Reflections on Proposition 8: California’s Shame (Part One)

by Hopeful Spirit on Sunday, December 28, 2008

What is one thing you will com­mit to do in 2009 that will draw you closer to Jesus?
(This is not a New Year’s Resolution)

Ma’am, I’d like to talk to you about Propo­si­tion 8.”

It was a sunny Sat­ur­day morn­ing in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, just a lit­tle after 10:00 a.m. I was not yet dressed, so I answered the door in my robe. The man I found stand­ing on my doorstep, lean­ing on the rail­ing casu­ally, had a stack of pam­phlets and other lit­er­a­ture in his hand. He looked like an out of uni­form sol­dier — his hair was cut short, neatly trimmed and combed into place. His plaid button-down shirt was as crisply pressed as his Dock­ers trousers which boasted a per­fectly lined crease down the front of each unwrin­kled leg.

I instinc­tively knew when I glanced at him for the first time that this well-groomed, polite gen­tle­man and I would find no com­mon ground on the issue at hand.

I don’t really think we have any­thing to talk about, but thanks for stop­ping by,” I said as gen­tly as I could as I began slowly clos­ing the door.

Mar­riage is between a man and a woman, ma’am,” he said hur­riedly in a ploy to stop me from ter­mi­nat­ing our brief encounter.

It worked.

I quickly pulled the door open fully and replied, “I don’t believe that,” chal­leng­ing him to defend his posi­tion.  I could have told him I didn’t wish to dis­cuss the issue fur­ther or that I had already made up my mind about how I intended to vote or … pro­vided an infi­nite num­ber of other rea­sons why the two of us should not spend time on that beau­ti­ful autumn morn­ing argu­ing with each other about an issue about which we both knew we would never achieve consensus.

Instead, he took my bait. “But that’s what the Bible says,” he continued.

I felt my cheeks get­ting hot and knew that if I looked in a mir­ror at that pre­cise moment, I would see that my ears were as bright as Rudolph’s nose on Christ­mas Eve.  As though I were two sep­a­rate beings, part of me recoiled at the invi­ta­tion to debate the man who had ded­i­cated his Sat­ur­day morn­ing to ring­ing the door­bells of total strangers in order to press his case.  While another part of me eagerly spoiled for the fight.

Look, I’ve stud­ied the Bible — all pas­sages that could even remotely be inter­preted as relat­ing to this issue.  At length.  I sim­ply don’t believe as you believe.  I have no desire to stand here argu­ing with you because nei­ther of us is going to con­vince the other of the cor­rect­ness of our posi­tion.  So how about if we just agree to dis­agree?  You have a nice day,” I said, as I again began to shut the door.

Can I leave you some lit­er­a­ture to read about what the Bible really says about mar­riage?” he queried.

I fell back on the response I always pro­vide when some­one rings my door­bell to push an agenda with which I dis­agree.  “Sure.  Leave me all of it!” I said enthusiastically.

Oh!  Well … sure, I guess I could do that.  Will you dis­trib­ute it to your friends and cowork­ers?” he said innocently.

No,” I replied sin­cerely.  “I’m going to burn it.”

At that moment, our eyes met and he finally accepted that he would not suc­ceed in con­vert­ing me.  Still … he was not quite ready to con­cede total defeat.

I see that there is another reg­is­tered voter liv­ing in this house.  Is ______ at home?  Could I talk to him?  Do you know how he will be vot­ing?” he asked.

No, he’s not home.  And he will be vot­ing ‘no’ just as I will,” I replied matter-of-factly.

With that, he prac­ti­cally ran down the steps, mum­bling “have a nice day” as he scur­ried toward the sidewalk.

That after­noon, I pur­chased my first “No on 8″ sign and installed it on my front lawn.  By the time Novem­ber 4, 2008, rolled around, how­ever, there was no longer a sign there — three “No on 8″ signs had been stolen from my front yard in the weeks just prior to the election.

The evening of Novem­ber 4, 2008, brought mixed bless­ings. I was joy­ous when I saw the words “President-Elect Obama” flash on the tele­vi­sion screen as the major news net­works declared the elec­tion results. But hope turned to despair in the ensu­ing hours and days as the bal­lots were counted and it became clear that a major­ity of Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers approved of inject­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion into the state’s constitution.

The protests around the state sig­naled that the fight for equal­ity was far from over.

This time of year, we sing about angelic choirs bring­ing glad tid­ings of “peace on earth, good will toward men.”  I have never suc­ceeded in rec­on­cil­ing those car­ols with pas­sages such as this one:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daugh­ter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s ene­mies will be those of his own house­hold. Who­ever loves father or mother more than me is not wor­thy of me, and who­ever loves son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me. And who­ever does not take his cross and fol­low me is not wor­thy of me. Who­ever finds his life will lose it, and who­ever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:34–39

The mod­ern lan­guage trans­la­tion, The Mes­sage, puts it this way:

Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daugh­ter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domes­tic arrange­ments and free you for God. Well-meaning fam­ily mem­bers can be your worst ene­mies. If you pre­fer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you pre­fer son or daugh­ter over me, you don’t deserve me.

If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your first con­cern is to look after your­self, you’ll never find your­self. But if you for­get about your­self and look to me, you’ll find both your­self and me.”

Matthew 10:34–39

The truth is that when that nice gen­tle­man rang my door­bell, I felt as com­pelled to speak the truth, as I believe it, as he felt called to get up on that day and spend his valu­able time knock­ing on the doors of strangers in order to con­vince them to vote for Propo­si­tion 8. I have no doubt that he believed he was doing the right thing.  Since the odds are good that we both claim to be believ­ers and fol­low­ers of Christ, there is also a good chance that he, like me, would claim inspi­ra­tion from the Spirit to speak out in favor of our core beliefs.

Is that notion plau­si­ble when he, along with his fel­low Chris­tians who voted for and assured the pas­sage of Propo­si­tion 8, was not just mis­guided, but flat-out wrong?  Com­pletely, if you take Jesus at his word in stat­ing his true pur­pose for tak­ing on human form.

Click here to read Part Two.


Writ­ers Offer­ing Their Finest for the Jan­u­ary 9, 2009 WOOF Con­test. Top Picks:

Poetry

  • Dragon Blog­ger & Jen­nifer M. ScottThe Fallen Knight — a poem in the fan­tasy genre about a knight hunted in the snow.
  • Dragon Blog­gerMad­ness for Love — A ran­dom twit­ter poem based on 7 words turned out to be about search­ing for love.

Non-Fiction, Phil­io­soph­i­cal, Opin­ion Piece

Flash Fic­tion, Fiction

  • Jen­nifer M ScottEvery­man – about a ser­ial killer.

Brought to you by Plot­Dog Press with the Ser­ial Sus­pense Screen­play “Inter­ven­tion.”

Tech­no­rati Tags: , , , ,

You might also like:

{ 13 comments }

1 Faith and Facts December 31, 2008 at 9:05 pm

I find it hard to believe you have, “…studied the Bible — all passages that could even remotely be interpreted as relating to this issue. At length.” and conclude that the biblical pattern for marriage is anything other than a man and a woman. There are over 100 verses that refer to a father and a mother. Eph 5:31 says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

While you are free in this country to believe what you want, you are not really free, especially if you claim to be a Christian, to misstate the Bible.

Faith and Facts´s latest blog post: Merry Xmas 2008

2 Viola Jaynes January 1, 2009 at 9:10 am

Thank you, Hopeful Spirit! I wish you a wonderful and very meaningful New Year! Thank you for your faithful contributions on the blogsphere!

Viola Jaynes´s latest blog post: New Years Wishes For You

3 Emery January 1, 2009 at 1:25 pm

First, I wish you a Happy New Year. May GOD enlighten you in all ways as He shines His light on our world.

… but how can you come to a conclusion regarding relationships that is so at odds with life-giving? Friendships are wonderful but they do not form marriage no matter how you cut it.

As a Californian who is saddened by our sliding slope of morality and the need to speak for life and all GOD means that to include, I was compelled to vote for Prop 8. But I can still love you and even your partner without condoning the acts that do not line up in any way with GOD.

Be blessed with all righteousness!

4 Hopeful Spirit January 1, 2009 at 2:42 pm

@Emery: Why do you assume that any relationship must be “life-giving” in order to be valid? And why do you assume that I am gay as is evident by your use of the term “partner”?

There are many marriages — same and opposite sex — that do not include children. Still more into which children are incorporated by means other than conception and childbirth. Are you saying that those marriages are not valid or worthy of recognition simply because they don’t involve “life-giving” in the traditional sense? What then would you say to those children of such relationships?

Moreover, it is dangerous to make assumptions. I am not, in fact, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. I am a heterosexual woman and have been married to a man for many years. That does not mean that I cannot stand in solidarity and fight for equality with my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters.

Lastly, you have the right to believe as you see fit and worship accordingly. However, the problem with Proposition 8 is that too many like yourself were unable to separate the religious from the secular. Proposition 8 has NOTHING to do with religion or religious beliefs. It is a SECULAR law and, as such, subject to Constitutional scrutiny which is cannot pass as I predict the California Supreme Court will declare. Sadly, too many people, voted, as you apparently did, from a place of religious conviction rather than understanding of the civil system of laws. That’s why it passed, but it will not stand.

Christians in diverse cultures such as California must learn that they cannot impose their will, beliefs, traditions, and practices on society as a whole.

Moreover, there are many, many Christians who, like me, have studied the Bible and concluded that it does not say what the patriarchal church has insisted for centuries that it says on the issue of sexual orientation, as well as many other subjects.

Your “scale of morality” is not mine and that is ok. You can live in accordance with your moral compass and I with mine. But neither of us can impose our “scale of morality” upon other persons via the government and enactment of laws that are blatantly discriminatory and serve to deny equal rights to all persons irrespective of their religious beliefs or lack thereof.

You and I can love each other, but you do not have a right to judge me. You can believe what you want about human nature and behavior, but it is not your place to “condone” or not “condone” my choices. It is simply your place to offer unconditional love, acceptance, patience, and most importantly, tolerance!

Happy New Year!

5 Hopeful Spirit January 1, 2009 at 2:58 pm

@Faith and Facts: Where, precisely, did I “misstate the Bible”? I would love to hear how I did that, in your estimation. I stated that I have studied the Bible thoroughly and do not beleve that it can be used to deny equal rights under the law to any person or group of persons. I’m sure that you do find that “hard to believe” because you have obviously come to a different conclusion. But that’s how it is and that’s why Christians need to agree to disagree in a loving, Christ-like manner.

However, as to a matter of civil rights under our system of laws, there is no room for disagreement founded upon the religious beliefs of one group. Nor can the religious beliefs of any group(s) be allowed to trump the secular rights granted to any person(s) under the state or federal Constitution.

Sexual orientation is protected under the law. Therefore, marriage cannot be denied to persons of the sex on the basis of their orientation. That is just how the law is written and the courts are finally recognizing that fact.

This argument is no different than arguments in previous decades related to the rights of women or persons of color. Exactly the same rhetoric is being thrown around by the religious right in this country to resist same-sex marriage as was used to argue that miscegenistic laws (prohibiting the marriage or cohabitation of persons of different races) should remain on the books.

For the record, those laws remained intact well into this century. In fact, the man who is about to be our next President was born to a man and woman who, under the law of that time, could not marry because one was black and the other white.

Sadly, there are still many churches that aren’t even discussing the issue of ordaining women, much less same-sex marriage. To me, that’s barbaric. Of course, I come from a lifetime of membership in a group that began ordaining women in 1970.

For me, those historical realities put this issue into perspective and compels only one conclusion.

6 yinyang January 2, 2009 at 8:32 am

Happy belated New Year! I eagerly await the next post(s) in this series.

yinyang´s latest blog post: Jon Stewart as Willy Wonka? Dick Cheney as Elmer Fudd?

7 Melissan January 2, 2009 at 10:01 am

I am so thankful to be living in Massachusetts where my wife and I live in peace and quiet. We are expecting a baby in April and happily married, just like any other ordinary family.

Melissan´s latest blog post: Why I Love to Watch the Biggest Loser

8 Not Fainthearted January 2, 2009 at 10:48 am

thank you, Hopeful Spirit, for all you said to the young man on your doorstep and to the commenters here. I can only hope to be so eloquent when I am called on in similar circumstance.

Blessings on you and yours in 2009!

Not Fainthearted´s latest blog post: Friday Five – First Edition 2009

9 Kevin January 5, 2009 at 7:23 am

Happy belated New Year! I eagerly await the next post(s) in this series.

10 Personal Development articles January 13, 2009 at 1:50 am

“Marriage is between a man and a woman, ma’am,” he said hurriedly in a ploy to stop me from terminating our brief encounter.

11 Asbestos January 14, 2009 at 8:43 pm

We are expecting a baby in April and happily married, just like any other ordinary family.

12 luxury perfume January 17, 2009 at 9:16 am

It was very good post, it helped me in finding a good affiliate, thanks.

13 derl February 6, 2009 at 6:29 pm

i hate anyone who comes door to door and bothers me even if i do agree with their message i want them gone

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post: