Many Paly students wore red clothing or ribbons to school today in protest of the passing of California’s Proposition 8 on Nov. 4, 2008.
Prop. 8 amends the California constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry and states that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid in California, according to the Official Voter Information Guide for the California General Election.
Many protests against the passage of Prop. 8 have been organized through events on Facebook. One of these events is titled “I Will Wear Red 11/5/08 if Prop. 8 Passes.”
“I decided to wear red ribbons today because I think discriminating against sexual orientation is just plain wrong,” senior Lynn Chang said. “I think red was chosen because it’s a symbol of love and shows the importance of being able to love whoever you want. Even though we lost today, it is a start of a new battle, which I think we can win because it is unconstitutional to eliminate the rights of a certain group of people.”
Other students shared this sentiment, saying that they disagreed strongly with the results.
“It was kind of eerie that in California, more than half the people are for discriminating against gay people,” junior Joshua Gould said. “I think it’s terrible. If you’re gay, you’ll obviously vote no on Prop. 8, but if you’re straight, why do you care? If you vote yes, you’ll just mess things up for other people.”
However, senior Daniel Yeh has mixed feelings about the results, as he is concerned with the consequences of the passage.
“I believe that the government has the power to define marriage, but I’m not sure about banning it,” Yeh said. “The government has the power to ban polygamy and incest and I don’t know where the line would be drawn if the government doesn’t have the power to ban gay marriage. Marriage is a sort of a government thing because it is a legal union, so the government should be able to define it.”
Living skills teacher Leticia Burton was surprised by the results, but recognizes the difficulties involved with legalizing gay marriage.
“This is the first time that there’s a constitutional amendment to restrict rights,” Burton said. “Yes, it’s [Prop. 8 is] about gay people getting married, but for me it’s about coming from a history or a legacy where the ballot box has been used to restrict people who look like me from voting. It feels like a step backwards in some ways, especially in light of [Barack] Obama being elected president, and Prop. 8 passes; it’s very incongruous.”
However, Burton feels that continuing efforts for equality are making progress in California.
“A friend of mine said that when you think about the struggle for civil rights in this country, it’s taken 400 years to get to the point where we have a person who’s black as president,” Burton said. “The struggle for gay rights is still new, and there’s still lots of work to be done. The thing that she said that really struck me was that, nothing worth having comes easy, that you have to fight for it. So now I just think that people who really believe in freedom for all people just need to fight for it.”
GSA President senior Alex Coblin was shocked by the lack of acceptance of gay rights in California when he heard the result.
“It [the passing of Prop. 8] sucked, to put it simply,” Coblin said. “Just the fact that it passed in California, which is supposed to be one of the most progressive states, is disappointing.”
Coblin feels the passage of Prop. 8 has dampened his reaction to the presidential election.
“Seeing everyone else happy about the election results, I don’t feel the same way because I’ve literally been stripped of a right,” Coblin said.
Gould agrees: “Too many people in this nation have been discriminated against at one point or another.”