I just returned from doing some volunteer work for No on Prop 8<\/a> at their SF office<\/a>. Other than the presidential election, this is the most important issue for me this election day. For those who aren’t aware, Proposition 8 is a California statewide ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.<\/p>\n

While this wouldn’t affect me personally, I have many friends who it would. And, I have a serious problem with denying a certain group of citizens the same rights as everyone else. If you don’t have a position on this issue, you should. To stand silently by while someone else is deprived of their rights is to be complicit in that act.<\/p>\n

Here is a poem that pretty well captures my motivations:<\/p>\n

When the Nazis came for the communists,
\nI remained silent;
\nI was not a communist.<\/p>\n

When they locked up the social democrats,
\nI remained silent;
\nI was not a social democrat.<\/p>\n

When they came for the trade unionists,
\nI did not speak out;
\nI was not a trade unionist.<\/p>\n

When they came for the Jews,
\nI remained silent;
\nI was not a Jew.<\/p>\n

When they came for me,
\nthere was no one left to speak out.<\/p>\n

– “First the came…<\/a>” by Martin\u00a0Niem\u00f6ller<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is plenty of time left to help, and this is going to be a very contentious race. So, please do what you can to help stop the codification of discrimination<\/a>. The campaign can use your money<\/a>, your time<\/a>, or just your voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DON’T REMAIN SILENT!<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just returned from doing some volunteer work for No on Prop 8 at their SF office. Other than the presidential election, this is the most important issue for me this election day. For those who aren’t aware, Proposition 8 is a California statewide ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to ban gay … Continue reading “Why I’m voting No on Proposition 8”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[128],"tags":[217,216,222,196,195,220,226,221,223,224,200,225,219,215,218],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deep_thoughts","tag-california","tag-california-proposition-8","tag-civil-rights","tag-election","tag-election08","tag-gay","tag-gay-marriage","tag-gay-rights","tag-no-on-prop-8","tag-noonprop8","tag-politics","tag-prop-8","tag-proposition-8","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-same-sex-marriage-in-california"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}