Update: I would like to thank Emily who is a non-lesbian, non-mother, CA resident living in Chile who reads this blog regularly and had never heard of Mombian.com before this.  She took up my challenge to post today on her blog and within 5 minutes was receiving heat for it.  I think her position was well thought out and clear.  Go check her out and thank her for reading and for VOTING!

Mombian is currently compiling a list of all the blogs taking part in Write To Marry Day. You should definitely check out the updated list of submissions here. 

As I think about the issue of Gay marriage in this country, two particular quotes come to mind:

Gay families are a rising river stretching across the country. Conservative opposition to gay marriage is a dam blocking the way. Impeded in its natural course, the river does not dry up.

and

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. -Audre Lorde

Regardless of if Prop 8 is passes or not (although for the sake of equality and American ideals, I can only hope it is), peoples sexuality will not change. The only thing that will change if Prop 8 passes is that CA will have succumbed to bigotry.  The proposition does not force religion to accept sexuality nor does it change the status quo.  As Looky Daddy pointed out, marriage did not implode, it was not undermined, in fact, nothing changed.

Saying No to prop 8 in CA, and other similar props around the country in this an future elections, secures couples who love each other and have chosen to be together the right to form a family without jumping through legal hoops of adoption, to make choices for the other when he/she is ill, and to take part in the civil institution of marriage just like any other American.  If they form a family (and they will do so with or without the state smiling on their marriage, it protects their children both in the legal sense and in the sense that they will not be forced to reconcile why the state sees their family as second class or why their classmate can site a proposition in his bigoted taunting. It means that LGBTQ youth in CA will feel more support as they recognize their own sexuality– hopefully lowering the commonly sighted figure that 1 out of every 3 adolecense who tries to commit suicide is doing so because of learned internalised homophobia. It means that the American dream that all people are created free and equal is being lived up to.

Finally, I want to say how appauled and saddend I am by people’s violent reactions and blatent homophobia aimed at the Vote No on 8 campaign. I hate that we are teaching hatred. I hate that people are so blinded by hatred that they forget their own morals. I hate that the religious community rallys around gay marriage and abortion issues and completely forgets the bible’s teachings:

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other  commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31),

“Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself” (Romans 2:1), and

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)

For more on the violence issue, check out Polly’s post.