An open letter to Tom Campbell
"Moderate" Republican Tom Campbell is running for Senate against Barbara Boxer.
Dear Mr. Campbell,
You have established yourself as a rare type of Republican: a fiscal hawk who recognizes that social conservatives are incompatible with the libertarian principles the GOP once stood for. You’ve defended the rights of women to make their own health care decisions, and campaigned against Proposition 8, which represented an intolerable intrusion of government into the most personal aspects of our private lives.
You were poised to be one of the few Republicans that could make the GLBT community reconsider its dogmatic adherence to the Democratic Party (a dysfunctional relationship that has served the gays so poorly the last few years).
Although it would be hard to pursuade gays and lesbians to vote for you over a long-time ally like California Senator Barbara Boxer, whose seat you are campaigning for, I thought you were worth a closer look.
But I have just heard your comments to an NBC affiliate here in Los Angeles, and I realize how wrong I was.
You state, unequivocally, that the state was wrong to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. But in the next breath, you claim that gay and lesbians are wrong to take the state to court over this issue.
How, then, are minorities supposed to receive fair treatment under the law when their rights can be trampled willy-nilly by a hostile electorate?
Voters have never been willing to protect minority rights, and often, the executive branch has been particularly complicit in their persecution. The courts guarantee that all citizens are treated equally before the law, particularly when the other branches of government–so prone to the whims of election cycles–fail in their duty to do so.
Were the thirteen parents wrong to take the Topeka School Board to court over Brown versus Board of Education? What would you say to the plaintiffs of any of the civil rights cases, where laws passed by voters (or their elected representatives) denied citizens equal treatment under the law?
If you think the Courts are wrong to overturn voter initiatives, you have no faith in the US Constitution or American Democracy.
Gays and lesbians may be shutting down the GayTM, but we can find better allies than you.
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