The so-called Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996, states that a legal union is recognized as only that between a man and a woman, thus laying the foundation for future denial of rights to same-sex partnerships.

In our state, voters approved Proposition 22, which changed the language of the California Civil Code to define legally-recognized marriage as that between a man and a woman. What’s interesting here is that before 1977, the law called marriage “a personal relation arising out of a civil context, to which consent of the parties making that contract is necessary.” Sounds okay to me. This was, coincidentally, the first election we were old enough to vote in and I clearly remember voting “no” on this measure.

What’s apparent to me, however, is that this problem will most likely be resolved with time. Our generation is far more tolerant than that of our grandparents, as evidenced by the absence of segregation. Their generation was far more tolerant than that of their grandparents, as evidenced by the abolition of slavery. But I don’t want to be remembered as part of a generation of Californians that voted to write bigotry into the state constitution; unfortunately, there seems to be no place for logic or compassion amongst the electorate.