An Open Letter to California Regarding Proposition 8

To the Justices of California’s Supreme Court:

This is a joint letter from a heterosexual woman and a gay woman. We’re writing today as sisters for a cause.

As a straight woman and a woman of color, it was unnervingВ for me to watch yesterday’s proceedings in the state’s Supreme Court, hearing the arguments to overturn Proposition 8. My sense of unease was not because I felt in any way that testing the constitutional limits of what the voters approved was wrong. It was because we were trying the constitutionality of a referendum that should never have happened in the first place.

I am the child of immigrants. A first generation American born and raised in California. More than 10 years before I was born, my uncle and aunt had to cross the state’s border to get married. He was Filipino and my aunt a Caucasian woman from Arkansas. Anti-miscegenation laws prevented them from being married in California.

Fortunately, with the repeal of miscegenation laws, first in the state and thenВ across the country, their marriage was validated. They stayed married for nearly 60 yearsВ separated only by death, less than a year apart. What makes my uncle and aunt’s desire to be married in the days of state’s miscegenation laws is no different than what same-sex couples are contending with Defense of Marriage laws across the country. What gives the states the right to dictate who gets to marry?

In yesterday’s Prop 8 hearing, Ken Starr argued that the people have the right to dictate who gets to marry whom. The rule of the people is “sovereign,” he stated, “even when they are unwise.” Even if they vote to take away the rights of all minorities, the Supreme Court should not intervene. Unless the ruling would enact “far reaching change in the structure of government,” California’s Supreme Court cannot get involved. With this perspective, it would be perfectly legal to impose, with a majority ballot vote: slavery in California, segregation, internment camps, anti-miscegenation laws, job discrimination based on race, ethnicity or gender — the list goes on.

“Every civil rights group sided [with same-sex couples and LGBT advocacy groups],” Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund explained in last night’s teleconference.

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