Dear Friend and Reader,
Wednesday, San Francisco’s city officials and civil rights groups filed two separate cases to prevent Proposition 8 from taking effect. The Proposition, which passed on Nov. 4, takes away same-sex marriage rights in California.
Black and Latino voters joined Mormons to aid in passing the proposition, a statistic that saddens racial minorities who empathize with this current civil rights battle and recognize their recent achievements in electing Barack Obama as president. Richard Kim of The Nation writes:
If exit polls are to be believed, some 70 percent of African-Americans voted Yes on 8, as did 52 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asians; each of these demographics went heavily for Obama, blacks by a 94-to-6 margin. Los Angeles County, heavily minority, went 50-50 on Prop 8. These results have shocked gay activists, who knew from earlier polls that black voters favored Prop 8, but they were seeing much smaller margins, closer to 50 percent.