Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, July 21, 2008 3:41:22 PM
The San Diego Mayor’s about-face on marriage helped get Proposition 8 on the ballot, writes Los Angeles Times staff writer Jessica Garrison.
The campaign against same-sex marriage in California was treading water until it got help from an unexpected corner: a Republican mayor choking up and announcing he would not betray his gay daughter.
This goes to what I wrote earlier. In no way would it be a betrayal of his gay daughter to affirm that marriage unites the sexes. She doesn’t want to join together with a man. She doesn’t have to. Nobody has to get married. But she can’t ask the rest of us to redefine marriage to eliminate the very core of its meaning. He doesn’t seem concerned that his daughter is asking him to betray marriage, thereby betraying himself.
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders had promised to oppose same-sex marriage. Then, last fall, hours before he was supposed to veto a City Council motion supporting gay marriage, he called a news conference at which he broke into tears.
Emotions make for bad laws. This whole thing is an appeal to emotions. Same-sex couples will feel better if they can legally claim marriage for their relationship. But that is not our obligation. In California, these couples can get all of the legalities of marriage, so it really is all about emotion.
One of his daughters is gay, he said, and he just couldn't tell her she did not have the right to get married.
She has always had the same “right” as anyone else.
The article keeps referring to “opponents of same-sex marriage” and “opponents of gay marriage”. They are not opponents of anything except forcing the rest of us to neuter marriage licenses to dishonor brides or grooms. They affirm marriage.
The article goes into the history of attempts to put the matter on California ballots.
"My opinions on this issue have evolved significantly," Sanders said. "I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community that they were less important . . . less deserving of the rights and responsibilities . . . simply because of their sexual orientation."
I’m for licensing bride-groom marriage only, and I certainly do not think that gay people are less important or less deserving. This is a false dichotomy.
His voice continuing to shake, he said his daughter Lisa and several of his senior staff members were gay or lesbian.
So what? That doesn’t change what marriage is, what it isn’t, and what is society’s interest. Society simply doesn’t have the same interest when men get together without women or vice-versa.