PROP 8 - BUILDING BLOCK OF FUNDAMENTALISM

California's Proposition 8, passed by a small majority in the recent election, defines marriage as ONLY between a man and a woman.

The years have shown that the marriage of any two individuals and the way they live their lives together or the way they get a divorce, is independent of law. Prop 8 overthrew a California Supreme Court decision that permitted marriage of any couples requesting the State's license to marry.

Now, as a nation, we are faced with the choice of enshrining this same proposition in the Constitution of the United States.

Unless we recognize this attack on individual rights and freedoms for what it is, we as a nation are doomed to an explosion of reactionary law-making that will bring Americans to live under similar intolerant tenets of religious fundamentalism seen in the Islamic world.

Proposition 8 is similar in kind to the attacks on women's rights now being conducted in courts throughout the land. Citizens running for election to political offices, from town Librarian to Mayor to member of the Board of Education and on up to the President, will declare their desire and willingness to tear down the separation of church and state and make decisions required in their positions that will dictate LEGAL prejudice, isolation, discrimination,

Prop 8 has many faces and many disguises. As our New England forebears stated so eloquently, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Unless we are vigilant and act on that vigilance, our liberties will exist only in history books.