After reading both the majority and minority opinions on the issue of the Proposition 8, I have an idea as to who should be denied their civil rights next.
I believe the California constitution allows a referendum every year, so I suggest the following for the next several years:
2009 - The "True American Voter Protecting Proposition" - This proposition would "protect" real Americans from the influence of anti-capitalist, anti-American individuals, by banning them from voting.
2010 - The "Free Employment Proposition" - This would "protect" rugged, individualistic, workers from those workers who ban together to get a better working condition by making unions & strikes felonies.
2011 - The "Kosher Non-Persons Proposition" - Only gentiles (Bible believers) would be recognized as persons under the California constitution. We must "protect" real Americans.
If you haven't figured it out yet, this proposal is facetious, and based on the famous poem from Martin Niemöller called First They Came...:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not protest;
I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.
If the people wanted proposition 8 to happen, they should have first repealed the equal protection found in the constitution, and THEN attempted to pass it. Instead, the judges have now set a precedent that any part of the constitution can now be violated by an addition such as this.
I am thoroughly disgusted today by actions of my brothers and sisters. Not because of what they believe, but because they have participated the in the exclusion of a very identifiable, very real subset of the human population, who love and live just the same of everyone else. You have made the law meaningless, and attack our values just as much as those who torture, and those cover it up.
Hang up your robes, and hang your heads in shame.