Recently in California politics Category

Supporters of Proposition 8 are angry at various acts of protest against the measure's passing, the Daily News reports here.

"Our opponents do not like the outcome and that is to be respected. They fought hard and they feel defeated and that is understandable," said Frank Schubert, co-manager of the Yes on 8 campaign. "What they do not have the right to do, however, is to harass and intimidate people. And they do not have the right to commit acts of domestic terrorism against our supporters."

What? Actually they do. That's as much a constitutional right as voting your conscience or expressing your opinion. In fact, that is expressing your opinion. Again, there is a difference between my freedom to express my opinion and someone else's duty to respect it. Are gay activists supposed to be compelled to keep eating at El Coyote?

It would be far better if we could all discuss these issues in a civil and respectful way; instead we've got angry activists doing anthrax hoaxes on one side and, on the other side, Sarah Palin complaining about how media scrutiny violates her 1st amendment right to slander her rivals. Neither side is clean here.

But there's a difference between "what's right" to an ideologue and "what a right is." There is always a right to boycott within our system.

As a strong supporter of same sex marriage, I am naturally disappointed in the passage of Proposition 8. I hope it is overturned by the State Supreme Court and then wends its way slowly enough to the Supreme Court that President Obama may have tilted the court back to the center. Some of the opponents of same sex marriage are calling me a bad sport and implying that I must accept the voice of the people. I disagree.

Yes, I believe in democracy and the democratic process. I believe that the will of the people should be heard. But (and you knew there would be a "but") democracy has limits. In this nation, we do not believe that "the majority rules." It governs with consideration of the rights of the minority. This is one of the great parts of our tradition. We don't shoot the losers or oppress the minority. We are aware of the great danger of the "tyranny of the majority."

There are other limits to majority rule. We can't vote to make a short person tall or outlaw gravity. One state legislature once voted, and got signed into law, a definition of Pi (π) that resolved it and didn't go on forever. Not useful votes.

Slavery would never have ended if it had been put to a vote. The Civil Rights movement would not have succeeded if the popular will had ruled. Lunch counters would still be segregated and schools would still be separate and unequal. In many states it is more than likely that inter-racial marriage would still be illegal.

The voice of the people and the popular will are indeed important, and courts should take them into consideration. But we have courts to explore the deeper issues of constitutionality. Same sex marriage will ultimately be decided on the basis of "equal protection" clause of our Constitution. We cannot amend our State Constitution in a manner that contravenes our Federal Constitution.

Here's a little gloating from the Family Research Council. I do wish the FRC people wouldn't characterize yesterday's West Hollywood demonstrations as "anti-family rioting." These protesters aren't really trying to break up Ward & June Cleaver's brood.

The anger on both sides often baffles me. I heard people on the radio this morning talking about how we had laws for so long against interracial marriage. And I thought to myself, "Wow, if that right were being voted on, I'd fight really hard to keep it." Then I realized that I don't particularly want to get married. But it's an interesting psychology, isn't it?

I'm still not sure why both sides have to fight over this. But frankly, if we're going to make the law mirror the vows involved in marriage, we need to make it lifelong, and to ban divorce. That'll make lots of people realize it's a right they can probably do without....

Well, he's "post-partisan" when he has no other choice. The rest of the time, Arnold is a jerk, calling out girlie-men and skinny boys, as he does here. But I wonder if Sen. McCain's supporters will proudly remind Arnie that they have a strict policy of not caring what people from other countries think of our presidential race anyway. Or maybe our next president will just send him back home, since Arnie's obviously so crestfallen about what's happening to this nation.

As best as I can tell, California's Proposition 8 is about "respect."

This means that each side says, "The Law has to respect my concept of marriage, and it has to avoid affirming the other side's concept of marriage."

This prop isn't about how we want to live, it's about how we want to think about how we live.

"Some of my best friends," as they say, work at Focus on the Family... and some of my best friends are gay.

I'm not convinced that how marriage is seen in the eyes of the law makes any real difference in a society, except psychologically.

Dennis Prager is in a lather about how societies have always defined marriage as between two sexes.

But what's the problem if it gets defined differently? Will you or I accidentally marry the same sex? "Aw, nuts, I got confused by these shifting definitions..."

What is more intriguing to me is why conservatives, who in theory despise excessive government, want to use government as a weapon in the culture wars -- regarding marriage, what happens within the walls of a woman's body, and so on. Don't like government? Fine -- let people live their lives. But if you need to make laws that protect your definition of morality, you're not a small-government person.

...but Mayor Villaraigosa says it can pour, as Rick Orlov notes in an article on the mayor's speech in Woodland Hills. Orlov says the mayor "warned business leaders the city is in for continued hard times," and admitted there isn't much that the city's leadership feels it can do to avert hardship.

Los Angeles has promising weather and location in its favor, as well as a charismatic way that captures the imagination of the planet. But working against it is a lack of vision among the politicians of the region and the state.

Los Angeles and California become victims of their own hare-like success, unable to realize that tortoises are catching up.

Passing through the Dubai airport a short while back, I was struck by how a backwater nation used oil revenues to build physical and economic infrastructure that can sustain it as a global center for the long haul.

L.A. and California must learn to compete in the global economy. It may not look as pretty or as fair or as environmentally friendly as some would like. But, I ask my Friendly Fire colleagues: Is there any other way to ensure we don't become a Baltimore in coming years?

As reported by CNN, UCLA has refused to offer academic credit to some Christian schools' courses on science and history, jeopardizing the admissions prospects of graduates from those schools. Good for UCLA and the UC system.

One religious school administrator offered this other-worldly defense of his school's academics:

Our teachings reflect that God exists ...whereas UC wants courses to be taught from a perspective that there is no God.

And one student offered this defense of her religious school's curriculum:

When you look at our science curriculums -- we're given every theory from intelligent design to evolution... whereas it's more narrow in public schools so I think we're given a broader spectrum.

Sure, that's great. But it's fair to say that, at any school where creationism is taught as a legitimate theory, evolution will be taught as a weaker cousin. In other words, such a school intentionally places its ideology above the ideology of empiricism, which drives American higher education.

So they've made their choice. And choices have consequences. They'll need to go to Azusa Pacific instead of UCLA.

A small item on the Sacramento Bee's web site caught my attention today as it illustrates how politicians in California see themselves as royalty of the sort. Here it is, in total:

The Department of Motor Vehicles announced it's eliminating Saturday hours this month to cope with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's layoffs, but one office remains open - if a bit hard to find. The unmarked DMV office, room 121, buried in a dark corner of the Legislative Office Building across the street from the Capitol, is devoted to serving the Legislature and its staff. The catch: that section of the building is not open to the public and security refuses to give directions.

I called DMV Spokesman Michael Marando this morning to confirm this. He said this is somewhat misleading as the office never was open on Saturday (which makes sense. What pol is going to work on Saturday?). But still, they need their own office?

I'm amazed by how only one in four Republicans in California worries about global warming as a serious threat, while half of independents and seven out of ten Democrats feel it's a big deal. Are we all reporting to different science labs each morning? No, we report to different political echo chambers each morning.

That's a nice way to mess up our children's world (well, your children; I'm gratefully progeny-free). Expanded drilling may be a short-term solution, but it's not as good a solution as curbing demand and taxing those arrogant Hummer drivers back to the Stone Age.

A new Fields poll shows that Californians tilt toward allowing gay marriage. This will be seen as bad news by religious conservatives who believe they are doing the Lord's work in upholding traditional views of marriage.

As someone who has gay friends and friends on the religious right, I find all this to be a puzzlingly high-schoolish issue.

Those who are exemplars of monogamous commitment and who detest promiscuity are trying to keep one community from practicing fully sanctioned monogamy. Those who should be celebrating their freedom from traditional rules are demanding, "I want a ball and chain too." As a single person who is ambivalent about marriage, I imagine that one solution to all the political fighting would be to allow gay marriage but to outlaw divorce. That would make many gays say, sensibly, "who needs marriage?"

As for religious conservatives who believe that they must ensure that marriage is a sacred, lifelong union of one man and one woman in order to raise a stable family, I am not sure why they put more importance in protesting gay weddings than in protesting Brangelina, who has done much to popularize infidelity, divorce and shacking up within the straight community. I believe the answer is that the former is, at this point, still an easier target. But this will inevitably change.

Traditional morality and the "clear" teachings of Scripture meant that conservative churches frowned on divorce and remarriage just a generation ago. Now, pastors themselves can divorce and remarry while pontificating about how gay marriage undermines Biblical authority. A conservative friend, commenting on the ongoing battle among Presbyterians on gay ordination, complained to me last night about how his church allows practicing gays into membership. I told him that his church doesn't bar from membership or even leadership those who engage in various forbidden activities such as gossip, slander, gluttonous materialism, hatred toward others, and so on.

The difference is that, in such religiously conservative communities, there is great empathy for such persons -- they are "sinners like myself." But to them, gays are "sinners totally unlike myself." The reaction is a more visceral, "Ew, how can anyone do that?" That's why they have come to accept divorce but not homosexuality, even though divorce was more expressly forbidden by Jesus and even though divorce has far greater ramifications for the majority of society.

I suppose that religious conservatives' visceral reaction to "others" is something like my reaction to "saggers," who are now being banned in Flint, Michigan. Ban the butts! But I also understand that some "sins" are a matter of taste, and that we are better off dealing with more substantive issues such as how to pay for a half-trillion dollar war.

Ultimately, until religious conservatives convince the rest of society that the yoke that they seek to place on others is no heavier than the one they place on themselves -- and that it is not based on a matter of visceral personal taste -- will lose political battles inside and outside their churches.