Opponents of gay marriage painted homosexuals as perverts in the 2008 campaign to outlaw the institution in California, one of several ways in which the forces behind Proposition 8 leaned heavily on history in making their arguments, a court in San Francisco heard today. Lawyers seeking to overturn the ban also called a professor who likened the arguments to those against interracial marriage and equal rights for wives.
Much like those who would ban gay marriage, opponents of interracial marriage in past centuries argued that, if the practice became legal, “the institution would be degraded, their own marriages would be devalued,” Harvard professor Nancy Cott testified. Later in the day, Yale’s George Chauncey said that, in advertisements for Prop 8, “You have a pretty strong echo of this idea that simple exposure to gay people and their relationships is somehow going to lead a whole generation of young kids to become gay”—much like similar campaigns in the 1950s and ‘70s.
(More Proposition 8 stories.)
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