Prop 8, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights

Marriage didn’t work out for me. In the years since my divorce, I raised my daughters alone and, not wanting to bring a series of men into their lives, I’ve stayed single. Now they’re grown, and my life feels full and happy without a husband. So I never really understood the desperate search that some people go through to find a partner – someone to share their lives with.

Like many Caucasian folks who take all the benefits that come with being white for granted, I also took my heterosexuality for granted and never gave much thought to gay and lesbian people who were rallying for the right to marry. It wasn’t “my issue” and I was too busy raising my daughters alone, trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, to pay much attention to an issue that didn’t impact on my life.

Then Proposition 8 hit the ballot. It was an eye opener for me to realize there was a whole group of people who really, really wanted the “right” to marry the person of their dreams - even if that person happened to be the same gender. The rancor this issue caused in my workplace and my church surprised me. My own naiveté in believing that everyone else should recognize that this is a civil rights issue, and not a religious one was, in retrospect, pretty silly. But it seemed like a no-brainer for me.

In 1983, when we married, my husband and I took it for granted that we had the right to marry, have children, buy a home, and make a life together. Yes – there were times when we faced racism, but we never doubted our right to be together. I’m Caucasian, my former husband is African-American. Until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional, we would have been jailed in many states for being married and having biracial children. Many opponents of the Court’s decision were certain that this would result in the downfall of society. Many people, calling themselves Christians, used the Bible to support their views that marriage between the races was an abomination to God. For centuries, proponents of Jim Crow laws had cited chapter and verse in the Bible to support their views that African-Americans were an inferior race and therefore unworthy of being treated as equals.

Society didn’t fall apart when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, and it’s telling that most of today’s children don’t even know what “Jim Crow” means. Many people cried tears of joy when Barack Obama was elected as our 44th President. We’ve come far on this journey of civil rights, but the passage of Proposition 8 tells me that we have much farther to go.

Marriage between consenting adults is a civil rights issue, and whenever we single out a group of people and vote to take away their civil rights, we are treading on dangerous ground.