In the Nov. 4 elections, Proposition 8 passed 52 percent to 48 percent. Many people throughout the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ) community felt disappointment with the realization that same-sex marriage is just out of their reach.
Queer studies professor Eli Bartle said he believes that ultimately the decision to outlaw same-sex marriages will get overturned.
‘You know, it’s just noise,’ he said. ‘I’m just tired of the noise because it is going to get defeated in the Supreme Court but it’s giving attention to something that is very sad. It’s just hatred. I don’t think they think it’s hatred but it’s hatred of LGBT people.’
Passing Prop. 8 is allowing some people to push their ideals onto everyone who may not believe the same thing, Chloe Quintina, junior and cinema and television arts major, said.
‘I think that it’s an atrocious state of affairs when our government is pushing morals onto people due to religious principals,’ she said. ‘The separation of church and state, it’s a clear violation of human rights.’
Quintina said she believes not allowing same-sex marriage is another form of oppression on par with racism. Despite the fact that Prop. 8 passed, the LGBTQ community will not stop working to get same-sex marriages legalized in California.
‘It’s a huge backwards movement,’ she said. ‘All kinds of oppressed people have not been allowed to marry in our history. If they’ve moved on from oppressing people based on their skin color and moved onto their sexuality it’s not progress. It’s not progress to deny people their rights.’
President of the LGBTQ Mary Thornton, a junior, said that people who argue ‘yes’ for Prop. 8 are not necessarily fighting pertinent things.
‘This proposition has nothing to do with education or the curriculum and absolutely nothing to do with churches,’ she said. ‘Those are two of the things the ‘yes’ campaign has been saying. The only thing the proposition does is eliminate the right for same-sex couples to marry.’
Though some people may not want to participate in same-sex marriages, they have been living in a state that has legalized them for six months and it hasn’t seemed to make much of a difference, Thornton said.
‘ ‘(Same-sex couples) had the right to marry for the last six months and nothing has changed,’ she said. ‘(We have) been living in a world where same-sex marriage exists for the last six months. A lot of what ‘yes’ has to say is projections and exaggerations and fear. We don’t intend for any of those things to happen.’
The LGBTQ community is still making progress towards the ultimate goal of legalizing same-sex marriages.
‘It was really close,’ deaf studies junior Chris Scales said. ‘I think we’ve come a long way …maybe four years down the line it will do better. I don’t think of it as a step back necessarily, we just need a little bit more time.’
