Before you send me down in flames, please follow me and just consider the thoughts posited below. I am really interested in hearing some constructive feedback on how we can best move forward.
I've read diary upon diary bemoaning Prop 8 but California isn't the first state to have such hateful legislation on the books. Try reading my beloved Missouri's Constitution! This is bigger than any one community, ethnicity or state IMHO.
This is about the very essence of what freedom means to us as a nation and the slippery slope that we have found ourselves on as we wander within the reckless scope-creep that the religious right has imposed upon this nation. This issue is about more than gay marriage, IMHO. It's about redrawing the line of demarkation between church and state.
First, let's be clear: We failed at beating this measure because we didn't combat it using a successful strategy - no one group is to blame and the best thing to deal with this at a national level once and for all is
...a President Obama and
...a singular piece of overt discriminatory legislation that galvanizes the political will and efforts of many around this nation in order to deal with this Nationally and for good.
I will go one step further - this piece o' shit legislation is already on the books in several states including mine - Missouri. It appears that few states could measure up to California in its sheer political heart to take on this issue and is in the best position to rally the nation around this cause. And what better Administration to do that under than that of the the constitutional scholar, President Obama?
So here's something I have felt strongly about for some time -
1st: Maybe we should accept Civil Unions ensuring that they guarantee all of the same legal rights as today's marriage does.
2nd: Once on the books, I think we should challenge the "separate but equal" pretext of such a law
3rd: We should ultimately stop fighting to get "gay marriage" on the books and force the gov't to remove "marriage" from the books altogether by demonstrating its basis in religious dogma.
This is nothing new, I know, but the truth is this: The gov't should not be in the business of performing 'religious' sacraments. It may be that we should stop fighting the Christians for it and let them have it! Instead, our efforts may be best centered around challenging the laws that exist for marriage! Let's force our gov't to separate clearly itself from the church by extending a law to ALL of its citizens called 'civil unions.' If subsequently a couple chooses to have their legal bond celebrated through their religious entity, that's on them and they can call it marriage. However, this should NOT be the criteria by which a couple is granted the legal rights provided by a civil contract issued by our government.
It seems that the only way to eat this elephant is one bite at a time and by pecking away at the distortions in the law - similar to the approach of the civil rights movement - we can remove the bigotry from the books altogether. The civil rights movement may have symbolically begun with one woman refusing to leave her seat, but it later came to include all minorities - including women - as well as other countries. It may have begun with a few folks of color refusing to get up from a restaurant counter but it resulted in the doing away of all "blacks only" "whites only" facilities and the first African American President in 2008. In my opinion, this is bigger than just 'gay rights' and it seems to be time that we not just opened the doors but enlarged the tent, as well, by showing other groups how they are impacted.
As so elequently explained by other diarists, including one currently on the rec list by Icebergslims: What Happened Here, now is the time to dig deep and find a way to address the bigotry before us. If we can come together to put a President in office then surely we can tackle a micro-issue ballot measure as well as the macro-issue of extreme ideologies and discrimination affecting our policies and citizens.
Ultimately, dealing with the bigotry in the minds and hearts of citizens is something different that we will never legislate and only time will address. And although I don't pretend to be as eloquent as other diarists here, I hope that my thoughts and intent are not obscured by whatever deficit you may find in my fairly hastily written diary or by the fact that I am not an attorney.
Nonetheless, I am convinced that if we can begin to look at this as the 'big tent' issue that it is and resist the urge to alienate the uninformed, then we can do the impossible... AGAIN! We. Really. Can.
Thoughts?
UPDATE:
Catte Nippe makes a point more eloquently than the one I'm making, and I think it gets at the gist of the issue:
This is part of the problem
The gov't should not be in the business of performing 'religious' sacraments.
But not for the reasons you are proposing. The government does not perform religious sacraments. Religious entities are given permission to perform legal contracts. ("by the power vested in me by the State of xxxxx, I now pronounce you...")
We have a long history of conflating both religious and legal meanings on the word "marriage". It isn't going to be easy to disentangle them, but somehow that is what must be done. If we could go back several hundred years we could have gotten it "right", just as many other countries have. It is not uncommon in other places for all couples to go to a government office to tie the legal knot, and then opt to get the religious blessing in the church of their choice. Unfortunately, our system developed differently.
Meanwhile, everybody on both sides of the debate keeps yelling louder and louder. It's like someone who doesn't speak a foreign language talking louder in the expectation that somehow the natives will understand. And we are speaking foreign languages, even though everybody keeps using the same word - marriage. Prop 8 opponents mean it legally. Prop 8 supporters mean it religiously.