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Pacific Green
Party of Oregon
March 08, 2004.
Contacts:
Joanne Cvar, Co-Chair and Media Coordinator, 541-563-3615 cvar@oregonvos.net
Liz Trojan, Co-Chair, 503-246-7850 elizat8@pobox.com
PACIFIC GREEN PARTY CONGRATULATES OREGON NEWLYWEDS
Members of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon join the
Green Party of the United States in offering our congratulations to
same-sex couples in Oregon and elsewhere in the nation who are taking
advantage of newly offered opportunities to marry the partners of their
choice. . We wholeheartedly support them in their celebration of love
and commitment and in the affirmation of their constitutional and human
rights.
The national Green platform has supported same-sex
marriage rights since the platform was introduced in 2000. The platform
of the Oregon Greens, while not specific to same- sex marriage,
dedicates Greens to the defense of social justice and to combating all
prejudice based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age,
physical/mental disability, sexual orientation, economic/social status,
homelessness, and immigration status, Greens stress that the
Constitution mandates equal protection for all Americans and note that
protection of human rights and freedoms is neither a majoritarian
concept nor subject to the approval of religious institutions or
doctrines.
Brian Setzler, member of Portland's PDX Activist Greens, reported Sunday
that "at church this morning, they announced fifteen couples from
our congregation had been married in the past week. It was beautiful to
see these loving, committed adults, many of them parents, able to have
the legal benefits and protections that come with marriage. Everyone was
happy and the world is better."
However, some PGP members, while supporting the movement for gay
marriage and human rights, are concerned about the undemocratic process
by which the Multnomah County Commissioners reached agreement to let the
marriages proceed through meetings that excluded the public and even one
Commissioner representing a conservative district. As Jeff Cropp,
Co-Chair of the Portland Metro Chapter, explains, "I became a Green
partially because I believe the ends do not justify the means. Elected
officials should not engage in discrimination against 25% of the
population [who might voice objections] in order to end long-standing
discrimination against 10-15% of the population."
"What matters most," says Lloyd Marbet, long-time Green
activist and former PGP candidate for secretary of state, "is
striving for higher consciousness. I believe the ends do not justify the
means, for when we cross that line, we are no better than those whose
actions we use to justify using their own actions against them;
spiraling evil in the name of good, laying the seeds for moral
degradation, excusing ourselves and rewriting history to gloss it
over." And "Greens have a commitment to use consensus whenever
reasonably possible," Metro member and Humanist Jeff Strang points
out. "If people work together on a decision and include as many
rational people as is reasonably possible, the quality of the decision
is better/ "
Although they may differ as to process, Greens are untied in their
strong opposition to President Bush's support for an amendment to the
Constitution that would ban states from allowing same-sex marriages as
well as civil unions. The Constitution provides rights for America's
citizens and any amendment should expand citizen rights, not contract
them. "What's missing from the current debate," says Greg
Gerritt, secretary of the Green Party of the United States, "is the
idea of freedom. The Green Party's position supports that freedom. To
use the Constitution to repeal rights and freedoms is abhorrent--it's
un-American."
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