rough draft letter

So I've decided to send out a letter to pretty much everyone I know.
I'm a little afraid to ask my parents what they're voting on prop 8, but I plan to have a serious conversation about it with them and I urge you to do the same.
Feedback is GREATLY appreciated... I want the final draft that I send out to be articulate, persuasive, and hopefully provide it's reader with a more personal view on the effects of prop 8.

here it is:

" I find it poor logic to say that because women are good they should vote. Men vote because they are male and woman should vote not because they are angels and man are animals but because we are human beings, and citizens of this country" –Jo March, from Little Women.

Throughout the short history of this country founded on "liberty and justice for all" we have time after time fought to bring said equality to all its citizens. The 19th amendment to our constitution was not added until 1920, granting women not only the right to vote, but dignity and equality. Not until 1967, was the ban on interracial marriage was lifted. Imagine, a time in which blacks and whites could not marry due to the color of their skin. Imagine this is now.
You cannot marry the person you love because you are black.
You cannot marry the person you love because you are Buddhist.
You cannot marry the person you love because you are a woman.
You cannot marry the person you love because you are poor.
You cannot marry the person you love because you are gay.
Thus making you a second class citizen.

What were fighting for is equal rights. What we want is nothing short of a first class citizenship in our own country. What becomes problematic about proposition 8 is not that it disallows gay couples from making all the same commitments to one another that a straight couple will make, for I assure you they will be made regardless. No, we are asking for equal rights as a lifelong committed couple. Call it what you will a "union" a "partnership" …"queer" even. But please, do not tell me that I cannot love cherish, honor, and be faithful to one person to only find myself 20 or 30 years down the road forbidden to ride in an ambulance alongside my critically injured "partner" (whom I will, in any circumstance, lovingly call my WIFE) because I am not recognized as "family".
There was a man in Maryland, Bill Flanigan, who was turned away from the emergency room, where his partner had been taken after suddenly collapsing at work, and told he could not be given any information because he was not next of kin. He had to leave the hospital and retrieve their legal documents before he could gain admittance to see his partner when a married spouse would have been waved through without question. This is only the beginning, thousands of others will tell you a horrifying, similar story.
I ask you, simply, to put yourself in this couples shoes. Feel what it might be like to be denied such rights. I am in no way for you to make a radical change of belief. If asking for you to vote no on prop 8 is just too much. If you're just not ready to make that step… if you worry that due to your beliefs that you hold dear voting no would be the equivalent of saying "homosexuality is 100% ok"… then I'm just asking you today to leave it blank. I'm asking you not to make a vote that would take away my rights. MY rights.