X-MEN WRITERS ON PROP 8

I thought that all fans of the X-Men would enjoy the answer to a question asked to them by a fan...

"Given the recent analogy of Proposition 8 in California and the similarly restrictive Proposition X, do you feel that the story being told in “Uncanny” adequately frames the realities of minority social politics?"

"This was a coincidental analogy, I just want to say – we had already started telling our tale before we'd become aware of the loathsome Prop. 8 (and I'm not speaking of myself in the royal "we," but rather by “we,” I mean Ed Brubaker and myself – Trask and the Coalition came from the two of us in one form or fashion I don't remember any more).
I don't know why that was important for me to say, but it was. Maybe because Prop. 8 is actual honest-to-god hate legislation that's keeping real, live, and loving people apart and we're a little piece of comic book entertainment? I don't know. I'm struck by the coincidence, but it's not meant to be a straightforward one-to-one allegory.
For my money, what Stan and Jack created with “The X-Men” is the perfect metaphor book. If you've ever been discriminated against, picked on, ridiculed, or rejected because of who you were or what you did, you can maybe see a little of yourself here. I think the X-Men – the whole line, the whole idea, not just my little piece of the pie – works as a kind of allegory-of-the-discriminated. I think that's why the line endures. At best, we're a small reflective facet of a very complicated jewel.
Does this story adequately frame the realities of minority social politics? I think that's impossible, because we're a comic book. Meanwhile, real people with real lives and real love are being really discriminated against and treated like less than citizens – like they are less than human, even. Any time any of our brothers or sisters are treated like less than yourself, the founding fathers and the framers of our Constitution turn in their graves."