Celebrities Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw and Brad Pitt are throwing their weight behind efforts to stop Proposition 8, the proposed amendment to again ban same-sex marriage in California.
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California legalized same-sex marriages in May. Proposition 8 would reverse the California Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriages, allowing only marriage between a man and a woman.
Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, said in a statement, “By writing discrimination into our state constitution, Proposition 8 seeks to eliminate the right of each and every citizen in our state to marry regardless of sexual orientation. Such discrimination has NO place in California’s constitution, or any other.”
Spielberg and Capshaw donated $100,000 to the Vote No on 8, Equality for All campaign, matching Pitt’s contribution last week to the political organization Californians Against Eliminating Basic Rights.
Steven Spielberg
It’s not the first time Pitt has publicized his views on marriage. In an October 2006 interview, Pitt told Esquire that he and partner Angelina Jolie weren’t planning to marry until it was legal for everyone.
Many openly gay high-profile celebs have yet to donate such large amounts to the Vote No on 8 campaigns. IN magazine reports that Rosie O’Donnell, Elton John, and Melissa Etheridge have not yet contributed to the campaign.
Although Ellen DeGeneres wrote on her blog of her support for gay marriage, and therefore her choice to vote no on Proposition 8, she has yet to make a significant public contribution to the cause.
DeGeneres was one of the first high-profile celebrities to put the same-sex marriage law into practice when she married her longtime partner Portia de Rossi on August 16.
Other high-profile same-sex weddings in the last month include George Takai to Brad Altman, and Jonathan Adler to Simon Doonan.
Variety reports political groups supporting Proposition 8, which include Focus on the Family and Knights of Columbus, have raised $16.2 million, while “No on 8″ groups have only managed to collect $10.8 million.
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3 Comments
#1. KB 09.24.2008
This is just great! The Hollywood types, who have been dragging our society into the gutter for years through the movies are now trying to drag our families there. They could care less if our society is stable or healthy only sexual perversion will do. If we allow homosexual marriage our society will suffer. The CDC reports that 13-14 year old boys, who are experimenting with homosexuality, are catching HIV/AIDS. Is this what we want for our children. Our society must take a stand on anything that would jeopardize our children and their future. I just wish Hollywood could do the same.
#2. E. Joanne Hawkins 10.19.2008
Not only are Hollywood stars and it’s lesser known celeberties bringing or society into the gutter, but did ANYONE figure out how to stop the ‘JUDGEMENT’ or wrath of God, allowing His children *by( HIS NAME)to rejuvinate a Sodom and Gormorrah 2 cities that He destroyed for their perversion in the first place?
If people feel Katrina wasn’t a judgement of God (man can’t create hurricanes), ripping right down the street where they were going to parade in public in their BIRTHDAY SUITS…. then I wonder what will happen to San Francisco?
Didn’t I hear that California is sitting on a ‘fault’ that an earthqauake could drop the whole state into the Pacific Ocean?
#3. Albert 11.04.2008
What’s really the problem here? Is this really about legal rights, or just about the endless cultural fight between liberals and conservatives trying to force their values down everyone’s else’s throats?
Even if same sex marriages were not allowed, nobody’s forcing gays to get rid of their partners. You could also still legally protect the rights of gay couples by giving them basically the same rights as the married men and women have. Maybe not the same cultural status as marriages have - but that would be difficult even if gays have a right to marry.
If there already are married gay couples in California, those unions couldn’t be made illegal just like that. Probably they would be changed to registered partnerships, and such unions could guarantee practically all the same rights as marriages have. It is about legal details of laws, not about a name that is used for a certain kind of union between same or opposite sex partners.
As to culture and values, and which ever way the Proposition 8 goes, you simply cannot change the values of other people.
You have to realize that a majority of people, throughout the whole world, still believe and will believe that a marriage is primarily an institute meant for heterosexual couples. It is also not discriminating to think so, and people have every right to such values as much as gays have rights to their values - as long as they respect others and give them their freedom to live their lives as they wish.
Children are also a rather natural part of marriages, even if some married couples may not have kids. You have to remember the rights of children too when discussing marriage and related laws. Would it be ok, if all gay couples were allowed to adopt all the children they may ever wish? Or would a family where there would be both a mother and a father still be considered better? Can gay marriages really be equal to heterosexual marriages in that respect? Many specialists see that ideally children should have both a mother and a father, a male and a female role model in the family. In a natural, biological family that is also always the case, but not in a homosexual family, how ever good those gays might be with children. In that sense a gay family that has children can never be considered a natural and ideal family, I’m afraid.
Gay couples and families are and will be simply different from heterosexual couples and families. Why should they be considered just the same legally? Since when has sexual freedom become the ultimate human right in our society that goes before anything else in a society, including children’s rights to have both a mother and a father?
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