One of the saddest things I've ever read. Please see:

Robert Hillsborough
Harvey Milk
Terry Knudson
The Upstairs Lounge arson attack in New Orleans
Julio Rivera
Brandon Teena (person behind the movie “Boys Don't Cry”)
Jason Gage

and of course, it goes all the way back to the riots at the Stone Wall and long before. Also, you've clearly never spent any time in a high school in a rural area where any of the students are even perceived to be gay. If you honestly think there have only ever been two gay people in America in the modern era who were the targets of violence, I can't imagine that world view that spawned that.

You say: “Are they commonly targets of hatred, violence and coordinated campaigns of legislative discrimination to anywhere NEAR the levels seen by gays or Muslims?” I know of two incidents of violence against gays: 1) the celebrated Matthew Shepherd case, and 2) the recent case where a gay middle school student was shot by a fellow student. In both of these cases, the violence was inexcusable, and should be punished to the full extent of the law. Is there a spate of other unreported or underreported cases? Your statement would imply as much.

As for the instance of Muslims, immediately following the Sept 2001 attacks, there were a handful of attacks on Muslims, but since then, very few. In fact, as far as I can tell, in neither the case of gays nor Muslims have they been “commonly targets of hatred and violence,” as your post suggests. The United States is an incredibly tolerant society, by-and-large. That is why most of us will be very happy when soon-to-be President Obama shuts down Guantanamo, since it and Abu Ghraib highlighted instances of intolerance that cut across the grain of our national concern for human rights. That being said, what we saw in Proposition 8 was the African-American community, at least 70% of it, joining together with others to say: “We can and should tolerate a lot, but a redefinition of what marriage is and means, we should not tolerate.” President-elect Obama himself would not come out in favor of gay marriage, a telling fact. The arguments the proposition's proponents used were well-presented and carried the day. You can try to paint that as bigotry, but to do so is to say that the majority of citizens in 30 states are bigots, since 30 states have now defined marriage as between one man and one woman. In the end, whether sexual orientation is genetic – an hypothesis yet-to-be scientifically established – may be a moot point. A growing social consensus is being reaffirmed, namely, that for all it shortcomings, a traditional family with one mom and one dad is the societal norm that our marriage laws should reinforce and not undermine.

Yet, was it not large-scale protests that contributed to the civil rights cause for blacks? I'm sure people then considered them silly children who needed to grow up and live with their situation.

Seems to have worked for them, though.

And Jazz, I've gotten some flack for it before, but I've always seen Obama's Muslim problem. The best case I can remember was when two Muslim women were barred from sitting behind him after all the “he's a Muslim” hysteria from the right.

His handlers had a near case of paranoia, at least during the primaries. Problem is, Obama never spoke to say what it took Colin Powell to say months later.

Never mind that anyone protesting outside California, or the other states where other constitutional changes were passed, or anyone protesting specifically against Prop 8 but doing it outside California, where it is irrelevent, is simply choosing to be an idiot.

What is the legal status of Prop 8 and constitutional change that it establishes, or does not establish, in California? That is the principal issue (and the only truly legal issue) here.

And when mentioning Obama, let's let the silly protestors start being not only grown up but logical and consistent in choosing the objects of their wrath. Obama is on record as firmly being opposed to altering the definition of marriage while being in favor of civil unions, which is the mainstream American position. Why don't the silly protestors not only a) wait for Washington to be more in their obvious favor; and b) begin by directing their statements to the person at the top?

Or are there other goals or motives really at work here?