Today’s Reader Rant is from Ellen Sugg of Burney, a small town in the conservative northern California county of Shasta. She responded with this letter to an anti-Prop 8 editorial in her local newspaper, the Record Searchlight. Ellen is a second grade teacher, a teacher union activist, a mother of two, and a former resident of Ocean Beach, who still visits on occasion.
I am not surprised that some intolerant folks of our area have weighed in on your “No on Proposition 8” opinion (editorial, Oct. 9). But, I, for one, applaud your levelheaded view of equality for all in supporting the right of any couple to marry.
Our forefathers’ declaration of “all men are created equal” has in fact required a slow journey toward inclusion of all people (not simply white men) from the end of slavery to the vote for non-white men and finally the vote for women; from the end of segregated schools, buses, restaurants and neighborhoods to the end of laws against interracial marriages and now the end of discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
Our forefathers also wisely decided that our country would have no state religion and so we are not a Christian country, but a country of people free to hold our own religious beliefs, even if they are different from our neighbors’. We are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Buddhists, agnostics and more, and nobody’s holy book rules over all of us.
Hooray for our freedom and hooray for the Record Searchlight for supporting yet another group that has been deemed less equal than the rest by a few people. And to those who truly believe in freedom, I urge you to “Let freedom ring!” and vote no on Proposition 8.
Ellen Sugg
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