Precedence

by Elisheva Offenbacher on Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 9:15pm

Finally! Someone sensible enough to apply constitutional law to California’s discriminatory marriage bill. I have been waiting quite some time for an event just like this. Why? I’m straight, I can marry any man I choose. I am more though, than just my sexual preference.

I am a woman who, at one period in recent history, in the last century, in fact, would not have been allowed to vote had it not been for moral people standing up against the majority…moral people who held signs and shouted, who had bricks thrown in their house windows, who were beaten and sometimes killed so that women, like me, I’m only 30, would never even KNOW what it was like to be discriminated against in such a fashion. My niece, 12 years old, proudly cannot fathom a time when women were not allowed to walk freely, speak freely, vote freely. For her, the idea is as fabled as Cinderella’s slipper.

I am also a Jew. I pray every day near a window in my apartment that faces toward the Eastern horizon. I light Sabbath candles every Friday night in front of a different window. I have marked my doorways with mezuzot, small cases holding holy verses from the Bible. And, I am lucky enough not only to have kosher dairy, meat and fish available in my local super market, but also have more than 3 different kosher restaurants in driving distance from my home. Would this have been likely in pre-World War II America? Maybe in New York or Chicago; but in Seattle?? Not if our nation hadn’t been drawn into the fight against Hitler’s Third Reich.

You could argue, sure, that had the Japanese not bombed Pearl Harbor, our good President never would have risked his countrymen (Yid, or otherwise) for the sake of 6 million European Jews. But he surely would have joined the ranks once the Nazis started bombing on American soil. And don't kid yourselves...Hitler wasn't just after us Jews. The bigger point remains: we DID enter the war and because of it, and I, a Jewish American woman, can travel anywhere in Europe, almost anywhere in the world, without demarcations of second class citizenship as a result. Because Hitler was defeated my sons and my husband can wear yarmulkes, can walk to the synagogue any day of the week without threat of bodily harm, in the middle of Berlin! (Ok, maybe not Berlin, but still... little cheeky, there.)

There are lots of things I am grateful for; there are many forebearers to appreciate for paving the way for myself and my sisters and all of our daughters to live freely in our own pursuits of happiness. Because of the race the others won; because of the stand the others took, I am now in a place where I too can take a stand and speak for those who the “majority” longs to silence.

I’m not a California resident so I was unable to vote against the anti-constitutional, anti-gay marriage bill presented before the public in November 2008; but I DID send California Civil Rights activists money to aid in their fight, the ONLY donation I could afford to make that year politically went to fighting this discriminatory bill. THAT’S how important I felt it was. And, I called my friends, sent out emails, and petitioned others in our state and abroad to do the same, to sign their names on behalf of the freedom our sisters and brothers deserve as American citizens but are unfairly denied because of religious imposition on the lives of private parties.

Andy Pugno, one of the attorneys for backers of California’s Proposition 8 said yesterday that, Judge Vaughn Walker's "invalidation of the votes of over 7 million Californians violates binding legal precedent and short-circuits the democratic process.”

Well, Mr. Pugno, I sure am glad that MY civil rights were not determined by an exorbitantly loud group of narrow-minded pedants. Precedent is supposed to SAVE the criminal justice system time and resources; not subjugate Justice and Law itself! If our forefathers could see the practice being used today as a loop hole to free criminals and, as a means to unfairly marginalize entire groups of American citizens, they’d be rolling in their graves.

As an American, I am horrified that any large number of constituents would willingly, rabidly in some cases, seek to exclude rights and inherent liberties from ANY other law observing, productive citizen…but more than that, I am ashamed that those sworn to uphold and defend the laws and liberties of this great land could represent and justify their hate while calling their battle cries against freedom: "democratic." The fact that this is even in question in our country; the supposed bedrock of freedom and democracy in the modern world, a country whose very inception was provoked to rectify the oppression of civil liberties is a disgrace.

Oscar Wilde said, “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” I'm hopeful that this latest advancement in the defense of individual liberties is only the beginning and that one day, every American will be free and treated equitably.