yes, it is

Last Wednesday, the USC College Republicans sent a letter to the Daily Trojan that made me so furious I couldn't focus on anything else until I had come up with an appropriate response. So after a few minutes of thinking, I wrote a reply and fired it back to the DT.

Today, they published it. Apparently. I say "apparently", because although I've received a few scattered "nice letter"s and "good job"s, the link on the DT's website goes to a letter to the editor espousing the virtues of classical opera. Or something. I didn't read the whole thing.

So I've decided to publish it on the internet myself. The letter went something like this:

"I am deeply disappointed in the attitude expressed by the USC College Republicans in Wednesday’s Daily Trojan, which frames Proposition 8 as purely a political issue. The USC College Republicans claim that many Proposition 8 supporters “actually support gay marriage.” If this is true, those people disgust me more than those who can at least be honest about their bigotry.

If you want to vote against judicial activism, start gathering signatures to create a proposition against judicial activism. Don’t deny a minority group rights because you want to stick it to those pesky liberal judges. A vote “yes” on Proposition 8 was a vote to eliminate the rights of a minority group, and I consider this bigoted no matter the rationalization.

Civil rights are not political. They are politicized, certainly, but I was brought up with the idea that all Americans, regardless of gender, race, background, socio-economic class, political affiliation, and even sexual orientation should be treated as equals under the law.

It doesn’t matter if 52.5%, 61%, or 100% of Californians voted to ban gay marriage – it’s still a civil rights violation. It doesn’t matter if its supporters are liberal or conservative – it’s still a civil rights violation. Supporting Proposition 8 isn’t supporting anything except a state-sanctioned right to discriminate against a minority.

And telling opponents of Proposition 8 that they should stop protesting a violation of their civil rights is – frankly – un-American."