Proposition 8. (subject-Identify a problem that effects your community) Free Essay Example, 1000 words

Prof’s Proposition 8 in California: Fracturing Communities and Stepping back on Minority Rights. One of the most contentious issues that has ever occurred in California was proposition 8: a proposition to remove the rights of gay couples to marry, a right previously upheld by the California Supreme Court (Audi). Essentially proposition 8 was a referendum on whether or not to allow gay marriage in California, something that California’s constitution had already implicitly done through its human rights defense clauses (Audi). This issue was hotly debated, and of extreme importance: gay couples who are unable to marry are denied a wide variety of things, such as the choice to file taxes jointly, the ability to visit spouses in hospitals, and the ability to make important life and death decisions regarding their partner’s health if their partner is unable to make those decisions due to being incapacitated. This legislation had a huge scope and significant negative i mpact: it removed rights from a significant proportion of the Californian population, divided the community, and represented a significant step backwards by removing rights from people who already had them. The scope of proposition 8 is hard to overestimate. We will write a custom essay sample on Proposition 8. (subject-Identify a problem that effects your community) or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Many population estimates state that the gay population is somewhere around one in ten people amongst the general population (Robison), and it may be higher in California, a relatively liberal state with gay enclaves like San Francisco. This means that the number of people directly affected by this legislation is likely somewhere in the three million people range – given that California has a population of thirty million and about one in ten people in the general population is gay. But what does it really matter if people are allowed to marry? Well, unmarried couples, even if they have been together for decades, are denied several important rights. These include the right to death-bed visitation outside of normal visiting hours at hospitals, the ability to make decisions regarding partner’s health care and finances, the ability to inherit when a will is not present or invalid, and the ability to save money on taxes by filing jointly (L arson). So this legislation removed many important rights from a huge amount of people in California. While the scope of this legislation and its direct impact are obvious and hard to refute, the wider societal effects may be more important but harder to directly quantify. For one thing, this was a very divisive issue that split the country in a lot of different ways.