An interesting analysis. I’m glad to read something to help lessen my anger towards those who supported Prop 8…

I am a gay man who is in a committed relationship and neither of us desire to get married. However, I do believe that anyone who desires to get married should have the same opportunity regardless of their sexual orientation. I believe that it is completely unconstitutional to deny anyone the right to marry. It seems to fall into the category of depriving a citizen their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. One day, I believe that we will look back at this type of amendment in dismay, unable to believe that there were such backwards and unjust laws (not unlike segregation, prohibition, denying women the right to vote and denying interracial marriage). I feel that the evangelical groups that are so opposed to it are completely blinded by hate and ignorance. They insist that being gay is a choice, but isn’t their involvement in religion a choice yet it is protected from hate crimes and discrimination? I do not believe that the narrow way is also a narrow mind, but that is often the case. I do believe that those “Christians” who support such discrimination and hatred would be the same people who would crucify their Christ again if he returned. What ever happened to turning the other cheek, loving thy neighbor and not throwing the first stone?

The church and the state are separate per the constitution. Your Marriage definition is a religious concept and as such can not constitutionally determine who can get married prop 8 is unconstitutional and denies equal protection per the 14th amendment to the US constitution for which the blacks and the jews paid a price. You should not impose your religious predjudices on the rest of the citizens. __I am a happily married, for 43 years, heterosexual

I, like you Rabbi, would have voted against Prop 8, however I could live with “a civil union”. This would ensure the rights afforded a married couple, to a gay union. I feel that this would give gays the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without using marriage, which should be between a man and a woman, as described in the Bible.

In an election…people are allowed to voice their opinions. I would be more inclined to question the motives of those who brought proposition 8 into the voting booth. Fox news and all of the other right-wing nut jobs blame the blacks for passing prop 8. IMO they are saying we can’t get Pres-elect Obama so we’ll go after his race. The percentage of [black Americans] are between 12-12.5%. There are 7 times as many whites in [CA] as there are blacks. 70% of the black voters in CA voted for prop 8; 49% whites voted for it; 49% Asians voted for it and 53% Hispanics voted for it.
According to the 2006 ACS Estimates, California’s population was:
“59.8% White American,
12.3% Asian American,
6.2% Black or African American,
0.7% American Indian,
3.3% mixed, and 17.3% of some other race.
35.9% are Hispanic or Latino (of any race).[4]
California has the largest population of White Americans in the U.S., an estimated 21,810,156 residents. The state has the fifth largest population of African Americans in the U.S., an estimated 2,260,648 residents. California’s Asian population is estimated at 4.5 million, approximately one-third of the nation’s 14.9 to 15.1 million Asian Americans. California’s Native American population of 376,093 (but some estimates place it at one million) is the most of any state.”
I [doubt] that in two years the black population in CA is more than 7%.

This is for those posters citing the religious roots of marriage as reasons not to have civil law enforce the “One man + one woman” concept.
I agree with you 100%. I also think that we should do away with all laws having their roots in religion. Let us repeal the laws against murder, adultery, theft and perjury. After all they are from the bible also.

1st: the writer/author is unreadable. Use a grammar helper or proof-reader. Got thru about a 1/3 b4 I quit!__
2nd: You are a hypocrite and since you don’t have a AZ,CA or FL residency, your thoughts to enflame the huge radical left middle finger( & growing) of the Demoncratic party is not desired.__
3rd :Quinton is spot on. My Uncle and his partner of 50+ YRS ALSO AGREE AND SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS JAMMED UNDER OUR COLLECTIVE THROATS BY THE CA ST.SUPREME COURT WHO DID NOT TAKE LOTS OF WESTERN STATES ADVISE TO DELAY THIS DECISION THIS ELECTION YEAR. WE PLAN TO IMPEACH THEM AND THEY STUPIDLY DECIDED AGAINST THE WISER UTAH,AZ,NM & MTN STATES TO HAVE US YES VOTERS OVERTHROW THERE DECISION AGAINST 4 MILLION VOTERS IN 2000. RABBI HIRSHFIELD YOU NEED TO QUIET YOUR PANDERING / INFLAMATORY RHETORIC TO YOUR PARTIES RADICAL LEFT MIDDLE FINGER.

“Not only has the word “marriage” been redefined (hijacked), but also the word “wedding” — and there may be additional definition changes coming down the pike….A recent CT magazine article quoted a gay woman as saying that she and her partner refer to each other as “wife.” Does that mean that the words “husband” and “wife” will also be changed? Can I then too, at my whim, open the dictionary and change some words to suit my purposes?”____Sure. It happens all the time. Sometime in the ’70s, “sexually active” and “promiscuous” exchanged meanings, for instance. And I can still remember when “gay” used to mean happy, and “associates” were employees, and “guests” were customers. However offensive such dyed-in-the-wool English teachers, editors, and proofreaders as myself may find these changes, nobody has ever invoked the attention of the legal system to reverse them. So why do we expect the courts and the legislature to monitor our dictionaries when the word in question is “marriage.” Especially since the meaning of THAT word has changed radically in the last three or four hundred years. A marriage used to be a contract between families, to which the husband and wife (or wives) were only incidental parties.__

Rabbi Hirschfield, this was a very good piece. My husband and I had plenty of arguments over Prop. 8 (obviously, we live in California) I was totally against it and he was leaning toward voting “yes.” (Don’t know how he voted for certain.) I have known several long-term gay couples, really good, hard-working, caring people, and if something called marriage would make them happy, I had no problem with it. Contrary to the rumors that were tossed about, no one was going to force a minister, priest or rabbi to officiate at a gay marriage or make any religous group recognize such unions. It was not going to harm children or in some, undefined way “destroy marriage.” As I noted to my husband, heterosexuals have been “destroying” marriage for centuries, so if the institution is in peril, we cannot blame gays. ____ The rabbi who married us (he is Orthodox although we are not) several years ago said it was kinder to allow civil marriage for gays and he would not object to it, though of course, he would not officiate at such a union. I really respected him for that. It took courage for him to speak up when he knew many would disagree.____ I know people object to homosexuality because of certain prohibitions in the bible, particularly in Leviticus. I have always suspected that these prohibitions did not refer to monogomous gay unions (which were probably quite unusual in ancient times) but to far more sinister behavior involving pagan religous rites, dominance and abuse. I figure that no matter what, if two people care for each other and support each other, without harming anyone, we can afford to be kind to them. I don’t see why we cannot be generous and allow them civil marriage. If we want to protect marriage, we should look to how we behave to our spouses, not worry about a few gay couples.

In many states a civil union leaves a lot to be desired legally for a partner-burial, rights of inheritance and even parrenting rights after the death of one of the partners. You have to adopt your partners child and sometimes that is not only not easy but should not even be comming up, inhertance should be automatic and all things should be as if you were married.
Many people thought their preachers would go to jail if refusing to do a gay marriage not realizing that would be treated the same as a rabbi refusing to marry a Jew and a Non-Jew as far as the state goes. They were also told that if they did not allow gay religous marriages that their churches would loose their tax exemptions.
I do believe that if your religon does not allow gay marriage that should be just fine as a intermarriage would be but you need a civil wedding instead.
Things just have to be spelled out in the law that it does not relate to religous but only civil things.
And then you have the gentleman that was interviewed and shown on some news stations. He said it was not a civil rights matter because he (he was dark skinned) could not CHOOSE to be white. People such as that must be educated in the cause of why a person is gay. It is only those who experiment that are choosing not someone who is born that way.
Then these bills would pass.
Hugs
Laura

CORRECTION:
I am pleased that Rabbi Hirschfield has opened up the “gay marriage” issue for discussion – and that he has stated at least a portion of
what I’ve been thinking – that those of us who oppose changing -
and twisting – the dictionary definition of the millennial word “marriage” – and turning it into an oxymoron – are NOT hateful bigots and homophobes.
While certainly homosexual couples deserve the same rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, health care benefits and decisions, and the like, they don’t deserve the right to force the rest of society to call day night and night day.
Rabbi Hirschfield when he attempts to justify why he would have voted against Prop 8 says that “…experience teaches me that when it comes to hearing the voice of God, there are many ways to hear. In fact, if the voice of the God in whom any of us believes can be compressed into a single understanding or doctrine, we would be listening to a very small God. And the God in whom I believe is infinitely large.”
He goes on to further say: “As a traditional Jew, my best understanding of what is religiously demanded of my (sic) by God, precludes gay marriage. But I do not believe that my understanding need be everybody’s for two important reasons. First, while I believe that religious wisdom can contribute to our thinking about public affairs, there is no room in this country for religion dogma to make public policy.”
My responses:
1.) If there’s no room in this country for religion dogma to make public policy, why is there room for a powerful gay lobby to make public policy (a lobby which uses the specious claim of homophobia to manipulate voters and stifle dialogue)?
2.) If there are many ways to hear G-d, it seems to me there are ought to be many ways way to define gay unions. We created words like font, icon, and internet; surely there could be a word to describe gay unions.
3.) Rabbi H. says: “As a traditional Jew, my best understanding of what is religiously demanded of my (sic) by God, precludes gay marriage. But I do not believe that my understanding need be everybody’s…”
Why though is it acceptable for the homosexual community to expect their “understanding” to be everybody’s?
4.) Not only has the word “marriage” been redefined (hijacked), but also the word “wedding” — and there may be additional definition changes coming down the pike. I live in Connecticut, where “gay “marriage” was recently legislated without voting input from its citizens. A recent CT magazine article quoted a gay woman as saying that she and her partner refer to each other as “wife.” Does that mean that the words “husband” and “wife” will also be changed? Can I then too, at my whim, open the dictionary and change some words to suit my purposes?
Sorry – with all due respect to homosexuals, I resent being forced to contort my thinking and accept something as normal that if we’re to be honest about it, simply is not. It is bordering on criminal that most people – myself included – don’t feel comfortable speaking publicly on this issue for fear of being branded with a scarlet letter and accused of burning a proverbial cross on someone’s lawn.

I am always amused by the comments from heterosexuals that they don’t like being “forced to change their thinking” about homosexuality or being confronted about homosexual issues. As a gay male, I have had heterosexuality shoved down my throat daily my entire life. I was forced to live my life as someone else just to “fit in” and avoid heterosexual violence. I had to deny being who I was the majority of my early life. So, when I hear complaints about having the gay world forced down someones throat, I just consider it backlash for the oppression, prejudice and discrimination we’ve experienced all of our lives.
“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rabbi Hirschfield’s comments are just polite bigotry. And his statement that he cautiously opposed Prop 8 after doing all that soul searching is just cloaking his prejudice in the cruel language of realpolitik. I hope someday a mob of nutjobs puts a proposition on a ballot defining marriage as a Christian institution between one Christian man and one Christian woman. If that happens, I will write some wishy-washy blog saying, “I guess I oppose this proposition, even though I see why supporters think marriage is a Christian institution, and I think the Jews, Muslims, and atheists who are calling these Christians bigots are being extremist.”____Rabbi, most of us are not rich rock stars without a care in the world like Elton John. I don’t care whether he wants to get married or not

Rabbi Hirschfield’s comments are just polite bigotry. And his statement that he cautiously opposed Prop 8 after doing all that soul searching is just cloaking his prejudice in the cruel language of realpolitik. I hope someday a mob of nutjobs puts a proposition on a ballot defining marriage as a Christian institution between one Christian man and one Christian woman. If that happens, I will write some wishy-washy blog saying, “I guess I oppose this proposition, even though I see why supporters think marriage is a Christian institution, and I think the Jews, Muslims, and atheists who are calling these Christians bigots are being extremist.”
Rabbi, most of us are not rich rock stars without a care in the world like Elton John. I don’t care whether he wants to get married or not; there are millions of gay couples who would like to be more than two guys or two women shacking up, and when we have children, that just adds more importance to it. That a supposedly spiritual clergyman doesn’t get that is sad.
Interestingly, the Rabbi Hirschfield’s very next blog is about those same Mormons who spent so much money taking away gay peoples’ rights. Except that the rabbi is not complaining about that. He is getting worked up over some silly ritual where Mormons are “converting” Jews after their deaths. How can the rabbi be so tribal and self-obsessed that the “rights” of dead Jewish people are deemed more important to him than the rights of gay families who are alive right now and need his support!!
It’s so predictable. Once again, “what’s good for the Jews?” is the only question that matters.

Also, last time I checked, Elton John isn’t even a citizen of the United States, let alone a citizen of California.

Thank you Rabbi Hirschfield for addressing this issue. One thing I want to say right now is that I do not appreciate anyone dragging African-Americans into the fray every time they are trying to justify gay rights. I hear it so often, that it makes me wonder why black people are expected to go along with whatever the gay community wants to do just because they have been categorized as a minority.
No one should ever have been denied the right to be human just because of the color of their skin so this has been and is still a horrible miscarriage of justice and, NO OTHER race of people has suffered and continues to suffer this type of injustice across the face of the earth. Gay people being denied the right to marry in no way compares to black people being denied the right to be considered human.
To say “black voters favored that outcome by a margin of 70%” and that “those statistics leave many astounded at the seeming incongruity of one minority being so hostile to another” is mixing apples and oranges. Who are the many and what has hostility got to do with this issue? A great deal of black voters believe in the Bible. Just because they voted against gay marriage does not make them hostile. Those same “many astounded” could care less about the reasons behind why black people think or feel as they do except to find fault. Stop making black people scapegoats for any issue that suits your fancy.
Personally, I do not believe the Bible supports gay marriage, but I have no problem with gay couples receiving benefits based on legal civil unions. They have as much right to care for and support each other financially as anyone else and should be allowed the opportunity to do so without discrimination. One last thing, there are other minority groups in this country. Start making them responsible for what happens to gays as well, OK?

I agree with JOyafrica77. I am white Jewish and born in Latin America__and I agree because not agreeing with gay “marriage”does not mean not agreeing with any sort of formality that would legalize a situation giving equivalent rights to people that consider themselves gay. __In my view to simplify the situation the word”marriage” could be changed.The problem resides in that “marriage” implies a religious union and that is the core of the issue, not the union itself.__On the other hand I cannot understand why these very private issues cannot be kept private so everybody can live their lives in peace without a host of others voicing opinions.

Hostility is relative. If, for the sake of the their own majority, they deprive you of what you desire, they are hostile. If, for the sake of your own minority, you deprive them of what they desire, then you are beautiful. Maybe this thing about majority rule is a bunch of crap. After all, Plato did write of the tyranny of it. Do you think that the wrong man might have been elected president of the no so US of A?

joyafrica____Black people have not gone through more oppression than any other group. that isn’t historical and even if it was it’s not a good argument. Black people are allowed to get married and they can now marry white people when they could not in the past. Gay people are not allowed to in most states in America. THat’s what’s important.____I’m tired of people bringing up slavery every time a minority wants equal rights. It’s an excuse to act like bigots when you go to the voting polls.

Why not rapist or adulterers or poligamy be legal? Can a man marry a dog or pig if he calls it love?