People are bigots. Yes, most believe that their opinion is the right one and often refuse to bend on many issues. Maine's repeal of the their same sex marriage law is proof of that. But it's not the bigots in Maine, in California or any other state where they have voted, may vote, or will vote to legalize or repeal same sex marriage laws that gays are denied equal rights fault. It's the cowardly Congress, Senate, President and Supreme Court. The very people that know that civil rights should never be left up to the electorate. Ever.
People don't often do the right thing in the privacy of the anonymous ballot box. Hidden fears, hidden bigotries, deep-seeded ones many didn't even know they had, come out. That's why equality for blacks would never be up for a vote. Imagine, if we began voting on interracial marriage again. Given the recent justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple, I'm not sure that interracial couples would be able to marry when all the ballots were counted.
The fact is, no civil right should be left up to the masses. Our founders were very clear about equality in the Constitution, and as the t-shirts on my website says, "Equal equals Equal." No, it's not the homophobes or those religious zealots frightened by their church's fault. It's the churches themselves and the cowardly government that either tells all religious institutions to get out of politics or be taxed. And until religion's death grip on our society is loosened, the Constitution must continue to be interpreted by the hopefully educated legislators and Executives (Presidents), the hopefully learned Supreme Court justices whose charge it is to enforce and maintain the equality promised for all Americans, including those who are of the same gender and wish to marry.
Until President Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and nine supremes do their jobs, do what they know must be done, and once and for all grant federal same sex marriage to all, until a law is made that no state can deny anyone the right to enter in to a legal contract based solely on gender, then this battle will continue to be won and lost state by bigoted states. In other words, until someone decides to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
The founders did not want all the power with the people, which is why we are a Republic and not a true Democracy. Maine is a prime example as to why. Shame on the President, the leading Democrats and all the other "liberals" out there who didn't wake up and denounce Maine's vote and pledging to go all the way to the Supreme Court, pledging to get an item on the Congressional agenda, pledging to equal the playing field.
Today, gays and lesbians across America are reminded that it is still all right for the masses to either approve or disapprove of their unions, their lives. That's insulting, to them, and to America. And as for you bystanders, you know, the same type person that would watch a girl get gang raped in Richmond, CA, the same type person that would watch millions of taxpaying Americans be humiliated and denied basic rights granted to all others based on religious dogma and sit by and do nothing (which quietly condones it), well, as for you bystanders "shame on you" would be redundant. The evidence of our shame is all around in a society that can't seem to get basic human rights down 200+ years after a simple document explaining them was given to the nation.
Maine didn't lose a thing. Gays didn't lose a thing. Americans did. Again. All Americans lost the chance to get it right, yet again.
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