Editor:

The Paradise Center for Tolerance and Nonviolence (PCTN) is endorsing a NO vote on Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that takes away the right of same-sex couples to marry. PCTN agrees with Governor Schwarzenegger that the decision of the California Supreme Court entitling lesbian and gay couples the same fundamental civil right to marry as heterosexual couples should be upheld.

In its ruling on May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court stated that "our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation - like a person's race or gender - does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights".

PCTN further agrees with the court's statement that "one of the core elements of the right to establish an officially recognized family that is embodied in the California constitutional right to marry is a couple's right to have their family relationship accorded dignity and respect equal to that accorded other officially recognized families, and assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same-sex couples while reserving the historic designation of 'marriage' exclusively for opposite-sex couples poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect."

Sixty years ago the California Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriages were "inconsistent with the fundamental constitutional right to marry." That ruling, controversial at the time, is now generally recognized as a constitutionally sound decision. To take away the right to marry after previously granting gay people the status of civil unions would be tantamount to having permitted interracial civil unions but not interracial marriages.

PCTN believes that the court was right sixty years ago and was also right in its ruling in May 2008. We support a vote of NO on Proposition 8.

Board of Directors
Paradise Center for Tolerance and Nonviolence