On Tuesday night, I celebrated with the majority of the nation as Barack Obama was named president-elect of the United States of America.
I experienced enormous pride in our country for electing a pro-equality president and our first African-American president, as well as several other pro-equality members in Congress.
But the very next morning my heart was broken as I heard the results of the anti-marriage equality ballot initiatives that had passed in California, Florida and Arizona. California’s Proposition 8 was not just one ballot initiative. Its passage was one of the biggest steps backward in terms of equality and progressivism for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement and for the nation as a whole.
Proposition 8 not only banned same-sex marriage, it actually eliminated a human right that citizens had previously been granted in California.
Same-sex marriage is a fundamental human right. Not only are loving, committed same-sex couples denied the right to marry, they are also denied more than 1,138 federal rights that come along with marriage. Same-sex couples will never achieve true equality until same-sex marriage is legalized nationwide.
Many parallels can be drawn from same-sex marriage to interracial marriage. As difficult as it is to imagine, interracial marriage was once banned in 30 states. It was only legalized nationwide with the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia.
Race, like sexual orientation, is not a choice. No one chooses his or her skin color or sexual orientation. This makes me think of Barack Obama’s parents, a white woman and a black man, who wed in February 1961. They were married in a state that permitted interracial couples to wed. Unfortunately, there are currently several states that ban same-sex marriage and only two states, Massachusetts and Connecticut, that permit same-sex couples to wed.
Civil unions and domestic partnerships are not the answer to the same-sex marriage debate. According to a Gallup poll from March 2008, 54 percent of Americans were in favor of civil unions for same-sex couples. This is wonderful in the sense that a majority used to oppose them.
However, civil unions and domestic partnerships follow the theme of “separate but equal,” even though they are not equal. Same-sex couples who obtain a civil union or a domestic partnership only receive a fraction of the rights that opposite-sex couples who have a marriage receive.
In the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, there was a unanimous 9-0 decision that found that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This was referring to separate schools for black and white children. There are many parallels that can be drawn from the theme of “separate but equal” schools to “separate but equal” civil unions and domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.
Same-sex marriage affects every citizen of a nation that is supposed to be the leader of freedom and equality in the world. Banning same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution – “no state shall. deny to any person . the equal protection of the laws.”
I believe in equal rights for every individual in this country. I, an openly gay man, want to get married someday. I want the same rights – no better, no worse – as everyone else in this country. As president of Allied in Pride, I will continue to do everything in my power in my quest for marriage equality.
We may have lost the battle to defeat Proposition 8, but we will someday win the war to achieve marriage equality in this country.
The writer, a sophomore majoring in political science, is president of Allied in Pride.
