Generic Racist Posted:

I’ll i am saying is that people can govern themselves better than big government.

Except this isn’t about big government. It’s about human dignity, and whether two people who love each other should be able to build a life together without suffering prejudice and scorn. It’s about whether couples that could get married in one location can also get married if they move to another place in the same country.

It took federal action to end slavery and segregation. It sometimes takes big government to tell the people “Hey, you can’t do that to the minority. Our country was founded to protect what was, at the time, a minority – Americans.”

I’m gonna steal a quote from my iconsake for the purpose of illustrating how plebiscites work, and why they suck. Feel free to replace “voting” with “Prop 8” for best effect:

Spider Jerusalem Posted:

You want to know about voting. I’m here to tell you about voting.

Imagine you’re locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that enjoy pit bulls for fun.

And you ain’t allowed out until all vote on what you’re going to do tonight.

YOU like to put your feet up and watch “Republican Party Reservation.”

THEY like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand-new sexual organs that you did not know existed.

So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to **** you with switchblades.

That’s voting.

You’re welcome.

Generic Racist Posted:

It’s tiring to see my generation abandon democracy in favor of socialism because some minority wants money from the government and/or feels like they aren’t accepted and loved and celebrated by everyone.

This is what privileged clbumes actually believe. This is also about the biggest facepalm in the history of facepalms. They don’t want “more money from the government”, and while they certainly want, and deserve, to be accepted by everyone since they are, y’know, human beings with the inherent dignity that should provide, everyone is well aware they can’t force people to “love” or “celebrate” them anymore than they can be forced to “celebrate” homophobic morons. Further, socialism and democracy are not incompatible. The two systems do not exist on the same spectrum, and it’s laughable to watch Republican pundits treat them as though they did.

Also, we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a representative republic, specifically because the framers of the Constitution realized that The People, while they were magnificent, were also generally dangerous and uneducated, and not necessarily able to think of what is to their best benefit – like, say, supporting equal rights for the minority, or remembering that they once were one.

Generic Racist Posted:

Besides if the proposition is illegal the court system will overturn it anyway.

Sadly, in Cali, it’s not “illegal”. The people can amend their constitution through a plebiscite, legally. It’s reprehensible, and an annoying step backward that can’t be corrected till 2010 and probably won’t be corrected for another couple years, it turns gay marriage in a football that will get kicked around every 2 years for a good long while. But it’s not illegal.

Still, Prop 8 based with the barest majority, at a time when even the Democrats were mobilizing traditionally homophobic voters. It pbumed with less of a majority than the previous equivalent referendum in California. The number of homophobes is decreasing.

And that’s why people say gay marriage is inevitable. Not because anyone is going to “force it” on anyone, but simply because with every year that goes by, more and more people come of voting age having grown up in an increasingly reasonable world where gay people are recognized as people, and when they vote, they will vote to treat gay people like people. It is inevitable because majority support of equal rights for homosexuals is inevitable.