Welcome to khan.org

Faith. The very word undermines the certainty that many who have it pretend to demonstrate.

Yet with quite a bit of certainty, the majority of the electorate in California voted for Prop 8, which literally "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry".

Last I checked, no religion has a 51% lock on morality to demand our obeisance, and in fact, the beliefs of any particular faith is a minority compared to the non-believers of that faith.

But the certainty in ones faith is apparently so strong, that apparently facts simply can't hold a candle to it.

Universal facts, such as the matter that love is a fundamentally human trait, the love that a parent has for a child, the love that my wife and I share.

Universal facts about our human nature, such as the deep sense of loss our fellow man feels at the departure of a loved one, whether they're away on travel, or to a more final destination.

Universal facts about our human nature, such as the repudiation, by any sane person, that no class of person is beneath basic human rights, whether they are Jews, or Africans.

Universal facts about our human nature, such that no government should ever deny them to its citizens.

Yet, the same people who agree on these universal facts of human nature, and thus human rights, would deny to certain others among us the same rights we enjoy.

Those of faith who supported Prop 8 betray a turpitude that undermines the moral high ground they assume they hold, because this legislation, as history will eventually disambiguate, is fundamentally equivalent to the hateful laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Some misguided sense of purity/superiority dictated that certain perishable norms exist such that people's liberties needed to be restrained. Marriage is apparently some kind of old cheese that needs to be wrapped in the plastic wrap of Prop 8 for fear that gays will cast their moldy spoilage upon it.

Any institution that can be spoiled by the egalitarian participation of everyone is one which needs no government intervention to protect.

Is this the America we want our children to grow up in? One where we tell them that love and hope are the greatest weapons against fear and despair-- unless it turns out that they are gay, in which case we tell them "sorry, these liberties we cherish for ourselves... they don't apply to you..."?

That's what slave owners told the slaves, and what the Nazis told the Jews. Is that extreme? Perhaps-- but not nearly as extreme as telling loving couples that they can't enjoy the same freedoms that other loving couples, whose only differential characteristic is gender, do!

Does anybody really think that homosexuality is a choice anymore? Does anybody think that someone would choose a life of being ostracized and have their rights taken away, just for the sake of some kind of misguided perversion? Anyone who believes that homosexuality is like smoking where you can get a patch or undergo hypnosis and "be cured", or is equivalent to drug addiction, where all someone needs are a sufficient number of steps and an intervention program, needs to get out a little more, and talk to (and imagine! befriend!) some gay people and get to know them.

No, they'd rather throw millions of dollars into the mail from across the nation to abrogate the rights of people whose shoes which they've never bothered to walk a mile in.

If $5.7 million was poured into California to affect the outcome of Prop 8, then you bet this is something that each and every righteous American across the entire country ought to find offensive. Go to Californians Against Hate, find out about the organizations and groups that organized to support Prop 8, and join us on Saturday in Seattle at Volunteer Park to march in protest of Prop 8!