add Proposition 8 to the ballot.
“The reason I am Yes on Prop 8 is because marriage is something that I didn’t design and mankind didn’t design,” said Mendy Dearborn, a Cal Poly biochemistry graduate who earned a teaching credential and currently works in the education department. “It was there from the beginning throughout generations and as the American people, we don’t have the right to decide this isn’t how it’s done; redefining something that is not ours to say how it’s made.”
“For some reason, we think we can change moral things,” she added. “We don’t have the right to change it.”
The Protect Marriage Coalition is a prominent campaign in favor of the proposition. Protect Marriage brings together families, community leaders, religious leaders and individuals from all over the state who support Proposition 8.
The Protect Marriage Coalition holds that the definition of marriage was changed for all of society when the Supreme Court made their decision. According to coalition’s Web site, the value of marriage is weakened when a marriage is between any two people, rather than only a man and woman.
“Proposition 8 does not have to do with homosexuality,” said Yes on 8 supporter Danny Dearborn, husband to Mendy Dearborn and Cal Poly student currently earning his teaching credential in English. “It has to do with marriage and it has to do with what marriage is and how marriage is defined. In Genesis, God says what marriage is: between a man and woman,” he said. “I’m married, so I’ve seen the blessing God can bring for that, for myself and my family.”
Proponents of Proposition 8 say it means same-sex couples no harm and does not look to take away the rights already given to them under California’s domestic partner law, which gives same-sex couples many of the same rights spouses are given under the state law. The coalition’s claims that its primary goal is to preserve marriage between a man and woman.
But those against the proposition question this reasoning. “Why is taking the right to marry away from loving couples, that have often times been together for decades, protecting marriage when we have the highest divorce rate in the western world?” said Winkenwerder. “It doesn’t make sense that we would say we are protecting marriage when we (as a society) need to rethink marriage.”