A Prop 8 thread that isn't about race or religion

I spent some time last night mulling over the Yes on 8 website and their various advertisements. For those who can stomach it, I would suggest doing the same... http://www.protectmarriage.com/ and for those who can't I can understand.

One thing I find interesting about the site is that the world's religion, church, Christianity, and Christ are not mentioned anywhere except for a button that links to "Resources for Churches and Supporters". Now this isn't to imply that religion didn't play a part in Prop 8's passage. The funding for all of this propaganda came largely from religious organizations (one in particular).

But if you look at the propaganda itself, it isn't really designed to appeal to people who have deep religious convictions that tell them homosexuality is wrong. I think it is assumed that those people are going to go to the polls and vote Yes on Prop 8 no matter what. But those people are not a majority in California unlike in some southern states. The appeals in this propaganda are far more secular and instead of using words like "religion" or "Christianity" they use the word "tradition" and the phrase "protect the children".

The ads frequently feature a Massachusetts couple who is outraged that a teacher read " The King and King" a story about two men getting married, to their 2nd grader.

http://www.protectmarriage.com/video/view/6

Now for a moment lets set aside the fact that Prop 8 had nothing to do with school curriculum and that this was a blatant distortion from the right wing, and lets pretend that Prop 8 would lead to 2nd grade teachers reading "The King and King" to their students.

The lady in this video talks about how she wants her child to be sheltered from these ideas until he's older. Well I don't know about everybody else, but I learned about homosexuality that I would imagine most people did. Somebody looked it up on the internet and told all of the other kids in the school yard. This was in 1996 and I was in 3rd grade, so not much older than this 2nd grader.

Personally I wish my 2nd grade teacher had read "The King and King" to our class because it might've spared us the phase where "gay" and "fag" were considered insults and if I do ever have kids I would hope that they will get to grow up in a world where homosexual marriage is accepted just as heterosexual marriage is.

But, it seems that these ads struck fear in enough people in California to change the outcome, given that initially the polls were showing it would not pass. It seems to me that the ads were so effective because parents don't understand that childhood is different now than it was when they were children.

These ads told parents that they should be very afraid because exposing 2nd graders to homosexuality "isn't normal". Well maybe it wasn't normal in 1958, but in 2008 2nd graders do know about homosexuality. Whether they get it from their teacher or from their classmates is the only question.

I understand that parents want to shelter their children as much as possible, but trying to shelter them to the extent that they were sheltered as kids simply is not appropriate because the world is different now. Kids are going to be exposed to things at an earlier age in this era and it's better that they be exposed to them by a teacher or a parent and not by their classmates in the schoolyard.

People need to get over this notion that we should strive to go back to a 1950's Leave it to Beaver era that never actually existed.

Interestingly, the couple featured in the video were involved in an unsuccessful lawsuit about that issue in Massachusetts. So it's not like they didn't have an axe to grind. :sarcasm:

http://www.miketidmus.com/blog/2008/10/25/the-wirthlins-hit-the-road-for-hate/

edit to include link

The propaganda was created by those who hate homosexuals to make the indifferent fear homosexuals. It's the people that were scared by the propaganda that I'm interested in.

.... what's to stop any teacher from reading The King and King? It's still appropriate in the 21st century.