A Hint of Prop 8 Sanity in Hollywood?
Maybe, but you really have to dig for it. The often violent reaction of the radical left over California’s passage of Proposition 8 comes as no surprise to many of us. Liberals like to propound diversity and tolerance, but there’s one group toward whom they refuse to extend those ideals: social conservatives. Tolerance, to the left, generally means lending an ear to all opinions except those based upon traditional morality. There is a small flicker of light here.
[Bill] Condon, the gay writer-director of “Dreamgirls” and a Film Independent board member, offered this retort to what he calls the “off-with-his-head” crowd: “If you’re asking, ‘Do we take discrimination against gays as seriously as bigotry against African Americans and Jews?’ . . . the answer is, ‘Of course we do.’ But we also believe that some people, including Rich [Raddon], saw Prop. 8 not as a civil rights issue but a religious one. That is their right. And it is not, in and of itself, proof of bigotry.”
He is, of course, correct. California is one of the most liberal states in the nation, and yet a majority of voters agreed that it was wrong for their courts to impose a redefinition of marriage. I simply cannot be convinced that the majority of Californians hate gays. They simply believe there is something valuable to retaining the traditional definition of marriage. Let’s hope against hope that the rational voices on the left, such as Condon, prevail.