Protests are being coordinated across the United States and beyond, legislators in the California State Legislature and the Governator are speaking out against it, the president-elect has said he is against it – wow did the Mormon Church play this attack on the gay community wrong when they swung the tide financially in favour of Proposition 8! In my lifetime I’ve never seen anything like this, apart from the near-riot which resulted from the UK Parliament failing to vote for an equal age of consent in 1994. This really is comparable now to the Stonewall Riots of the late ’60s – an entire movement which now encompasses straight people too, has sprung up and it’s incredible to see.
This is my home town Portland, Oregon’s gay mayor-elect, speaking out against Proposition 8 (the state just voted in an out lesbian as Secretary of State too, how cool is that?):
(all photos via Towleroad apart from where mentioned)
(via Just Out)
Here are some other shots of demonstrations across the country. Firstly New York:
(via starkyld on Flickr)
San Francisco:
See the Mormons for Marriage there? Proof that religious leaders really are not representing their flocks when they promote bigotry and discrimination! Here’s Hawaii, the home state of the president-elect:
The still-president’s home state of Texas:
Prop 8 was on the wrong side of history. I look forward to its being repealed by the California State Supreme Court, or at least passed down to the legislature to modify the constitution to enable it (which they would then almost certainly refuse to do). A country which has voted for change cannot allow this blatant bigotry to succeed. Some say the solution is to wait until 2010 and put a repeal on the ballot, but it’s increasingly clear to me that it cannot wait that long. If the ballot measure is unconstitutional it must be struck down by the state’s highest court, but it’s also highly illogical, not to say immoral, to allow mob rule when it comes to human rights. Forty per cent of people in the UK are against gay adoption – if voters were allowed a referendum on it, they might prevail – that wouldn’t make it right. If this campaign can continue to reach out to straight people and religious communities and encompass all races, then a remarkable and lasting result can be achieved.
Cosmodaddy 
See they went and got the gays all pissed off.
*That* was a bad idea.
No bueno.
WOW, it’s amazing that a group of people want to change how we do things in this country and override the majority vote. It shows that most people in this country are against this. Right or wrong is not the issue; the issue is that it was put to a vote and failed. Heck, I didn’t want Obama for president, but the people have spoken and he’s in. Can I try to get some court to appeal the voter’s decision. So, how can this group think they can do that as well. In calling those of us who are against something like this judgmental means that they have been judgmental to judge us. They cry that they don’t want our “religion” to interfere in their quest for their rights, and while doing that, they pretty much want us to accept their “religion.” Let’s not play semantics, here. Their movement is a religion even if it’s described as anti-religion. It seems that this group of people do not want to play with the same set of rules and on the same playing field. They want to scream and rant and rave even though this proposition was on the ballot. Now, if this didn’t even make it to the ballot, then they would have something to fight about. But, just because the majority of the country does not believe in what they stand for does not give cause for them to decry the results of the vote.
If civil rights issue were left to the majority to decide and vote on, there’s no way Barack Obama would have been elected President of the United States earlier this month. The Civil Rights act of 1965 would never have been passed across the entire country, and quite possibly still would not be in some parts of America.
On issues of equality, of justice, of fairness, it is up to Government and the legal system to protect the rights and promote the equality of minority groups, to protect them from the tyranny of the majority, who know not and care not of the issues that these minority people have to deal with.
Such was the case with the black civil rights movement, and as the the Government and the justice system led on the issue, so did the die-hards follow, slowly and unwillingly. Left to their own devices, that would not have been the case.
This is nothing to do with being a religion. Being gay is not a religion, wanting to be treated equally in the eyes of the law has nothing to do with religion. It is simply about the state discriminating and saying your love is more valid than our love because your love is about one man, one woman, and our love might be about two men, or two women. It’s about recognising that love between two men is in no way different than love between a man and a woman, and it is not dangerous to the love between man and woman. It might not be about reproduction, but neither are many heterosexual relationships that are no less valid for that. Homosexuals work jobs, pay taxes, participate in the democratic process and behave as reasonable citizens in the same way that heterosexuals do. This is about saying – don’t tell us that what we are is less valid than what they are. That what we want will damage what they have. It’s nonsense. And these sorts of civil rights issues should not be handled by whipping up the majority to run to the ballot box with their pitchforks and burning torches – an earlier example of the wonderful reason that suggests the majority is always right.
@jackg – I’m not sure you understand what the protests are about. I’m also not sure what else I can add on top of Scoobs’ extraordinary, eloquent reply. So I’ll stick with this:
They cry that they don’t want our “religion” to interfere in their quest for their rights, and while doing that, they pretty much want us to accept their “religion.” Let’s not play semantics, here. Their movement is a religion even if it’s described as anti-religion.
Take a look at my latest post (as I write), when Ashton Kutcher makes the religion issue clear with gay marriage. This isn’t about gay people being anti-religion – indeed there are many gay Christians, gay Muslims, gay Hindus, Buddhists, you name it. It is a complaint that religion is not supposed in the US to interfere in matters of state, and in this case it most definitely did. You are welcome to believe what you think, you are not welcome to use undue influence to impose your belief on a secular, rights-based society, defined by an absolute separation of church and state to avoid precisely such an attack on civil rights.
Being gay isn’t a religion, but nor is standing up for gay marriage. A belief in equality before the law is not the same as a belief in a supreme being.