San Francisco not 100% opposed to Prop. 8
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Voters in 54 of San Francisco’s 580 precincts supported the ban, with a high of 65 percent of voters favoring it in parts of Chinatown and downtown. More than half of voters in large swaths of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, the Excelsior and areas around Lake Merced also voted to ban same-sex marriage.
Neighborhoods including the Marina, Laurel Heights and Mission Bay – which almost always vote more conservatively than neighborhoods such as Bayview and Chinatown – voted overwhelmingly against Prop. 8.
“With the racial and religious overprint that we’re seeing, the standard San Francisco politics get thrown out the window on this one,” said political consultant David Latterman, who further crunched the precinct-by-precinct voting results that The Chronicle obtained this week from the Department of Elections.
“This issue is very separate from what we usually think of as liberal and conservative,” he said.
Latterman said the issue played out in San Francisco the same way it plays out everywhere else: Race, age and education were big influences in one’s vote on Prop. 8. Latterman did not factor in religion, but exit polls throughout California showed a strong church affiliation correlated with a vote in favor of the ban among all racial groups.
Voters ages 18 to 29 were overwhelmingly against the measure, while those older 60 were overwhelmingly for it. And those with only a high school education mostly voted for the measure, while those who graduated from college were largely against it.
In Visitacion Valley, where more than half of voters supported Prop. 8, many residents told The Chronicle they voted that way for one of two reasons: their religious beliefs or fear that children would learn about gay marriage in school, which was played up in Yes on 8 television commercials. Some in the neighborhood wrongly believed it was written into the measure.
Note that last paragraph. Most voters made up their minds on Prop. 8 based on misinformation spread by the proponents of the proposition.
This is the challenge to the gay community and those who support equal rights for all citizens. We have to educate those who relied on untruths as their reason for voting in favor of Prop. 8. Decisions based on lies should not be used to deny rights to lawful citizens.
It’s the height of irony that so many Blacks allied themselves with an institution (the Mormon church) that as recently as the 60s didn’t even consider them to be true human beings. Other minority members need to be shown that their ability to vote on this issue wouldn’t have been possible had not America ignored the bigots and religious leaders and given voting rights to them.
Californians and Americans will eventually realize this isn’t an issue of redefining a word, we do that all the time. Nor is it a demand that everyone accept homosexuality as “normal”. It’s a purely civil rights issue, and limiting the rights of any minority in this country is unacceptable.