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The people holding, wearing, waving, posting, and otherwise presenting their bright yellow "Yes on 8" signs or otherwise supporting California's Proposition 8 are bigots—plain and simple. If you don't support gay marriage, fine; don't get one. If as part of a church, temple, mosque, or other religious institution you don't want to recognize gay marriages in your religion because gay marriage conflicts with your beliefs, fine; you are free to approve or disapprove of what you will. But please don't try to legislate your bigotry.
We have been down this road before and it always leads to a bad place. Blacks were treated as personal property—kept as slaves and abused and it was legal. Women were treated as second-class citizens and denied the right to vote and it was legal. Japanese people were gathered into internment camps and it was legal. Now so-called conservatives and the religious right are trying to change California's constitution to once again support and spread bigotry with the force of law. Their signs might as well read "END WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE" or "REPEAL THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION" because this issue, as those before it, is about no less than equal treatment under the law.
If there are two principles for which this state and this nation should both strive above all others, they are freedom and fairness. Without equal treatment under the law, we can have neither.
Whatever your views about gay marriage, please consider the gravity of legislating discrimination against gays and as you do so, please also ask yourself whether we should also repeal the Emancipation Proclamation or end women's suffrage. Then, if you are registered to vote in the State of California and you have not yet cast your ballot, please go vote—regardless of the weather or your work or school or other commitments—and join me in taking a stand against legislating bigotry by voting no on Proposition 8.
