Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

Here is my latest blog post.

These elections have been bittersweet, and a source of highs and lows for equality and civil rights advocates. While the country basks in the joy of electing its first African American president, it looks as if California has voted to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

As of now, Proposition 8 won 52 percent of the vote. Some provisional and absentee ballots have yet to be counted, but the situation does not look good for those who are against the constitutional amendment.

As for me, I’m extremely dismayed by the vote on Proposition 8. I view marriage as a governmental law with state benefits, not as religious doctrine. Denying same sex couples the fundamental right to marry means denying these couples the state and federal protections that come with marriage.

As the Oscar winning documentary “Freeheld” shows, these protections have real and dire implications.

Even worse, California has voted to institutionalize discrimination, as the denial of a fundamental right to a group of people will be explicitly written into the state’s constitution.

It’s ironic that this happened on the day Barack Obama was elected. Obama, the son of a black father and a white mother, was born six years before Loving v. Virginia, a US Supreme Court case that ended all laws banning interracial marriage.

Let us hope that one day, the LGBT community will have its own Loving v. Virginia.

(I also recommend checking out Kate Nocera’s blog post entitled “Congrats Connecticut“).