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1. Who ever is running the NO on 8 campaign is a BIG failure. I blame them for not being a good leader and shame on the LGBT community in California for not even showing any interest to the mere essence of what we are fighting for... FREEDOM from Discrimination. and where we are... probably still sleeping from last night's party. SHAME ON US!!! I want my money back, i live in Illinois and yet im so f... conscious about my responsibilities as a member of the community.

   Posted by: roy | Oct 27, 2008 9:06:17 AM

   
   

2. My own favorite way to counter-protest? Get a crowd of singers and musicians to set up next to the haters and sing/play "Yes, Jesus Loves Me, the Bible Tells Me So". LOUDLY. No hate, no yelling, just smile and sing-sing-sing.

   This site has some great banners against PROP 8.

   http://www.tacticalsyntax.com/

   This was left on myblog this morning; nice to hear from Jesus!

   http://jesussaysnoon8.com/
   

   Posted by: John Bisceglia | Oct 27, 2008 10:35:41 AM

   
   

3. actually, jesus wouldn't have voted at all -- he didn't get mixed up in politics -- too busy doing god's work you know...

   i had no idea that huntington beach was a bastion of heterosexuality but that's one of the wonderful things about towleroad, you learn something new everyday...

   well, roy, my dahling... you make a good point and one which i myself tried to make some weeks ago when some queen got all riled up and accused me of trying to thwart the no on 8 people (i had no idea i had that kind of power!!) and asked andy to pull off my observations and comments which he did... censorship on towleroad, imagine that!

   Posted by: the queen | Oct 27, 2008 10:40:53 AM

   
   

4. I was at the Huntington Beach rally on Sunday. The No on 8 folks were definitely in the minority, but we tried to make up for it with energy and enthusiasm. I was also at a large rally on Saturday at the corner of PCH and Crown Valley in Laguna Beach. Again, the No on 8 supporters were in the minority (20 of us, 200 of them), but we received a great response from the folks going by. And when I head out tonight, I'm sure it'll be the same thing - lots of Yes on 8 folks who are well-organized, have a mountain of professionally printed signs, and have bumper stickers, magnets, and pins to give away. And standing amongst them will be a handful of enthusiastic No on 8 folks doing their best to be seen and heard.

   It's apparent to me that (at least in Orange County) we've dropped the ball in a big way and we need to do everything we can between now and November 4th. And we need everyone's help. Get to every rally you can, call your friends and family and remind them to vote No on 8. Blog. Get some yard signs and plant them in and around your neighborhood. Donate money. Already have? Donate more. If you don't live in California, but know someone who does, please please please call them today.

   It's obvious that Prop 8 has a very good chance of passing. This is a historic moment for the GLBT community, and one that we won't have again for a long, long time. We must not let Prop 8 pass.

   The Obama campaign headquarters in Laguna Beach has No on 8 yard signs and placards (at least they did on Saturday). And you can download printable 8x11" signs here:
   http://www2.noonprop8.com/assets/pdfs/noon8window.pdf
   For rally locations, check myspace or facebook or go to the Politics section for your city on Craigslist.

   Thanks,

   Mark

   p.s. Please forward my comments to anyone who can help make a difference.
   

   Posted by: Mark | Oct 27, 2008 11:04:42 AM

   
   

5. Yes on 8 = less government? WTF kind of right-wing wacko thinking is this. It's the Government regulating who people can marry and this is less government?

   BTW: If any so-called religious institutions are supporting the right-wing wacko Prop 8, then I suggest everyone write in an e-mail to the CA State Franchise Tax Board as they do not like so-called Churches taking advantage of their tax-free status in shoving their political views on the tax-payers dime.
   http://www.ftb.ca.gov/

   Posted by: mike | Oct 27, 2008 12:55:42 PM

   
   

6. The most disturbing thing about this all is the apathy that so many gays today have in terms of their rights and voting in general. I've donated to No on 8 and I'm not even American. Hiding in the insular world of gay culture does not make us safe only deluded.

   Posted by: D.R.H. | Oct 27, 2008 4:06:05 PM

   
   

7. The most disturbing thing about this all is the apathy that so many gays today have in terms of their rights and voting in general. I've donated to No on 8 and I'm not even American. Hiding in the insular world of gay culture does not make us safe only deluded.

   Posted by: D.R.H. | Oct 27, 2008 4:07:07 PM

   
   

8. I just heard from someone who was there that COngressman Dana Rohrabacher was there supporting the Yes on 8 contingent.

   Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook is running against him and she supports full marraige equality. www.debbiecookforcongress.com

   It's a close race, so tell your friends in southern California.

   Posted by: Joe Shaw | Oct 27, 2008 4:17:52 PM

   
   

9. This looks like a real concern: Proposition 8 may make Polygamy legal. You have to wonder about its strange wording.

   Posted by: Cain Hamm | Oct 28, 2008 12:06:18 PM

   
   

10. To the person who is proud of her "Jesus would vote no on 8" sign. If you believe that Jesus is God than you can't deny the scriptures.

    Genesis 1:26-28 (New International Version)
    New International Version (NIV)
    26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
    27 So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.
    28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (God created men and women to procreate and fill the earth. Two same sexed couples can't biologically accomplish this naturally.)

    Genesis 2:24 (New International Version)
    New International Version (NIV)
    24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
    (I don't know how more clear you can get than that)

    These scriptures are just in the old Testament alone.

    We are not saying that you don't have a right to civil unions that would offer you the same protection that marriage offers to heterosexuals couples. However, marriage as God intended is between " a man and a woman only."

    Now this is purely an argument based on my belief in the infallible word of God and If you don't believe in God it is impossible for you to discern the word of God. And that is your right. That's what makes this Country that I love so great. We have the right to voice our opinions without fear of repercussions.
    However, if you want to take God out of the equation there are also valid arguments on a strictly humanistic level. Following is an Los Angeles Times argument in Support of Prop 8 written by a liberal writer.

    "Los Angeles Times
    Protecting marriage to protect children
    Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving. But in all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood.

    By David Blankenhorn
    September 19, 2008
    » Discuss Article (74 Comments)
    I'm a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

    Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That's certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.
    But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I've come to a different conclusion.

    Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

    In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.
    These days, because of the gay marriage debate, one can be sent to bed without supper for saying such things. But until very recently, almost no one denied this core fact about marriage. Summing up the cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher in 1992 put it simply: "People wed primarily to reproduce." The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that "it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution."

    Marriage is society's most pro-child institution. In 2002 -- just moments before it became highly unfashionable to say so -- a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that "family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

    All our scholarly instruments seem to agree: For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other.

    For these reasons, children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right. The last time I checked, liberals like me were supposed to be in favor of internationally recognized human rights, particularly concerning children, who are typically society's most voiceless and vulnerable group. Or have I now said something I shouldn't?

    Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn't last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!

    For me, what we are encouraged or permitted to say, or not say, to one another about what our society owes its children is crucially important in the debate over initiatives like California's Proposition 8, which would reinstate marriage's customary man-woman form. Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them? Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another? Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children? How many parents per child is best? Do you think that "two" is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever? If you do, be careful. In making the case for same-sex marriage, more than a few grown-ups will be quite willing to question your integrity and goodwill. Children, of course, are rarely consulted.

    The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?

    Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution -- marriage -- that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

    Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing -- the gift, the birthright -- that is marriage's most distinctive contribution to human society. That's a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support."

    David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of "The Future of Marriage."

    Posted by: Trent | Oct 28, 2008 12:21:54 PM

    
    

11. To the person who is proud of her "Jesus would vote no on 8" sign. If you believe that Jesus is God than you can't deny the scriptures.

    Genesis 1:26-28 (New International Version)
    New International Version (NIV)
    26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
    27 So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.
    28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (God created men and women to procreate and fill the earth. Two same sexed couples can't biologically accomplish this naturally.)

    Genesis 2:24 (New International Version)
    New International Version (NIV)
    24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
    (I don't know how more clear you can get than that)

    These scriptures are just in the old Testament alone.

    We are not saying that you don't have a right to civil unions that would offer you the same protection that marriage offers to heterosexuals couples. However, marriage as God intended is between " a man and a woman only."

    Now this is purely an argument based on my belief in the infallible word of God and If you don't believe in God it is impossible for you to discern the word of God. And that is your right. That's what makes this Country that I love so great. We have the right to voice our opinions without fear of repercussions.
    However, if you want to take God out of the equation there are also valid arguments on a strictly humanistic level. Following is an Los Angeles Times argument in Support of Prop 8 written by a liberal writer.

    "Los Angeles Times
    Protecting marriage to protect children
    Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving. But in all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood.

    By David Blankenhorn
    September 19, 2008
    » Discuss Article (74 Comments)
    I'm a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

    Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That's certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.
    But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I've come to a different conclusion.

    Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

    In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.
    These days, because of the gay marriage debate, one can be sent to bed without supper for saying such things. But until very recently, almost no one denied this core fact about marriage. Summing up the cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher in 1992 put it simply: "People wed primarily to reproduce." The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that "it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution."

    Marriage is society's most pro-child institution. In 2002 -- just moments before it became highly unfashionable to say so -- a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that "family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

    All our scholarly instruments seem to agree: For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other.

    For these reasons, children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right. The last time I checked, liberals like me were supposed to be in favor of internationally recognized human rights, particularly concerning children, who are typically society's most voiceless and vulnerable group. Or have I now said something I shouldn't?

    Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn't last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!

    For me, what we are encouraged or permitted to say, or not say, to one another about what our society owes its children is crucially important in the debate over initiatives like California's Proposition 8, which would reinstate marriage's customary man-woman form. Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them? Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another? Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children? How many parents per child is best? Do you think that "two" is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever? If you do, be careful. In making the case for same-sex marriage, more than a few grown-ups will be quite willing to question your integrity and goodwill. Children, of course, are rarely consulted.

    The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?

    Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution -- marriage -- that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

    Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing -- the gift, the birthright -- that is marriage's most distinctive contribution to human society. That's a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support."

    David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of "The Future of Marriage."

    Posted by: Trent | Oct 28, 2008 12:23:13 PM

    
    

12. thanks trent for your comments.

    someone ranted against a prop 8 sign that equaled "less government." they said this sign was crazy.

    they may find this article interesting:
    http://prop8discussion.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/same-sex-marriage-and-creeping-totalitarianism/

    "...the steps necessary to institute legal same-sex marriage represent an unusual and worrisome expansion of the State’s claims to authority and status.
    Defining Totalitarianism

    The word totalitarian conjures up specters from the last century—images of leader worship and revolutionary violence, of prison camps and secret police. But these are the incidents of totalitarianism, not its essence. Their different forms rise from a common root: A philosophical stand in which the State is pre-eminent, in which it may exert whatsoever power it will, in which its claim upon the bodies and minds of its subjects may not be excelled. That is the common heritage of Fascists and Bolsheviks; that is totalitarianism.

    What, then, do I mean by creeping totalitarianism? Simply this: the extension of State power to new domains, the reduction of competing authorities, or the consolidation of State power that had been dispersed. Creeping totalitarianism is a stepwise, slow, even covert movement toward the position of control described above, a quiet and gradual betrayal of liberty. I believe that as many as three such extensions are threatened by the same-sex marriage laws currently being debated: While instituting same-sex marriage, the State must co-opt its competition and promote legal positivism, and it may also diminish democracy. "
    

    Posted by: lee | Oct 28, 2008 2:11:01 PM

    
    

13. thanks trent for your comments.

    someone ranted against a prop 8 sign that equaled "less government." they said this sign was crazy.

    they may find this article interesting:
    http://prop8discussion.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/same-sex-marriage-and-creeping-totalitarianism/

    "...the steps necessary to institute legal same-sex marriage represent an unusual and worrisome expansion of the State’s claims to authority and status.
    Defining Totalitarianism

    The word totalitarian conjures up specters from the last century—images of leader worship and revolutionary violence, of prison camps and secret police. But these are the incidents of totalitarianism, not its essence. Their different forms rise from a common root: A philosophical stand in which the State is pre-eminent, in which it may exert whatsoever power it will, in which its claim upon the bodies and minds of its subjects may not be excelled. That is the common heritage of Fascists and Bolsheviks; that is totalitarianism.

    What, then, do I mean by creeping totalitarianism? Simply this: the extension of State power to new domains, the reduction of competing authorities, or the consolidation of State power that had been dispersed. Creeping totalitarianism is a stepwise, slow, even covert movement toward the position of control described above, a quiet and gradual betrayal of liberty. I believe that as many as three such extensions are threatened by the same-sex marriage laws currently being debated: While instituting same-sex marriage, the State must co-opt its competition and promote legal positivism, and it may also diminish democracy. "
    

    Posted by: lee | Oct 28, 2008 2:11:28 PM

    
    

14. thanks trent for your comments.

    someone ranted against a prop 8 sign that equaled "less government." they said this sign was crazy.

    they may find this article interesting:
    http://prop8discussion.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/same-sex-marriage-and-creeping-totalitarianism/

    "...the steps necessary to institute legal same-sex marriage represent an unusual and worrisome expansion of the State’s claims to authority and status.
    Defining Totalitarianism

    The word totalitarian conjures up specters from the last century—images of leader worship and revolutionary violence, of prison camps and secret police. But these are the incidents of totalitarianism, not its essence. Their different forms rise from a common root: A philosophical stand in which the State is pre-eminent, in which it may exert whatsoever power it will, in which its claim upon the bodies and minds of its subjects may not be excelled. That is the common heritage of Fascists and Bolsheviks; that is totalitarianism.

    What, then, do I mean by creeping totalitarianism? Simply this: the extension of State power to new domains, the reduction of competing authorities, or the consolidation of State power that had been dispersed. Creeping totalitarianism is a stepwise, slow, even covert movement toward the position of control described above, a quiet and gradual betrayal of liberty. I believe that as many as three such extensions are threatened by the same-sex marriage laws currently being debated: While instituting same-sex marriage, the State must co-opt its competition and promote legal positivism, and it may also diminish democracy. "
    

    Posted by: lee | Oct 28, 2008 2:11:33 PM

    
    

15. thanks trent for your comments.

    someone ranted against a prop 8 sign that equaled "less government." they said this sign was crazy.

    they may find this article interesting:
    http://prop8discussion.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/same-sex-marriage-and-creeping-totalitarianism/

    "...the steps necessary to institute legal same-sex marriage represent an unusual and worrisome expansion of the State’s claims to authority and status.
    Defining Totalitarianism

    The word totalitarian conjures up specters from the last century—images of leader worship and revolutionary violence, of prison camps and secret police. But these are the incidents of totalitarianism, not its essence. Their different forms rise from a common root: A philosophical stand in which the State is pre-eminent, in which it may exert whatsoever power it will, in which its claim upon the bodies and minds of its subjects may not be excelled. That is the common heritage of Fascists and Bolsheviks; that is totalitarianism.

    What, then, do I mean by creeping totalitarianism? Simply this: the extension of State power to new domains, the reduction of competing authorities, or the consolidation of State power that had been dispersed. Creeping totalitarianism is a stepwise, slow, even covert movement toward the position of control described above, a quiet and gradual betrayal of liberty. I believe that as many as three such extensions are threatened by the same-sex marriage laws currently being debated: While instituting same-sex marriage, the State must co-opt its competition and promote legal positivism, and it may also diminish democracy. "
    

    Posted by: lee | Oct 28, 2008 2:11:42 PM

    
    

16. Previous comment I Ditto that and thank you for the person who has this website. I love that we can voice our opinions without getting interrupted. I love that both sides love this Great country and we all have the freedom to voice our opinions.

    Posted by: Molina | Oct 28, 2008 2:23:58 PM

    
    

17. Thanks Trent for posting your comment this makes so much sense from a humanist point.

    Posted by: Patty | Oct 28, 2008 2:29:52 PM

    
    

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