This post will demonstrate why I will never be the spokesman for any political issue. I swim in an ocean of words and am not suitable for mass consumption. It is ironic considering "my side" made a big deal about not wanting to redefine the word marriage because my main response to your letter is that you are using some words rather loosely.
In particular you use the word "prejudice" carelessly. I know what you mean when you are saying it, just like in "The Princess Bride" we know what Vincitti (sp?) means when he says "inconceivable!" but it is still not the correct use of words. Prejudice is when we prejudge a person based upon some sort superficial standard. For example when server X decides that this table will be a bad table because they are black, they are being prejudiced. This phenomena is a kind of mildly offensive form of foolishness that is in many ways unavoidable. They way formulate the world is to make or recognize patterns and use them as an expectation for future experience. So Jacob (my five year old nephew) just yesterday had a still yet undeveloped expectation that a lemon would be tasty like an orange based upon they way it looked. He now knows a little better. This pattern recognition/pattern projection is natural and develops all kind accurate and inaccurate prejudices. When used in social situations prejudice usually is forming expectations based upon the way someone looks, dresses or by associations. This is what the word prejudice means, but is not how I sense you are using it.
What I imagine when you get so passionate about people and friends who "have views that are prejudice." Is a collage of past associations with that word so strong that it would be more fitting if you wrote that "people have views that are PREJUDICE PREJUDICE PREJUDICE!!!!!!!!" When we were children and school teachers taught us about the Civil Rights movement they were somewhat limited by our own child understanding of the world and what is permissible to say in front of a child and also their own un-reflective and ignorant beliefs of the actual historical and moral questions. So they could not go into depth about what was really going on in the South so instead would say what was a little more digestible to children "White people in the South did not like black people. They were prejudiced against them. But Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came to speak against prejudice so that everyone could be friends together (insert a clip from the "I Have a Dream" speech)." This is perhaps the best that we could hope for in the circumstances but one of the consequences is that the word "prejudice" has been loaded with many things that has nothing to do with the word. As a child we (perhaps only unconsciously) understood that what was going on in the South was much more bloody and reprehensible that white people not wanting to be friends or share drinking faucets with black people. Lynching, voting suppression, terror attacks are not issues of prejudice but has (usually only unconsciously) been associated with the word prejudice.
I think a better word in these circumstances is "oppression." I do not get the impression that you are passionate about people not being friends or accepting homosexuals or homosexuals getting less service at Outback because of server X's preconceived notions. Those are personal and social issues that can not be solved through a ballet measure. Oppression is something that is institutional and can be dealt with via political means and is worthy of our moral outrage.
For me the issue of Proposition 8 is whether or not it is oppression. To be sure there is oppression that the homosexual community has been made to endure throughout our nation's history and that is inexcusable. Much of this has come from within the doors of churches to the shame of the practitioners of my faith. But understanding the movement behind Proposition 8 and the movement against it I have to say it has no right to associate itself with the struggle for equal legal standing and the oppression of the black population in much of our nation. There are crimes against homosexuals because of their sexual orientation but it nothing on the scope or scale as the institutional disenfranchisement and terrorism against blacks. You could argue that this Proposition is be the first step in that direction but this is a heavy burden of proof (but a noble undertaking to attempt). But as of yet I (and a reasonable majority of voting Californians) are not convinced of this.
To be sure there are embarrassing examples of foolishness and wickedness supporters of most causes. There are those who supported Prop 8 because "God hates fags" and other inexcusable, intolerable and abominable reasons. Equally true there are opponents of Prop 8 who hope to relax social social sexual mores for their own perversity (NAMBLA is the easy to accept example). But we can not casually use these examples as real arguments against our sincere opponents. Teaching chess we have had students who make a bad move with the hope that their opponent will make a much more foolish move. As instructors we correctly instruct our students to plan as if your opponent will make the best possible move. In the same way let's examine and argue against the best cases of our opponents. Let me explain what I believe to be the best argument in favor of Proposition 8.
You wrote "for the LAW all people should be treated equal and have the same rights" but this is not, has never been and never should be the case. In the most egalitarian society (which we ought to strive to be) equal rights for all is not the ideal. The ideal is equal rights for all responsible persons. Defenders of Equal Rights would not say (even in principle) that active murderers, children and acknowledged enemies of the state ought to have equal rights with responsible citizens because in case the party in not willing or capable of serving the betterment of this society responsibly. As such it would be right and responsible to take away some of their rights. Proven murderers, through due process, have some of their rights taken away. Children are not granted the rights reserved for adults. Enemies of the state are sometimes rightly even refused the right to live. But up to this point we have only been talking about the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of property" (or happiness).
A person can lose their rights by their actions. "Rights"does not refer to something that no government has any right to ever take away. If it did, no government would accept any rights for any of it citizens. "Rights" refers to powers, blessings and rewards that a government has limited ability to infringe upon. My "right" to be alive does not mean that my government may never lawfully take my life but instead means that there are limited and (ideally) well defined circumstances in which a government can lawfully kill me. The same thing applies for my right to move about in liberty and try to acquire property (aka secular happiness).
When it comes to the social and legal benefits given to married couples (social acceptance, tax status and the like) I do not believe that these are rights that the married population deserves outright. Those blessings are not a right acknowledged but a reward given by society for perceived merit. The state for holds the position that marriage (what is being called "traditional marriage) is beneficial to society and therefore is granted certain benefits. When the state or voting population decides that homosexual unions do not deserve the exact same legal status (which marriage provides and civil union only partly provides) they are not pre-judging homosexuals but post-judging them. The statement is that homosexuality is not equal to heterosexuality.
To those who believe the two are equally beneficial to society this is disappointing but it is not oppression. The logical next step in this letter is to go over the rational (rather than emotional) reasons that homosexuality is considered to be lesser than heterosexuality. I am very willing to go into this. However this has been a long letter so far and before we could go further I think we would need to refine the positions so far. No doubt you would find weaknesses that could be stated more clearly or even thrown out all together. Let's see where we are at this point and then decided if it is profitable to continue.
Most sincerely and with warm regards,Michael