One of the greatest elections in my lifetime is right around the corner and I couldn’t be more excited! Prop 8 has become almost as big as the election, it seems – and people become very upset discussing this issue.
My thoughts – marriage should be between two people (notice I did not say a man and a woman) who love each other. So many Americans have made such a joke out of marriage at this point (Ms. B. Spears, Pamela Anderson, the list goes on and on…) that it sickens me that people can even say that marriage is “sacred”. I’ve heard that marriage should be between a man and a woman “because that is what the Bible says”…Really? Well, the Bible didn’t say that more than 50% of marriages should end in divorce, did it? Sadly that is now the case.
What sickens me the most is that people feel ok with judging other loving couples. If two people love each other and want to get married and would like to be recoginzed as a married couple and receive the many benefits other married couples enjoy – what is the big problem there?
There is no excuse for discrimination! I was pleased to see this article in TechCrunch about an ad in today’s San Jose Mercury News. Thank you to companies like Google, Ebay, Cisco, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. for taking a public stance. Article below.
This is a full page ad that will run in the San Jose Mercury news tomorrow. I want to make fun of the wine and cheese crowd flocking to jump on the anti-Prop. 8 bandwagon
, but I’m not going to.
Discrimination in any form isn’t acceptable, and banning gay marriage is discrimination. Prop 8 will eliminate the right to marry for same-sex couples in California by amending the state’s Constitution. If you are a registered California voter, I’d like to ask you for a favor – vote against Prop 8.
Here’s a list of people who’ve added their name to the ad:
HONORARY CO-CHAIRS
Sergey Brin, Founder, Google, Inc.
Bill Campbell, Chairman, Intuit Inc.
David Filo, Founder, Yahoo! Inc.
Chuck Geschke, Founder & Chairman, Adobe Systems, Inc.
John Morgridge, Former CEO & Chairman, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman, eBay Inc., Founding Partner, Omidyar Network
Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google, Inc.
Jerry Yang, Founder, Yahoo! Inc.LEADERS (partial list)
Deborah Barber, Principal, Jackson Hole Group
John Battelle, Chairman & CEO, Federated Media
Larry Birenbaum, Former Senior Vice President, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Lorna Borenstein, President, Move, Inc.
Larry Brilliant, Executive Director, Google.org
Owen Byrd, President, Byrd Development
John Chisholm, Chairman & CEO, CustomerSat, Inc.
Barry Cinnamon, CEO, Akeena Solar
Tod Cohen, Director of Government Affairs, eBay Inc.
LaDoris Cordell, Administrator, Stanford University
Sue Decker, President, Yahoo! Inc.
Jack Dorsey, Chairman, Twitter
David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development & Chief Legal Officer, Google, Inc.
Donna Dubinsky, CEO, Numenta, Inc.
Alan Eustace, SVP, Engineering and Research, Google, Inc.
Naomi Fine, President & CEO, Pro-Tec Data, Inc.
Rachel Glaser COO/CFO, Reunion.com
Carl Guardino, President & CEO, Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Andre Haddad, CEO, Shopping.com
Jeff Hawkins, co-Founder Palm, Handspring, and Numenta
David Karnstedt, Investor
Scott Kaspick, Managing Director, Kaspick & Co.
Steve Kirsch, Serial Entrepreneur
John Koza, CEO, Third Millennium
Ross LaJeunesse, Head of State Policy Western US, Google, Inc.
Gary Lauder, Managing Partner, Lauder Partners Venture Capital
Laura Lauder, General Partner, Lauder Partners Venture Capital
Len Lehman, Investor
John Luongo, Former CEO, Vantive Corporation
Roger McNamee, Managing Director & co-Founder, Elevation Partners
Ken McNeely, President, AT&T California
Michael Moritz, Partner, Sequoia Capital
Susan Packard Orr, CEO, Telosa Software, Inc.
Randy Pond, Executive Vice President, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Amy Rao, Founder & CEO, Integrated Archive Systems
Jana Rich, Managing Director, Russell Reynolds
Miriam Rivera, Former Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Google, Inc.
Dan Rosensweig, Investor
Dan Rubin, Partner, Alloy Ventures
Hilary Schneider, Executive Vice President US Region, Yahoo! Inc.
Len Shustek, Chairman, Computer History Museum
Jeff Skoll, Former President, eBay Inc.
Stephanie Tilenius, SVP, eBay North America
Joy Weiss, President & CEO, Dust Networks
Steve Westly, former California State Controller & former SVP eBay Inc.
Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter
1 Comment
November 2, 2008 at 10:56 pm
What about the children in California?
Is Proposition 8 child abuse?
Do children’s mental and emotional well-being matter?
In California, imagine how SAFE the young children of gay or lesbian parents are feeling during this PROPOSITION 8 INSANITY.
Would children feel SAFE if they knew other families were voting, for God’s sake, VOTING on whether their parents deserved the right to be married and treated fairly in society?
How SAFE would a boy feel knowing some parents and teachers do not believe his own family is the same as their families?
How SAFE would a girl feel knowing some children do not believe her own family deserves “the same” as their families?
Now even young children ECHO this intolerance on the playground, thanks to their parents hateful words and ideas. How sick for the children of the YES ON PROP 8 crowd to feel more deserving than other children and their parents! Many children already know and love their gay uncles, lesbian grandmothers, and other FAMILY MEMBERS who are LGBTI, so we have created a hideous world with PROPOSITION 8 and other amendments like it in the U.S. Children are living in a world where they are witnessing adults spending MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars FOR or AGAINST their FAMILY.
Children deserve to grow up in a world where they BELONG.
Children deserve to grow up feeling SAFE.
How sick of a society that we ALLOW family rights to be VOTED ON?
Straight and gay children are being raised by straight and gay parents, but the government forgot that we are ALL interconnected in our families and in society. So now PROPOSITION 8 has brought children into this culture war, a war based on the assumption that some families deserve more legal rights and protections than other families in times of sickness, death, and divorce [for starters]. SICK.