By Jon Spike
The Daily Cardinal
Everywhere you go right now, Americans big and small, male and female, and black and white are hailing the 2008 election cycle as the turning point in progress. Newspaper headlines trumpet Nov. 4, 2008 as a banner day in civil rights. Nonsense. While the election of Sen. Barack Obama to the American presidency is a huge step for civil rights of African-Americans, three other states successfully - and embarrassingly - shot down civil rights for Americans of every race - specifically homosexual Americans.
In California, Proposition eight passed with a five percent margin of victory, effectively reversing the California Supreme Court's earlier decision to lift the ban on same-sex marriage. Prior to Proposition eight, the California Supreme Court concluded that sexual orientation does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."" However, after a large amount of backlash - especially from the religious community - those opposed to same-sex marriage successfully put the issue on the ballot. Although the gay marriage ban appeared to be heading for defeat from early poll projections, a large last-minute surge of funding from religious institutions factored into a narrow victory for the ban.
Amazingly, this election year's debate over same-sex marriage will go down as the costliest campaign over a social issue, carrying a price tag of approximately $74 million spent by both sides on campaign advertisements. This astronomical cost only further exemplifies what a polarizing issue gay marriage has grown into. The real eye-opening part of that statistic is how much money was wasted fighting over the equal rights of every human being, a matter one would think is fairly straightforward. Imagine what could've been done with those funds had Californians simply realized the justices were simply protecting legal rights to all.
If Californian legislators, officials and leaders have any semblance of logic, they should not retroactively revoke the marriage licenses of the approximately 15,000 same-sex couples that did get married. Such a decision would only serve to rub salt in a wound split already far too wide. The couples may have lost their titles in the figurative sense, but do not exacerbate the problem by stripping their licenses.
In Madison, the issue is still simmering even after the gay marriage ban passed in Wisconsin two years earlier. On campus, hundreds of protesters gathered in Madison last Saturday to march to the capitol in protest of Proposition eight passing in California. Their protests bring back a history of contention over gay marriage stemming back to March of 2004, when the state Senate first passed a gay marriage ban in a hasty floor session. The words of two prominent Wisconsin figures still resonate in the conscience of the issue even today. Former Sen. Chuck Chvala, now infamous for his major legal troubles, still deserves respect for his position on the issue.
""If this is what we pass and we put into the constitution, 25 years from now I guarantee ... you will regret this day,"" Chvala said before the vote. ""You will regret it till the end of your life. And frankly, I think you'll remember it more than almost anything else that you did.""
Sen. Tim Carpenter, another prominent figure and the only openly gay member of the state Senate at that time, also spoke out, explaining to legislators the message they were essentially telling the homosexual community.
""You are the official target, you are the official symbol in the state of Wisconsin for open and clear discrimination. And this Legislature has gone on record endorsing that policy,"" Carpenter said to the Senate.
Wisconsin had the perfect chance to forever change the political landscape regarding same-sex marriage in November of 2006, but the words of men like former Sen. Chvala and former Sen. Carpenter fell on deaf ears. Even the unrelenting efforts of A Fair Wisconsin, a group devoted to preserving the rights of same-sex couples, could not rally the state to vote no on Wisconsin's gay marriage ban. Without question, Wisconsin's rejection of the ban could've initiated a domino effect in other states considered progressive, leading to a federal law giving the green light to gay marriage.
Here's hoping it doesn't take 25 years for federal, state and local citizens to realize how morally wrong banning gay marriage is. For now, it appears California is just the latest victim in what appears to be a sad but continuing trend of stripping legal rights from other human beings.
Jon Spike is a junior majoring in secondary education in English. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
