...people on both sides of the same-sex marriage controversy confronted each other on Friday night, as police tried to keep the peace. Proposition 8 passed in a close vote and eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry. Members of the gay community said that almost every Friday night, a Christian group meets at the corner of Castro and 18th Streets. They try to convert gays and lesbians into a straight lifestyle.Look...we all need to take one huge collective deep breath, close our eyes, and count to ten. Then, we need to calm down.
This Friday night, the message didn't go over well. Some gays and lesbians reacted by trying to chase the group out of the Castro. "Their rights were respected," said Joe Schmitz, an opponent of Prop 8. "They got a chance to go ahead and pray on the sidewalk and I had the opportunity to express my freedom of speech which is telling them to get out of my neighborhood." San Francisco Police officers in riot gear formed a line and escorted the religious group into a van to safely get them out of the area.
Cool, collective reasoning will get us through the day. Mark my words: temper flare-ups and violence will work against us faster and stronger than anything else we do. I'm just as upset and angry as the rest of you, but please...before someone gets killed...calm down.
You may hate to hear it, but the other side has a Constitutional right to free speech. We may hate what they have to say with every fiber of our beings, but the way to counter them is to match their words with our own. Make our point louder and louder, and eventually we drown them out.
Protest, march, make speeches, blog, join the fight to get Prop 8 overturned. But please...before someone gets hurt or, God forbid, killed...before we turn even more people against us...cut the shit.
