Dear YES on 8 people:

I am perplexed, perplexed, P-E-R-P-L-E-X-E-D by the irrational conclusions of you people who are voting YES on Proposition 8. Most of you are motivated by your religious beliefs and, in an astonishing act of incongruity, have banded together with people who hold many, many, M-A-N-Y contradictory Biblical beliefs from your own...people you often despise. And why? To “protect the children.”

I must ask this question:

“Are gay parents the only parents you think will lead their children astray?”

As a former evangelical, I know that the most-conservative literally-interpreted-Bible-following-Christians believe that Mormonism is a cult. I took a class called “Cults” in Bible College and it dealt squarely with the Mormon religion. Many of those same conservative people believe that Catholic parishioners aren’t real Christians. Yet you have banded together to stamp out the gays who want to organize their lives into marriages and families and the main place of attack involves protecting the children.

Protecting the children is a hogwash reason! Here’s why:

If you believe that Catholics aren’t really Christians and that Mormons are members of a cult, the children born into those homes will be raised following a religion that doesn’t lead those kids to Christ or to Heaven. What about those children? Is the hell they face any different than the hell you believe that the children of gay men and women are going to face? Are the lives of those non-Christ-following husbands and wives any less screwed up than the lives you imagine will result when two men or two women, in love, raise children? Most certainly not, and if you profess to interpret the Bible literally, you must answer NO to that question (James 2:10).

I don't believe that gay men and women raise mixed up kids; as a teacher, I see that some of the highest achieving students in my classes are from gay parents and I also see those same kids demonstrate a love and understanding for the cares of the other students around them, a compassion that comes only from having experienced not being part of the “norm” at some point in their life. If I have a fear for them, it’s the fear that they will be ridiculed by the children of the literally-interpreted-Bible-following-Christians who are intolerant and virulent in their efforts to weed out the true Christians from the false Christians!

Proposition 8 isn’t about protecting marriage, either, otherwise it would deal with the rampant divorce rate. In fact, a 2000 study found that the divorce rate of evangelical Christians is actually higher than that of the general population! If you’re voting YES on 8 due to some Biblical interpretation, I must ask how you deal with Matthew 5:31,32, 19:3-9, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18 & Romans 7:2,3, knowing that you share the pew with adulterers and fornicators. Do you rush home every Sunday and jump into a long shower to rid yourself of the uncleanliness that might have wafted over you amongst all the sinners; those who knowingly commit ongoing sexual sin with their second or third spouse, ignoring the clear directive of the scriptures?

There used to be a television commercial from a plumbing fixture company where a husband and wife raced home, stripping their clothes off as they ran from their cars to their front door, trying to be the first into the bath...is that what happens at your house on Sundays, a mad dash for the holy water and ivory? Of course not! You go to church and share the love of Christ with all of the imperfect people there who are doing what they can to live for God and who wrestle with the scripture and how it applies to their lives. Why can't you extend that same grace to your gay brothers and sisters?

Proposition 8 is about one thing only: Proposition 8 is about giving people an opportunity to vote about whether they like or approve of gay people and their lives. This, my misguided friends, is not the role of the government...the government should treat every person the same, whether we be straight, gay, evangelical, Mormon, Catholic, black, white, smart, stupid, blind, deaf, short, tall, fat, skinny, or _______________(fill in the blank). The role of the government is to not consider those things, even when the populace salivates at the thought of being able to consider them!

No matter how much you dislike gay people and the thought that they would marry, voting YES on Proposition 8 is an act that is contrary to the most-basic tenets of our system of laws because it singles out one group of people to treat differently than the rest of the population. That is both unfair and wrong, legally. Churches are free to marry who they want to marry already (Mormons and Catholics are quite selective about who can marry and who cannot) and nothing about the current state of the law infringes on the right of a church to continue those practices.

Likewise, the California school system includes distinct provisions for parents to be able to control what their children learn about marriage and families.

Voting YES on Proposition 8 is the WRONG thing to do. Vote NO on Proposition 8.

For the record, I believe that many Mormons and Catholics and Jewish people and other despised-by-the-self-righteous-religious-elite, the outcasts, will stand with me in Heaven. The loving God I serve and the grace under which I live my life assures me so.