Usefully Employed

Again, this isn’t employment related, but over time this blog might start to embrace (as it were) discrimination in all its forms.

On 4th November in the US voters will go to decide whether McCain or Obama will be their next president. Californians, however, will have an extra decision to make: should the Californian constitution be amended to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry? This would reverse the decision of the state’s supreme court which upheld gay marriage as protected by the constitution earlier this year.

To give you an idea of scale, in the UK there were around 16,000 civil partnerships in 2006, which has settled down to an annual figure of around half that number. UCLA forecast that in California, on the other hand, in the next three year period there may be as many 100,000 gay marriage ceremonies if they remain lawful. Many of these will be pilgrims from other American states.

Whereas UK citizens can detach themselves from the presidential race, California is certainly the largest, most liberally progressive and media driven jurisdiction to have a referendum on gay marriage. Since referenda are rare in the UK some might argue our laws are watered down. There was no opposition of much substance to the introduction of civil partnerships, but this may well be because the government didn’t want the public debate that the word ‘marriage’ brings. Would our debate have been so polarised? The universal applicability of the topic to any western nation makes it harder to dismiss the Californian debate as inextricably American - it could happen here.

For a flavour of the debate so far, and to see the energy and importance of this vote to many of California’s LGB community, visit the site of blogger Sapphocrat at her Lavender Newswire. Her output is prodigious (there is at least one long post each day) with a recent and evocative one being a YouTube montage of a selection of the rapists, paedophiles and serial killers allowed a (heterosexual) marriage in prison. The point is clear: if them, why not us? She also tries to counter what she sees as the lies told by the Yes campaign, which a visit to its website predictably and depressingly confirms amount to “your kids will get gayed up at school”.

The official No on 8 gives a less personalised view of the battle than the Lavender Newswire - and the sponsors of Proposition 8 and its official Yes campaign can be found here. Look and decide for yourself.

Oddly enough I have (according to Google, which must surely discount visits from its own robots) a small handful of readers in California - although I can’t think what could possibly interest them here. If you do have a vote on Proposition 8, and you’re reading this, then look at how much Sapphocrat cares about the result. If you’re a Yes voter, then make sure you remember you’re dealing with thousands of real people’s happiness - not just your own proclivities.