Prop 8

[karabear1212]

I was very interested to see what would happen with prop 8 (the proposition to ban gay marriage) in California. Honestly, I was a little surprised that it passed. Just to be clear, I'm not supporting this one way or the other. While I have my own personal beliefs about gay marriage, I believe that everyone should have equal rights, and that the government should not tell society what it will and will not allow. That's why I'm glad that they voted on this. I feel for the people who recently got married in California or were planning on it and now they no longer can. This is one issue that I disagree with most of my party on, because I believe that it goes against the principles of limited government and human rights. I will admit that I used to not feel this way, but as I've matured, I've learned to separate my religious beliefs from my political beliefs.

But I'm bringing this up because of an article that I recently read. It said that the gay marriage ban was mostly supported by african americans (7 out of 10) and latinos, but that whites were split on the issue. I was shocked to read this because I would think that African Americans and Latinos of all people would support any kind of human rights issue. At first I thought that maybe it was religion, but I'm not so sure. How can religious beliefs trump centuries of struggling for equal rights? Any thoughts or explanations for this?

Here's the article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ballot_measures