ISU Alliance Blog

So, the state of California voted for a state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. The 52% support for it was surprising for me, specially since California is known for being a liberal state. It is indeed heart breaking. I know a lot of people were angered by the results. It seemed so unfair.

As Political Science major, I can see both sides of the argument. Proponents of Prop 8 claims that it is not about denying rights to same-sex couples, but rather, protecting the will of the people, as Newt Gingrinch described in this advert:


Even though I can see where he was coming from, I also know that in recent history, we have made laws that protects the minority from the tyrannical majority. Even though the result in California showed the will of the people, I don't see how denying someone their rights could be constitutional. And this amendment, is so obviously discriminatory on its face that it doesn't even require a strict scrutiny. Regardless of how they tried to mask this, discrimination is discrimination.

I know some people would say, "why don't the gays just call marriage something else, then there wouldn't be any issues."

Well, the way I understand it, because the states use the word marriage in their statute, and certain rights and privileges are attached to word marriage, if the gays use a different word to describe their union, then they don't get the rights that people who are allowed to use the word marriage would normally have.

And because the proponents of Prop 8 want the word marriage to only be defined as union between a man and woman, same-sex couples are not allowed to use that word. Hence, they don't get the benefits.

Sucks, doesn't it?