When you fight for the freedom and equality of a specific group of people, you soon will begin to realize that any struggle or movement for the civil rights of some has to be applied to all people if that freedom struggle or movement is to have true integrity of principle and conscience.
If you stand against one form of discrimination, then you should not have a problem or difficulty standing against all forms of discrimination.
Hundreds of thousands of people are now organizing protests in cities across America in opposition to the devastating discrimination against gays and lesbians embodied at the core of California's Proposition 8.
Religion nor tradition should be used to justify injustice. The right to get married should be an equal right for all people. Separate and unequal application of marriage laws based on sexual orientation is simply wrong and fundamentally unjust.
The passage of Proposition 8 to ban gay and *** marriage in California is a public outrage. I am calling on my good friend Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to take the deliberate and necessary steps to have this terrible proposition overturned.
Homophobic discrimination, like racial discrimination, should not be tolerated in the United States.
Millions of Americans voted for change in the election of Barack Obama to be President. It was most unfortunate that also on November 4th, too many African Americans, Latino Americans and others in California voted in favor of Proposition 8.
Now we have to work hard to fulfill the national change agenda inclusive getting rid of Proposition 8. I am speaking out on this as a matter of conscience. We have made too much progress in our society to start being silent and waiting for only the gay and *** community to protest this injustice.
The fight for equality and equal justice under the law is a fight that we all should actively support. At the end of the day, life should be more about mutual love and respect for all people. After we better inform people about this issue, I am hopeful that we all will be able to contribute to restoring and protecting the equality of marriage rights and other civil rights for all. Let's end Proposition 8 now.
-Russell Simmons