Please support SR 7 (Leno) and AR 5 (Ammiano)
I sent the following letter to my state legislators urging them to vote in favor of SR 7 and AR 5 to overturn Proposition 8 because the measure should have been reviewed by the legislature and only gone before voters if approved by a two-thirds vote in both houses.
Please support Leno’s Senate Resolution 7 and Ammiano’s Assembly Resolution 5 that will help to protect the basic human and civil rights of one minority from being eliminated by a slim majority.
Such elimination is never acceptable regardless of the minority or majority involved, as it is important that all people are fairly represented under the law. Equal protections of a minority group is a fundamental and founding principle of our Constitution.
By eliminating the fundamental right to marry from same-sex couples, Proposition 8 takes away equal protections of a minority group, which violates one of the fundamental and founding principles of our Constitution.
This type of change without the required two-thirds vote of the Legislature is unprecedented. It’s critical in our system of checks and balances that the Legislature weigh in on such fundamental revisions to the Constitution.
This is not a question of “protecting marriage” or even of the acceptability of gay and lesbian “lifestyles”. This is a matter of equal protection under law. Regardless of your political, religious, or ethical ideologies, as representatives, you swore to uphold the Constitution, and that is exactly what you are being asked to do now.
Thank you for your support on this important matter.
Follow this link to Equality California’s Action Center to send your own thoughts to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; Lt. Governor John Garamendi; Atty. General Edmund Gerry Brown; Secretary Debra Bowen; Controller John Chiang; Treasurer Bill Lockyer; Assemblymembers Roger Niello, Noreen Evans, Dave Jones, Alberto Torrico, Ira Ruskin, Joe Coto, Michael N. Villines, Juan Arambula, Sam Blakeslee, Pedro Nava, Audra Strickland, Karen Bass, Hector De La Torre, Ted W. Lieu, Charles M. Calderon, Bill Emmerson, Van T. Tran, Chuck De Vore, Lori Saldana, Felipe Fuentes, Warren Furutani, Ted Gaines, Jared Huffman, Fiona Ma, Sandré R. Swanson, Cathleen Galgiani, Jim Beall, Tom Berryhill, Anna M. Caballero, Jean Fuller, Cameron Smyth, Julia Brownley, Mike Feuer, Paul Krekorian, Anthony J. Portantino, Kevin DeLeón, Mike Davis, Mike Eng, Curren D. Price, Tony Mendoza, Edward P. Hernandez, Anthony Adams, Wilmer Amina Carter, Paul Cook, Kevin Jeffries, Jim Silva, Jose Solorio, Michael D. Duvall, Martin Garrick, Joel Anderson, and Mary Salas; and Senators Tom Harman, Dave Cox, Patricia A. Wiggins, Sam Aanestad, Darrell Steinberg, Leland Y. Yee, Ellen M. Corbett, Joe Simitian, Jeff Denham, Elaine K. Alquist, Dave Cogdill, Abel Maldonado, Dean Florez, George Runner, Roy Ashburn, Alex Padilla, Gilbert Cedillo, Gloria Romero, Alan S. Lowenthal, Jenny Oropeza, Ronald S. Calderon, Robert Dutton, Gloria Negrete McLeod, Lou Correa, Dennis Hollingsworth, Mark Wyland, Christine Kehoe, and Denise M. Ducheny.
Tags: gay marriage, Proposition 8
SR7 and AR5 are the wrong approach. Don’t give the ability to marry someone of your choice at the expense of denying people’s vote. The vote is the single most sacred tenet of democracy. Have another election. Keep having elections until you win, if you want, but don’t tell people their vote is worthless because you disagree with them.
January 11th, 2009 at 2:20 pmThank you for sharing your thoughts, Ian. While I agree that overturning the vote of the people through technicalities is not a good course of action in many cases, this is not such a case.
By your argument, if voters approved a law that prohibited freedom of speech but did not go through the proper steps to alter the Constitution of the Federal government, that law should not be overturned until a majority of voters decided to do so.
Simple majority votes are not adequate to remove basic rights from people granted by constitutions. In this case, the State Supreme Court had found that the California Constitution protects the rights of all people to marry, regardless of their gender. As a fundamental right, there are certain procedures that must be followed to prevent a simple majority of voters from stealing that right from the minority.
SR7 and AR5 are simply clarifying that and making sure that the rights of the affected minority are not lost without going through the proper process.
The fact that people voted in favor of something that was not Constitutionally permitted does not make that vote valid. IF there is a proper review done, and IF an adequate number of votes in favor of stripping rights away from an entire class of people is approved, then you are right in what you argue. But that is not what happened here.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:17 pmmy partner & I had been together for 27 years before getting married 10/27/08 but the moment we were told that California joined us together, there was a flush of…I’ll call it “invincibility’ that simply wasn’t present in such a palatably incontrovertible wa; it was like California saying in no uncertain terms, you two want to be together forever, & for the first time, your beloved State of California says we will help you wherever possible to do that” (Even for us old timers, it was an EXTREMELY transformative moment, and precicely why I care so much about more Americans-in-love-forever to know that that level of peace of mind. It is unethical, nay unholy, for straight-marriage-only advocates to withhold such a moment for themselves; & as for those who say we should be divorced due to Prop 8? It’s unthinkable that these folks dare call themselves “fair” to their fellow man; I am left feeling they take marriage 100% for granted, forgetting its true sanctity…
February 17th, 2009 at 4:57 amCongratulations on the length of your relationship! No law can ever divide what the two of you share. We can only hope that the courts will have more sense than the tiny fraction of people who tipped the scales toward injustice by codifying discrimination into the California Constitution.
February 18th, 2009 at 1:09 pm