Gay Marriage Battle On College Campus

The American River College Student Council voted 8-3 on Sept. 30 to endorse Prop. 8 which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Outrageous, right?

So, supporters of gay marriage responded by launching a recall effort and trying to immediately oust the council. Now they’d hoped that because nobody ever votes in school elections, that a small but committed advocacy group for gay marriage would oust the council and reverse the stance on gay marriage. In fact, only one percent of the school even voted for the council in the first place.

So the election happened this week. And guess what, lots of students turned out. It was the largest turnout in school history.T he leader’s decision to endorse Prop. 8, a statewide ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage, caused 3,486 students to turn out and vote on the recall.

And the student leaders who voted to support Proposition 8 won’t lose their council seats after all.

Gay marriage advocates are left with a bit of a public relations black eye. The last thing they wanted to do was hand a victory to the traditional marriage defenders in the press.

I’m starting to have hope for Prop 8 in California. If gay marriage can’t pass on a college campus, then I think they’ll have a tough time passing it in the culture at large -even if it is California.

According to the Sacramento Bee, student council member Viktor Choban, 25, said of the vote, “This resolution has everything to do with education because it affects all the public schools and colleges…If Proposition 8 fails, schools will absolutely be required to teach that gay marriage is equal to normal marriage, thereby confusing students and children about the most basic roles of men and women in society.”

This is such a huge issue and it’s interesting to me how it has evolved that the traditional marriage folks are pushing the angle that children will be taught that marriage is between a man and a man, a woman or a woman, or maybe even sometimes a man and a woman is the angle that seems to be working.

For a while the Yes on Prop 8 folks seemed to be foundering for how to frame the issue but finally they landed on something pretty effective. Adults can get confused sometimes. But I think when we’re forced to consider the world we’re giving our children it sobers everyone up a little.