Prop 8 Redux: What now for marriage rights?
Tara Hunt
Tara Hunt is a leading social media and community marketing consultant and the author of The Whuffie Factor. She is Canadian and based in San Francisco where she co-runs the Citizen…
Liza Sabater
Liza Sabater is a NY based feminist culture pundit, new media producer, online strategy consultant, blogpreneur and mom. She is founder of two of the most influential political…
Andrea Shorter
Andrea is co-chair of the Bayard LGBT Rustin Coalition, Northern California’s largest Black LGBT political organization. A longtime advocate in the LGBT community, she is the…
John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney
John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney were two of the plaintiffs in the historic same-sex marriage case, decided by the California Supreme last May. After 21 years together, they married…
Pamela Brown
Pamela Brown is the National Policy Director for Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA). In this capacity, she has provided MEUSA’s county chapter leaders, outreach directors and board…
Lee Stranahan
Lee Stranahan: is a Husband, Dad, Filmmaker, Political Comedian, Huffingtonpost Blogger, Photographer He wrote, produced and directed a 35mm, $30,000 comedy feature called Breathing…
Guests: Tara Hunt, Liza Sabater, Andrea Shorter, John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, Pamela Brown and Lee Stranahan
This show RAWKED in the words of conversator Liza Sabater. It was like a mythical Chappelle stand-up gig that just went on because no one wanted to leave. It birthed Equality Camp which will occur January 3rd in San Francisco to Obamify and integrate the grassroots, Netroots and the Campaign. Join us. There will be baked goods.
Tuesday Nov. 11th, 7-8:30PST/10:00-11:30 EST
Prop8 recently passed and amended the California Constitution to disallow gay and lesbian people from marrying. Since then, all kinds of uproar and questions are happening in the streets of San Francisco and LA and on the Net. This moment finds a new level of engagement and uncertainty about information in Net-era politics.
Heather conversates with: Pam Brown (MarriageEqualityUSA), Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis (lead plaintiffs and one of the first CA couples to marry), Andrea Shorter (And Marriage For All), Liza Sabater (culturekitchen), Tara Hunt (leading social media consultant) and you to explore how this happened and where we go from here.
Links:
-In the complete absence of a community managed web site from the campaign, independent sites like JointheImpact and Stop8and OverturnProp8 have arisen. Are we seeing a new grassroots first gay movement?
- A lawsuit has been filed to challenge Prop 8.
-EQCA (the CA gay lobby) is asking people to sign a petition to get the issue back on the ballot if the law suit doesn’t win.
-Can and should the courts overturn Prop8 ?
-How can a new movement organize? 261,000 names are already on an online petition.
-How do we deal with the support of African-Americans for Prop8 (69-31) and the racism of the gay movement (a breakdown that shows the African-American vote could not have passed Prop8)
- Was the No on 8 campaign’s decision to not use the word gay a mistake? Will the main gay rights groups shift to grassroots politics? How?
How does politics engage the God / religion / morality factor?
-A Utah boycott is shaping up as is a movement to strip the Mormon Church of its tax-exempt status. What was the real involvement of the Mormon Church and (one view). Will the attempt to strip the Church of its tax-exempt status work?
(disclosure, I have both signed this, and am in dialogue with a Mormon supporter of Prop8 to try to understand the point of view of someone who says they do not wish to harm gay people but just want to protect what they value)
-What about the geeks?
Tags: "African-American", "civil rights", "gay marriage", "social media", grassroots, invisibility, Latino, LDS, marriage, Mormon, Prop8, racism, religion
November 11th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I think that the “left”, consisting of many who are in favor of this mob rule initiative nonsense – until goes against them – needs to start acknowledging that rights are not granted by government.
Marriage and Contract are specifically removed from State purview for two reasons.
1. “Marriage” is a religious ceremony. When a state interferes with that, it is violating a fundamental right of the people to engage in worship.
2. A contract between two individuals is the most protected institution listed in the Federal Constitution.
It states “No State Shall make any law….. impairing the obligation of contract.”
So, if any people engage in a contract, the state may not interfere in that contract unless the terms of the contract perpetuate fraud. This is why laws against bigamy are essentially unconstitutional UNLESS the extra wives or husbands are the subject of fraud.
What the “gay rights” activists want, is for people to recognize their contracts. But this makes no sense since the only parties to the contract are those who agreed to its terms. Thus there is no legal basis to demand that the contract extend to others.
We *should* abolish the State’s insistence on issuing marriage licenses and performing religious ceremonies. And believe me, they in fact open up a Bible in the judge’s chambers and perform the marriage ceremony.
Every individual is born with the same rights. There are no “special” rights needed to correct past discrimination.
Discrimination is itself a fundamental right. With every right, one has to accept the good with the bad. The left often wants to abolish the bad part of some right (and in some cases all of it ie; self-defense) but does not want to acknowledge the positive results of the right in action.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:25 am
What an amazing show..the longest one yet because no one wanted to end!
This was by far the longest show ever. After we wrapped up the 90 min of Prop8 there was at least another hour of fun.
We were remarkably thorough, hitting all the issues we wanted to cover and flowing from analysis to conversation to play to action.
Grassroots-based equality movement that will achieve the promise of this nation that “no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Join us.
January 10th> http://barcamp.org/EqualityCamp
November 12th, 2008 at 1:17 am
The following article should be required reading for Marriage Equality organizers and supporters:
No-on-8′s White Bias
By Jasmyne A. Cannick
November 8, 2008
No On 8 had no ground game. None. Not even if the parts of California where it was “supposed” to fail.
Jasmyne highlights the fact that not only do we have to pour our hearts into communities that may not exactly be friendly, we also have to re-frame the discussion. I certainly think it’s a civil rights issue, but will we be able to convince the necessary demographics of that?
The black-people-don’t-think-this-is-a-civil-rights-issue is very similar to the religious-people-think-I’m-disgusting-and-aberrant issue… not sure either is winnable. So, what’s the strategy?
Looking forward to discussing all this on Jan 10!
November 14th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
[...] the fresh recording, comment here, comment on twitter or anywhere else by tagging: [...]
December 29th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
[...] after Prop 8 passed in California, a conversation on the Heather Gold Show about its passing prompted Heather and guest Tara Hunt of Citizen Space to gather several others [...]
January 10th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
[...] Obama, Speaker Pelosi (who’s also the Castro’s representative) and the new Congress. Heather Gold talked about “we have the internet now — we don’t need to wait for big slow [...]
May 26th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
[...] than I about EQCA and the No on 8 committee groups. You can listen to the talk show I did on what went wrong with Prop 8. But EQCA has the same end goal as everyone else: winning. And it seems to have been learning from [...]