Prop 8 videos to be public

Yesterday, U.S. district chief judge James Ware rules that videos taken during the Prop 8 trial could be made public, though he did put a time stamp on it of September 30 to allow appeals to be made. While I'm glad that the truth is one step closer to coming out to the general public, I have to admit I'm disillusioned with how this entire debacle has come about in the first place.

I was one of the voters who stayed up until the wee hours of the morning tracking results when Prop 8 was first on the ballot. As a general rule, I don't get involved in politics, and I definitely don't bother debating or discussing most issues as most of the time, it's a complete waste of time. However, the blatant misinformation that Prop 8 supporters kept throwing around infuriated me. I had to listen to radio spots that outright lied about what the proposition was set to do, and I drove home more than once through supporters standing on street corners, proclaiming how without the proposition, schools would be forced to teach about homosexuality.

A load of rubbish, of course. Just like so many of the other ridiculous claims supporters made about why the gay marriage laws had to be removed from California legislation.

Supporters don't want the tapes publicized. They don't want people to see their own expert witness testify that gay marriage does nothing to infringe upon straight marriage. They don't want anybody to know just how weak their claims actually were, that their assertions were based on fear and religion rather than logic or facts. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that any appeal made fails, because this entire farce has gone on too long.

Partnerships are based on love, not gender. Relationships that withstand the test of time deserve to be recognized. Nobody has the right to tell two people who are ready to commit their lives to each other that it's wrong or that they don't deserve to have the same legal rights as another couple that happens to fit an outdated, narrow-minded definition of what a marriage should be.

With so much awfulness in the world already, why would anyone want to make it even more miserable by hurting people who only want to have their love be recognized as valid and lawful?