Should California Pass Prop 8?

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Proposition 8 is only 14 words long, but would have a devastating effect on the status of same-sex parents and their children.  Without marriage, same-sex parents and their children struggle for legal recognition; the law sees only individuals. Not couples. Not families.   

Marriage is a powerful institution. It provides more than 1,000 protections to couples and the families they raise, including the right to make medical decisions on behalf of an incapacitated partner or child, the right to jointly adopt children, and the right to inherit property at the death of a spouse. Those are the benefits you can see on paper, but what makes marriage the keystone of any society is something more: It’s a promise loving and committed couples make to each other, the government, their families and friends, and society in general to care for each other and any children they have.  For those children, it’s the knowledge that their parents are committed both to them and to each other.  That benefits everyone in California, gay and straight.

It is the duty of pediatricians to make sure all children they care for have safe and secure homes. That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics passed a resolution in 2007 in support of the right of same-gender couples to marry. No one’s marriage is diminished or endangered by ensuring that everyone is equal under California law.  Speaking out to ensure that gay and lesbian families are as safe and protected as possible, and speaking out to ensure that heterosexual families are as safe and protected as possible, are not mutually exclusive enterprises. All of the families we care for need our support. None need our rejection.

Pediatricians have an obligation to be part of this discussion and to oppose what we know is wrong. Consequently, the California District of the American Academy of Pediatrics, representing more than 5,000 board certified pediatricians throughout California, strongly opposes Proposition 8. Failing to provide same-sex couples the legal protections that marriage affords is a very real roadblock to the security of the families of tens of thousands of the children we care for in California.

Proposition 8 hurts children by eliminating the right of their parents to marry.  Please join me in voting NO on Prop 8. We should not eliminate the right to marry from any loving and committed couples and their families.