Category ►►► Politics - California

May 15, 2008

Californichusetts - bumped from March pending new post

Surprise, surprise, the California Supreme Court is currently deciding (yet again) whether to tell California voters to go to hell, and to order the era of gender-neutral marriage... just as Massachusetts did! Thanks; I always wanted us to take our lead from Hyannisport.

So let's put on our manly gowns, gird our loins, and pull up our socks: It's time to deal with this invitation to cultural suicide once more.

It boils down to two questions:

• Doesn't the "equal protection" clause of the state constitution require the legalization of same-sex marriage (SSM) as a state constitutional right?
• Even if there is no "right" to SSM, isn't it a good idea to expand marriage to be more inclusive?

On a nutshell, he answer in each case is No -- it doesn't and it isn't. The rest of this post explains why.

How equal is "equal protection?"

In California, it's not just the state legislature that has defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman (explicitly in 1977, implicitly earlier); the people themselves did so in 2000 via Proposition 22, which added Section 308.5 to the state's California Family Code:

The citizen initiative passed overwhelmingly. If a court overturns it, it had better be because the court found it violates a clear, undeniable, and unambiguous right... not just because four justices voted against it seven years ago, and now they have their revenge.

But the only legal argument ever offered is that the rule violates the "equal protection" clause of the California constitution, Article I, Section 7:

Proponents of SSM say equal protection is violated for a homosexual, because he cannot marry the person that he wants to marry. But of course, a heterosexual also cannot marry the person he wants to marry if one of them is already married, they're too closely related, or one of them is too young. Throughout human history, marriage has always been strictly limited to certain types of unions; it has never, in thousands of years of human history, been an unrestricted right.

Gender is just one of the restrictions; if the others don't violate equal protection, then neither does the gender restriction. And if it does violate equal protection... then what's the legal rationale for banning polygamy?

Cat got your tongue? "But my four wives and I really love each other!"

With all restrictions dropped but the declaration that "we love each other," what's to stop gang members from all marrying each other, so that none will be able to testify against another? How do you prevent an entire building full of spinsters marrying the same guy, so each can receive Social Security? How do we prevent one American citizen from marrying five hundred Argentinian women and men to bring them all here as permanent residents?

Marriage needs restrictions: Without them, it's no more special a relationship than a bowling team or union membership.

So you're in favor of banning interracial marriages too, huh?

A ban on racial intermarriage has never been a piller of Western civilization; racism itself (per Dinesh D'Souza's the End of Racism) dates only to the sixteenth century. And most of the miscegenation laws in California were passed from 1901 onward, during the "Progressive Era" -- they were Jimmy Crow Lately laws.

Miscegenation laws were not repealed not by the courts, which never found any equal protection violation; in fact, they found no problem with them at all. It was the people, speaking through their state legislature, who rejected racism in the marriage laws in 1948 (after the Progressives and other socialists made those laws progressively restrictive through 1945).

Why did the legislature repeal those laws? Because society decided that there was no significant difference between the races; the differences are purely cosmetic. Thus, there was no compelling reason why a black man could not marry a white woman, or a white man marry a Hispanic woman.

However, nobody except self-described "queers" (radical "gender-free" advocates who proudly use the term on themselves) believes that there is no significant difference between males and females. In fact, we're discovering new differences every year, including distinctions in thought processes, temperment, and styles of exercising authority.

Unlike marriage between black and white, a marriage between two men or two women is completely different in character from a marriage between a man and a woman.

It has a great effect on child rearing -- the correlation between fatherlessness and violent crime and other antisocial behaviors is admitted by every sociologist -- and even on the behavior of the spouses themselves. When men mix only with other men, or women with other women, all the negative traits of each sex are magnified. But when men marry women, both parties moderate their behavior, and we achieve at least some union between yang and yin.

(As kids who grow up with divorced parents now, having two fathers can be terribly confusing and can also lead to the kids playing one Dad off the other. Fatherlessness and overfathering are both very sub-ideal.)

Finally, experience teaches that cultures that allow polygamy, such as traditional Moslem cultures, end up devaluing women and girls to the point where the papa will kill his own wife or daughter if he thinks (or imagines) she has shamed the family name. It's much, much rarer for a father to kill his teenaged son for such imagined shame, because males are so much more important in polygamous cultures. (They may encourage sons and daughters alike to become suicide bombers, but that is completely different: Radical Moslems consider that to be enhancing the family honor. It's like sending sons off to war. But the father rarely murders his son as punishment for shaming the family.)

Societal survival is a compelling interest

Thus, society does have at least three compelling interests in restricting marriage to one man and one woman: The effect on getting and raising children, moderating behavior of individual men and women, and promoting the full equality of the sexes. And equal protection is not violated, because every resident, regardless of sexual preference, may legally marry anyone he wants, provided both meet society's qualifications anent age, sex, number, family relationship, and of course willingness.

If we ever decide to change any of those restrictions, it must come from the people themselves... via the legislature or directly by citizen initiative. The courts should never drive society willy nilly towards the utopian leanings of the judges. That is the difference between leftists, who favor totalitarian, top-down rule by "experts" in all areas of life (from economics to religion to marriage)... and those of us on the right, who prefer individualism, Capitalism, and democracy, where the women and men in society get to decide for themselves, through the ballot box, what axioms define society.

For a perfect example, let me explain why I absolutely support Lawrence v. Texas (the U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down anti-"sodomy" laws across the nation) -- yet I oppose with equal fervor Goodridge v. the Department of Public Health, the ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts forcing the state legislature to legitimize SSM.

Simply put, Lawrence is individualistic and democratic: It does not require you to accept gay relationships as the equal of heterosexual relationships -- it just prevents you from throwing them in jail for it. It's one aspect of "the right to be let alone." Thus, Lawrence is individualist and conservative... modern conservatism has always recognized freedom of conscience in principle, even if some individual choices carry enough "ick" factor to tempt conservatives to make an unwarranted exception.

But Goodridge is totalitarian and leftist: It requires you to treat SSM exactly the same as mixed-sex marriage, and to hell with your deeply held religious beliefs. That is not the role of the courts.

SSM supporters twist words to impose a total, top-down transformation of society to fit the utopian ideology of the Left, using the phrase "equal protection of the laws" as a weapon to overthrow the democratic process -- quite literally, in the case of California and our Proposition 22. So on to question two...

What's so bad about SSM anyway?

This section will be briefer than it could be -- I could write an entire book! -- because I'll just sketch the argument; if you want more specifics, type "same-sex marriage" into the search box in the right sidebar and read my earlier posts.

Simply put, here is the syllogism on which I operate:

1. Our society ultimately rests on a small number of irreducible axioms: inalienable rights, government by consent of the governed, etc.
2. One leg of the stool of Western civilization is the marriage of one male to one female. This has been the definition in our society going back thousands of years. It encourages the interaction of male and female and the civilization of boys, female equality and women's rights, and the rights of children. It has dramatically shaped our culture.
3. But not irreversibly shaped; if you knock out one leg of the stool, it may still appear to stand; but it becomes ricketier, less stable, and more prone to topple over when hit by something external... such as militant Islamism, to pull a random example out of my hat.
4. While many people (especially the young) are eager to "change everything," a certain level of stability is vital to society, both culturally and legally. Our experience of societies that have a different set of axioms -- such as the Moslem and African cultures -- warns that treasured rights and privileges that we take for granted would not survive such ham-fisted tampering.
5. So for God's sake, don't do it!

Here's what's so bad, wise guy...

The law of unintended consequences applies in full force here. For example, the easier we make it for any group of two or more people to be legally considered "married," the less special is the marital relationship; as it becomes less special, it attracts fewer people. Fewer marriages means fewer children, hence a waning, dying culture (cf. Northern Europe, esp. Scandinavia).

Fewer marriages also mean kids who are born are more likely to grow up in fatherless homes. Looking at America's black population, we see an extraordinary rate of out of wedlock births (69.3% of all births, compared to 31.7% of white babies - Table 14) and fatherless households (60%, compared to 22% for white children). If we compare that disparity to the disparity in violent-crime offender rates between blacks and whites (blacks were nearly three times times as likely, 2.8:1, to commit violent crime in 2005 as whites; Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2000 Census), we see a strong correlation between out of wedlock birth and fatherlessness on the one hand and the commission of violent crime on the other. This is hardly surprising; a strong and law-abiding male role model teaches boys how to resolve problems peacefully and legally.

That correlation should tell us that the very last thing we should be doing is discouraging heterosexuals of any race from getting married: Raising kids in an intact, married family makes them much less likely to become either violent criminals or the victims of violent criminals. But diminishing the "sacred specialness" of marriage by opening it up to any and all groups of people who declare "love" for each other does exactly that: If marriage means nothing, then why get married?

The West is the best

Our Western culture is unique in many ways: It's the strongest and most economically successful culture in human history; it's the freest and most respectful of individual rights; and it's also the most conservative culture on the planet, in the sense of conserving the virtues and mores of the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century -- derived from Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke and first enshrined into law by the American Founding Fathers at the tail end of the eighteenth century.

Asian cultures (excepting Japan, which is completely Western) are mostly radical socialist cultures (Socialism includes both Marxist and fascist versions), still vainly trying to transform the world and create the New Socialist Man. And Moslem cultures are too often reactionary, trying to recreate the days of the Prophet -- more than thirteen centuries ago.

The Western culture converted to what we now call "traditional marriage" more than two thousand years ago; traditional African and ancestral American cultures never enforced "traditional marriage;" the socialist cultures of the East rejected spiritual unions (marriage) in favor of civil partnerships many decades ago; and traditional misogynist Islamic law still treats women like cattle.

Why on earth would any sane person want to monkey with the Western marriage model?

Jonah swallows the whale

Finally, I love this very appropos passage from Jonah Goldberg's new masterpiece, Liberal Fascism (pp. 133-4), which perfectly captures those radical activists trying to transform America into their own utopian vision:

Sadly, that is exactly what's going on here and now; and our enemies without and within call it "historically inevitable" that they will succeed. If so, fellow right-wingers, then it's our bounden duty, as William F. Buckley, jr. wrote in the National Review mission statement in 1955, to "stand athwart history, yelling Stop."

Ergo --

So to all those leftists who are screaming, arguing, threatening, cajoling, extorting, commanding, and suing to cram same-sex marriage down Californians' throats, and most particularly to the California Supreme Court...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 15, 2008, at the time of 2:55 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

March 14, 2008

Sacramento Dreamin’

The profligate ways of the Democratic legislature in Sacramento and the RINO in Sacramento (the governor) have finally reaped the economic whirlwind -- a $16 billion plus deficit. Unfortunately those that are left to inherit that wind are local school boards who are forced to issue pink slips to employees.

The legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger made a devil’s bargain the last few years that they finally could not sustain in 2008. Each year they have jacked up the budget, including the education budget, even though the state has seen declining enrollment for the past three years. What law of the universe says that you must increase your budget when you are educating fewer children?

Each year the governor and Democratic leadership claim that they are required by “mandates” to increase funding. To help pay for this toga party the state has floated more and more bonds, putting it all on future taxpayers to bear. But as Senator Tom McClintock, one of a few honest politicians in Sacramento points out, most of those mandates can be suspended by a two-thirds vote of the legislature, just as the budget itself requires a two-thirds vote each year.

The governor and the lawmakers at any time could rein in spending. They just don’t want to. The Democrats in particular don’t want to make any significant cuts.

Now that this spending has finally caught up with them, the Democrat leaders are predictably calling for more taxes.

We must not let them get away with it.

When you see teachers losing their jobs because of irresponsible “leaders” your heart aches and you want to do something to help. But the worst thing we could do is signal the Democrat leadership that it is OK to start their mouths writing checks that their constituents, i.e. you and me, must cash.

They need to cut back on a budget that has been growing out of control for several years to the point where we are actually worse off than when we recalled Governor Gray Davis and put Arnold in his place to supposedly control spending!

Don’t let your empathy for our teachers prod you into doing something stupid, like supporting higher taxes.

Hatched by Dave Ross on this day, March 14, 2008, at the time of 3:10 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 28, 2008

Props to Caleefornia’s Hornful Governator

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is so full of baloney that it is almost coming out of his ears! We could make sandwiches!

The governor who promised that he would never raise taxes is now engaged in an elaborate game of hocus-pocus -- now you see it, now you don’t -- that will end up tacking a 1.25% “fee” or “surcharge” onto all of our homeowner’s insurance payments in order to pay local fire districts back for money that he is going to swipe in order to balance the budget!

He calls it a fee, or a surcharge, although, of course, it’s a tax! Don’t get me wrong. Ronaldus Magnus as governor said things he had to back off from. In his first term he said that his “feet were set in concrete” about his opposition to a tax increase. Later, when he had to back down on that, he announced something to the effect that the “noise you hear” was the concrete cracking around his feet.

That’s honest. What Schwarzenegger is doing is dishonest. It’s in line with other dishonest statements he has made (perhaps the most egregious of his dishonesties is his assertion that he’s a Republican!).

For instance, he’s supporting the top Democratic hacks in Sacramento, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perrata, who put Prop. 93 on the ballot to give themselves four more years in office. Under current law they would be term-limited out of office at the end of 2008. But under the Byzantine provisions of Prop. 93, which Schwarzenegger supports as term limit “reform,” both pols, and quite a few other legislators, would be grandfathered in and able to continue screwing up the budget for several more years.

According to our RINO (Republican in Name Only) governor:

The current system of term limits -- which allows members of the Senate to serve two terms (eight years) and members of the Assembly three terms (six years), with a total maximum of 14 years -- is contributing to Sacramento's problems rather than fixing them. I am endorsing Prop. 93, which would lower the total number of years a member could serve to 12, but also allows him or her to divide them between the houses as they choose. I am convinced that this would result in the people of California getting a more experienced, more independent Legislature.

And it gives two corrupt hacks four more years to cut deals with Schwarzenegger!

Aside from the pig’s breakfast that is the combined Republican and Democratic primaries on Feb. 5, there are several other interesting items on the ballot. Most are concerned with Indian casinos and their compacts on the ballot this time.

Props. 94, 95, 96 and 97 are tossing Indian gaming compacts to the voters -- compacts that the legislature was unable to act on last year. They were negotiated between Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Pechanga, Morongo, Sycuan and Agua Caliente bands. These tribes own large casinos that they want to make even larger, with 5,000 slot machines for two casinos and 7,500 slots for two other casinos, as the upper limit. The state would get a larger percentage of the revenues than it has gotten from the original compacts signed in 2000 that limited tribes to 2,000 slot machines.

None of that money would come to local communities. It would just go to fill the bottomless black hole that Arnold and Fabian Nunez have created in the state budget. The new compacts would also require the tribes to work more closely with the state on addressing environmental concerns.

Many voters will look upon these four propositions as a referendum upon California Indian gaming itself. I can’t argue with someone who roundly hates Indian gaming because it has increased traffic or because he feels it has degraded the quality of life. People have a right to their opinions. But voting against these propositions won’t make Indian gaming go away -- and it won’t affect it a jot locally. It might make you feel better.

Ironically, if the voters reject the compacts, the governor will just go back to the drawing board and try to get something that will pass muster with the legislature, which mainly dragged its heels because of union opposition.

Prop. 91 would prohibit gasoline taxes from being used for anything other than transportation and would require that if the legislature borrows money from the fund to pay it back the same year. If you think you’ve voted on something like this before, you have -- a couple of times. Prop. 42 in 2002 protected fuel taxes from being raided except in an emergency. Of course, the legislature got around that by declaring a fiscal emergency on a regular basis.

So people who had put Prop. 42 on the ballot started to collect the signatures for Prop. 91. Meantime, Schwarzenegger and the group that collected the signatures for Prop. 91 were able to include the protections they sought in Prop. 1A. But too late to stop Prop. 91. So the folks who put Prop. 91 are no longer supporting it, although some small splinter group says that Prop. 91 would tighten the loophole even more. I say that anything that forces the legislature to spend gas taxes on roads and only roads is worth voting for -- so that’s the box I’m checking.

Prop. 92 would limit fees for students attending community colleges to $15 per unit. That would have the effect of increasing state spending on education. My personal feeling is that if your community college costs too much to attend, see if your local 7-Eleven has an opening so you can get a second (or even a first!) job. That’s what I did when I was younger.

Hatched by Dave Ross on this day, January 28, 2008, at the time of 9:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 6, 2006

It Just Keeps Getting Better and Better

In my previous post, Judicial Tyrants Teetering On the Brink, I discussed the California state appellate court that overturned the ruling by a San Francisco court requring same-sex marriages (SSMs) in this state, regardless of the 2000 ballot measure that restricted marriage to one man, one woman. I rather gloomily (and perhaps prematurely) wrote the following:

The sad part is that it was evidently an integral part of the ruling that in California, domestic partnerships are virtually the same as marriages.

In this, I foolishly relied upon the Associated Press story, which stated in unambiguous terms:

In reversing the March 2005 ruling of a San Francisco trial judge, the 1st District Court of Appeal agreed with the state's attorney general, who argued that California's ban on same-sex marriage does not discriminate against gays and lesbians because of the state's strong domestic partner law.

Lawblogger Xrlq was skeptical, however. Having at least skimmed the primary source (the court's opinion), he commented that "What I've seen so far indicates that the principal holding was that marriage is what the legislature/voters say it is - not that gays have a fundamental right to marry, but that right is satisfied by the domestic partnership law."

Intrigued (and more hopeful), I scurried after later, completer articles, and I found this Reuters piece. It completely backs Xrlq's position; if anything, it goes even farther... the state circus in fact enunciated a ringing endorsement of democracy over judicial tyranny:

"The Legislature and the voters of this state have determined that 'marriage' in California is an institution reserved for opposite-sex couples, and it makes no difference whether we agree with their reasoning," the California Court of Appeal held.

"We may not strike down a law simply because we think it unwise or because we believe there is a fairer way of dealing with the problem," it said in a majority opinion written by Justice William McGuiness....

The appeals court reversed a lower court, which had overturned California's ban on gay nuptials in a lawsuit triggered by the marriage licenses San Francisco briefly issued to same-sex couples in 2004.

"Courts in this state simply do not have authority to redefine marriage," the appeals court said.

It said a voter initiative or legislation would be required to legalize same-sex marriage.

This is a tremendously stronger slapdown of the SSM crowd than AP reported, and I am correspondingly much happier with it. However, one of the judges, Justice J. Anthony Kline, dissented. I hesitate to characterize his dissenting argument on the basis of a media account ("once bitten..."); but since Reuters seems to have gotten the rest of the story right (that is, it matches Xrlq's read of the opinion), I'll go for it.

Kline dissented on the grounds that domestic partnership laws constitute an unconstitutional "separate but equal" institution:

In its ruling Thursday, the court noted gay couples in California have rights comparable to married heterosexuals thanks to domestic partnership laws.

But gay rights activists said comparable rights are not equal rights, and, citing Justice J. Anthony Kline's dissent, they said the majority carved out an unconstitutional "separate but equal" standard for gays by supporting domestic partnerships, which Kline compared to laws enforcing racial segregation.

The domestic partnership act is "a form of pseudomarriage that stigmatizes homosexual unions in much the same way 'separate but equal' public schools stigmatized black students," Kline said.

"Like separate educational facilities, domestic partnership and marriage are 'inherently unequal,"' he said.

This is an emotionally powerful argument, but it's logically flawed. Let me take a few thousand words to show why that's obvious...

Origins of desegregation

First, what is the point of the Civil Rights Amendments and the racial desegregation they ulimately spawned? Prior to the Civil War, North America had a 250 year history of racial slavery stretching back long before the founding of America; and the West had an even longer tradition of racial slavery. (So did the Arabs and Turks, but that's irrelevant to this point.)

The Civil War was fought, whatever Southerners might absurdly argue, to end the practice of slavery. There were proximate causes, but that was the underlying one. But why is slavery wrong? Why should we put 600,000 soldiers into the ground just to end an institution that had stood in this place for two and a half centuries?

The Civil War was fought over the unique and unprecedented proposition that underpinned the very founding of our country:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In the end, no argument for slavery, no matter how recondite, could batter down this simple, "self-evident" truth... if all men are created equal, then how can a whole race of men be condemned to slavery merely because of their skin color?

Once the nation finally accepted that argument (with the Civil War as a resounding exclamation point), desegregation was the inevitable result: because people being what they were, segregated public institutions, even if they began as equal, would in short order become very unequal.

Unequal inequalities

But not all inequality is wrong, let alone unconstitutional. We do not outlaw income disparity; nor do we follow the lead of Kurt Vonnegut's seminal short story "Harrison Bergeron" and handicap the talented so that they're no better than everyone else. What we hold to be "self-evidently" equal is the essence of personhood; and the laws we strike down are those that discriminate solely upon what a person is, not what he chooses to do.

Thus, the actual corollary to the segregation laws for gays would be a law that said, for example, that children determined to have "homosexual tendencies" were required to be educated in separate schools from those other kids who have "heterosexual tendencies."

So the first error in Kline's argument is that the marriage laws do not discriminate in such a fashion; they don't even mention heterosexuality or homosexuality -- and such a distinction is necessary for a law to discriminate against a person, rather than against an action: without a detailed description of the subset of humanity that is to be put down, how would anyone know who to discriminate against?

Segregationist laws always included a legal description of what makes a person black or white. The marriage laws contain no such distinction between heterosexual and homosexual... so right away we know Kline's argument is off base.

Equal equalities

Moreover, the laws are exactly the same for all genders and sexual preferences.

Lambda disagrees:

Jon Davidson of the gay rights group Lambda Legal said the California law was unfair, and legal analysts expect lawsuits over same-sex marriage will continue for years across the United States.

"This violates a fundamental right that all people have in California, which is to marry a person of their choice," Davidson said.

But this is nonsense; there is no such right "to marry a person of their choice." There are many rules:

• You can only marry a person of the opposite gender --
• Who is not already legally married --
• Who is not too consanguineous to you --
• Who is of legal age --
• And who consents to marry you;
• In addition, you must obtain a marriage license first.

(There may be other restrictions as well.)

Note that the exact, same rule applies to men and women, to gays and straights, and to all races. There is no extra restriction on gays; a gay man can marry any woman who fits the above requirements, just as a lesbian can marry any man who qualifies as above... just as with straights.

Not even SSM advocates actually argue that the law is different for people with different sexual preferences; what they really argue is that it's easier for straights than gays to obey it. It's a disparate-impact argument, not an equal-rights argument: since it's harder for gays to find an opposite-sex person they want to marry than it is for straights, they argue, it should be unconstitutional.

But it's likewise harder for swingers to find a single person they want to marry; they would prefer to marry half a dozen folks together. So does that mean the Constitution requires we legalize polygamy?

At this point, I start to get out of my legal depth: I only play a sea-lawyer on the web... I'm not really an attorney! Even so, it's my understanding that "disparate impact" theory is based in statute -- specifically, Title VII of the Civil Rights code, which relates specifically to employment discrimination. Beyond the obvious (marriage is not an employment contract), there is also the fact that even if some statute could be stretched to apply a disparate-impact theory to marriage, it would be a general statute... and there is a more specific statute, the Defense of Marriage Act, that explicitly restricts marriage (in federal cases) to one man and one woman; in addition, nearly every state has a similar act either as state law or in the state constitution.

The specific trumps the general, so this argument collapses upon inspection. Marriage laws are not in any way "unequal;" and if they have a disparate impact on people who prefer to marry members of the same sex -- or who prefer to marry their first cousins or marry two women at the same time, or marry a woman who doesn't want to get married -- that's too bad for them, but it doesn't make marriage law unconstitutional.

Who rules?

Finally, there is the ultimate question: who controls society? Another element of the Declaration of Independence -- which is actually federal law, by the way, one of the "Organic Laws of the United States" -- makes the answer to that question very clear:

To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

In no state of the United States have "the governed" ever consented to SSM; but if they did, I would argue that they do have that right: if the good people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were to enact through referendum (or through their legislature without the lege being compelled by the courts) laws allowing gay marriage, sibling marriage, or polyamorous marriage, I say fine; that is the job of the democratic arms of government, not the judicial.

When the courts order SSM, they usurp power that rightfully belongs to the voters. There is no clause nor amendment to the Constitution or any state constitution that says people have a "fundamental right" to "to marry a person of their choice;" some courts simply made that up, like the "right" to an abortion.

So there is a clear separation of powers argument against SSM that I doubt Justice Kline even considered.

The end -- at last!

As usual, it takes a powerful lot more argument to knock down a crazy theory than to propound one. But this is a nutter idea, that denying the "fundamental right" of gays "to marry a person of their choice" is the legal and moral equivalent of the discredited "separate but equal" doctrine. Such an argument results from the muddled and narcissistic emoting that masquerades as ratiocination at university today, where what matters is not what folks do -- but how they feel about themselves.

It has no place in a court of law.

See? I told you it was obvious!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 6, 2006, at the time of 6:51 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

October 5, 2006

Judicial Tyrants Teetering On the Brink

The campaign by gay activists to force "gender neutral" marriage down our throats via judicial fiat suffered a catastrophic setback today. The 1st (state) District Court of Appeals overturned the ruling by a San Francsico state judge (a year and a half ago) that the state's marriage laws were unconstitutional because they restrict marriage to "a man and a woman."

The sad part is that it was evidently an integral part of the ruling that in California, domestic partnerships are virtually the same as marriages.

In reversing the March 2005 ruling of a San Francisco trial judge, the 1st District Court of Appeal agreed with the state's attorney general, who argued that California's ban on same-sex marriage does not discriminate against gays and lesbians because of the state's strong domestic partner law.

I would hope the court would have overturned the earlier ruling even if we didn't have any domestic partnerships at all; after all, there is no question more clearly left to the people than which relationships they will accept as "marriage."

Alas, I suspect that the court would have ruled differently. But at least they went this far upholding the 2000 ballot proposition by which the people of this state overwhelmingly limited marriage to one man, one woman.

But this is the part I find so amusing, indicating (as it does) that the Left no longer even remembers that the people in a democracy have any say at all:

The ruling does not guarantee, however, that same-sex couples will not ultimately be able to get married in California.

Of course; the voters could vote on a ballot proposition any time they want to allow same-sex marriage. Oh, wait -- that's not what the Associated Press had in mind. Here is the rest of the story:

The ruling does not guarantee, however, that same-sex couples will not ultimately be able to get married in California. Gay marriage advocates said beforehand that they would appeal to the state Supreme Court if the intermediate court did not decide in their favor.

What AP meant was that there was no "guarantee" because a higher court might overturn the appellate court and by golly go back to forcing it upon us willy nilly, whether we like it or not.

Naturally!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 5, 2006, at the time of 3:45 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 12, 2006

Hackers, Slackers, and "Hot" Latinas

Following up on our earlier post about California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's comments on the only Republican Latina in the state Assembly, Bonnie Garcia, in a privately recorded conversation that was released to the media a few days ago:

[Schwarzenegger's Democratic chief of staff, Susan] Kennedy offers praise for Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, the lone Latina Republican in the Legislature. The governor and Kennedy debate her ethnicity, and Schwarzenegger opines that whether she is Cuban or Puerto Rican doesn't matter much.

"I mean, they are all very hot," the governor says. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

In our first post, we opined that there was nothing intrinsically offensive in the comment, nor was Garcia offended; in fact, she says she describes herself as a "hot-blooded Latina" all the time, and she has specifically used that phrase to describe herself to Schwarzenegger.

But this does beg an interesting question: how did the audio tape get into the grubby paws of the LA Times in the first place? That conundrum, at least, has now been answered... it came from campaign officials of Phil Angelides, Schwarzenegger's opponent in his reelection bid November:

Democrat Phil Angelides' gubernatorial campaign acknowledged Monday that it downloaded the digital audio file containing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's controversial private remarks on ethnicity, but said it did nothing inappropriate and accessed the recording through the governor's "publicly available" Web site.

But Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said earlier that the access was "unauthorized" and that an internal audit discovered the six-minute audio file was hacked from the private computer system of the Governor's Office on Aug. 29 and 30.

After some fum-fahing, the Angelides camp finally admitted yesterday that they downloaded the audio file and sent it to the Times, according to ace Bee-blogger Daniel Weintraub. But they have a defense:

Angelides campaign manager Cathy Calfo admitted a few minutes ago that the Angelides campaign was the source of the Los Angeles Times story revealing a privately recorded conversation involving Gov. Schwarzenegger and his top aides. But Calfo says the audio file was downloaded from a link in a Schwarzenegger press release, and no one on her staff “hacked” the governor’s Web site or accessed a password protected area....

Calfo said the staff members, a press aide and a researcher, followed a link in an Aug. 29 press release that included a recording of the governor’s comments at CSU Long Beach regarding the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina....

Calfo said the staff “backed up” on that link to see the entire directory of files available (also not possible today) and downloaded more than four hours of material. She wouldn’t release those recordings Tuesday nor say what they contained.

Weintraub says (in a different post) that if it turns out the Angelides campaign workers actually "hacked" (in the legal defintion, which requires breaking a password scheme) the site to get the private audiotapes, then they'll be in trouble; but if it turns out they were available on the site without busting security, but with some monkeying around in areas known to be private, then they're off the hook.

I completely disagree. If we follow Weintraub's reasoning, that means if I forget and leave my front door unlocked, you have the legal right to burgarize the joint.

Morally and ethically, whenever an unauthorized person is trolling around the private area of someone else's website, he is hacking -- whether security was adequate or not. It's completely irrelevant, no matter what the law says.

The lack of good security procedures does not release Democrats from the necessity to act in a morally responsible way, any more than the lack of a good lock releases them from moral responsibility for black-bagging Republican campaign offices and Xeroxing donor lists.

Am I an anachronism? Is it now the general belief in America that it's morally acceptable to lift anything not literally nailed down? That if there isn't a secure enough lock, then it's all right to steal? Is that the logical end result of teenagers "ripping" music they want to hear but don't want to pay for?

If so, I'm hardly suprised to see California Democrats in the vanguard of defending such a despicable worldview.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 12, 2006, at the time of 4:38 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

September 8, 2006

Oh, THAT'S What Arnold Meant

So the newest hysteria here in the golden state (or the granola state, take your pick) is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's verbal "assault" on a Latina Republican assemblywoman, Bonnie Garcia. This is the only part I had heard until now:

[Schwarzenegger's Democratic chief of staff, Susan] Kennedy offers praise for Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, the lone Latina Republican in the Legislature [that is, she calls Garcia a "ball buster"... but in a nice way]. The governor and Kennedy debate her ethnicity, and Schwarzenegger opines that whether she is Cuban or Puerto Rican doesn't matter much.

"I mean, they are all very hot," the governor says. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

(Hat tip to Ryan Sager of Real Clear Politics, in between plumping for that mayor guy from New York City, whatever his name is.)

I assumed -- as I now assume most people assumed, if they heard only this part, which was the only part broadcast on the radio story I listened to -- that Schwarzenegger was making a sexual inuendo; I mean, the guy has a history of that sort of thing.

But for the first time today, I read the very next sentence, which casts the entire imbroglio in a different frame of reference:

[Gov. Schwarzenegger] goes on to recall a former weightlifter and competitor, Cuban-born Sergio Oliva. "He was like that," Schwarzenegger says.

Now, Schwarzenegger may have had a bit of a tough time keeping his hands off the starlets when he was just a movie star; but that's not even unusual in Hollywoodland. However, of all the things Arnold has been accused of, not even the Los Angeles Times has ever insinuated that Arnold Schwarzenegger is homosexual.

Therefore, I can only conclude that he did not mean "hot" in a sexual context. He meant passionate, enthusiastic, high-energy... all terms that a go-getting politician would love to have associated with her (and which I would be very puzzled about if anyone ever applied them to me).

But what about Assemblywoman Garcia? As the feminist Left insists ("shrieks" would be an apter word), sexual harassment is not determined by what the speaker meant, but rather whether it offended the target. Well... did it?

Garcia said the conversation didn't bother her in the least. She called herself an "unpolished politician" and said Schwarzenegger had shown nothing but respect for her.

"I love the governor because he is a straight talker just like I am," Garcia said. "Very often I tell him, 'Look, I am a hot-blooded Latina.' I label myself a hot-blooded Latina that is very passionate about the issues, and this is kind of an inside joke that I have with the governor."

So yet again, the whole election-year brouhaha boils down to the Schwarzenegger-hating Los Angeles Times trying to make a mountain out of a mohawk. I swear bedad, not a day goes by that I don't thank my lucky scars that we canceled our subscription to that "newspaper" three years ago.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 8, 2006, at the time of 11:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 5, 2006

Schwarzenegger Will Veto California HillaryCare

According to famed Bee-blogger Daniel Weintraub, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto the ghastly socialized-medicine bill enacted by the sinister California legislature.

Thank goodness. There is no way the legislature can override the veto, and I doubt they'll even try -- as that would give the Republicans running for the Assembly and state Senate another good campaign issue.

As the dumb-looking guy in a fedora says (and I don't mean Roger L. Simon!), "developing...."

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 5, 2006, at the time of 3:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 30, 2006

California HillaryCare

As anyone who reads Captain's Quarters knows, the California Assembly just approved a bill, SB-840, which was previously approved by the state Senate, to implement "HillaryCare" style socialized medicine throughout California.

The bill was voted out of both chambers on essentially party-line votes, and you can find the complete text as amended here. The next stop is the state Senate again, where approval is pro-forma, and then to the desk of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger... who is widely expected to veto it, thank goodness.

I'm astonished that there has been so little reporting about this. I live in California, and I had heard nothing about it until I read Captain Ed's piece, which he picked up from SFGate.com, which is the web version of the San Francisco Chronicle. Aside from the Comical:

• The bill and vote was covered by the Sacramento Bee (Sacramento is the state capital), and it was covered by various other small newspapers;
• But as of this moment, I can find absolutely nothing on the website of the Los Angeles Times, the largest newspaper by far in the entire state. (I'm sure Patterico is shocked at the utter incompetence of the L.A. Slimes);
• The San Diego Union Tribune published an opinion piece in favor of this socialized-medicine bill by a representative of the main group that wrote it, Health Care For All - California; but I cannot find any actual news story about its passage;

• The San Jose Mercury News put a story up yesterday -- under the marvelously opaque headline, Demo bills highlight contrasts. Yeah, that sure makes clear that the subject is socialized medicine!

  The other bill referred to by the Mockery News, just passed by the state Assembly, was -- no, really, I'm not making this up -- a bill to allow illegal aliens to obtain California drivers' licenses. In case anyone here doesn't know or has forgotten, that is the issue, more than any other, that led to the recall of our previous governor, Gray Davis. California Democrats... the gift that keeps on giving;

• I can't imagine this wasn't carried on AP, Yahoo, and Reuters -- or at least on Agence France-Presse -- but darned if I saw it on any of the feeds I read, and I can't find any reference via Google... except for a press release from another "consumer rights" group that supports socialized medicine, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which Yahoo ran on Monday.

It is astonishing how low this bill and the illegal-alien drivers' license bill have flown under the radar. I make no doubt of the reason why: because Californians, while leaning liberal, notoriously despise both HillaryCare and also giving illegal aliens a government ID card they can use to fake legal residency. So no wonder the elite media -- which "has bones in the fight," as a (legal) immigrant friend of mine said a long time ago, when she was still learning English -- are doing their bestest to keep mum about the bills.

The Democrats will happily tout their leftism at the appropriate venues: fund raisers, rallies, and speeches to the nurses and prison-guard unions. No reason to let real voters find out just how radical their own state senators and assemblymen are!

It is absolutely critical that the governor veto this bill.

The following is an e-mail I sent to the Office of the Governor, where I hope it will buck Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger up to veto this monstrosity of a bill (all emphasis added, since the e-mail form used by the Office of the Governor does not allow HTML code, for obvious reasons):

I am very sure that Schwarzenegger will veto this bill; and there are not enough Democrats in the Assembly, or (it appears) in the state Senate, to override a veto.

According to the story in the San Francisco Comical, the vote in the Assembly was 43 to 30; currently, the California State Assembly comprises 48 Democrats and 32 Republicans, with one vacancy.

Overriding a veto requires 2/3rds of each body, I believe, just as with the U.S. Congress. That requires 54 votes in the Assembly; but there are far fewer Democrats than that -- and not even all of them voted for this despicable bill: even assuming all 30 of the Nays were from Republicans, that means five Democrats (at the very least) abstained or failed to show up. If more than two Republicans failed to vote against SB-840, that means even more Democrats demurred.

Still, however, the main bulk of the Democrats don't want Sachi and me to be able to get the health-insurance plan that we want, but instead want to tell us what we'll get, good and hard.

The state Senate is dicier; but even there, with 40 members, you need 27 Ayes to override... and there are only 25 Democrats. There were 25 votes in favor of SB-804, and I wouldn't be surprised if those two groups, Democrats and Ayes, were coterminous.

Thus, for either body to vote to override a Schwarzenegger veto (assuming he's mensch enough to veto), the Democrats would have to lure some Republicans over to the dark side, to embrace socialism as the solution to our health-care woes, such as they are.

And really, the woes are neither deep nor wide: very few people are unable to find adequate health insurance; considerably more are unwilling... and as I noted in a previous post, given the current system, this may be a rational response for young singles or even married couples with no children and a reasonably high income.

And nobody has made a good argument why consolidating all health-care plans into a single buyer, that buyer being the state government, would make health insurance cheaper. The only pseudo-rationalization is the "argument by repeated assertion" used by the various socialist groups who push "health care for all": that everything will be cheaper because socialism eliminates all the "wasteful competition" you find in capitalist systems.

Yup; and it's worked great in Sweden, Mexico, Canada, Japan, the Democratic People's Republican of Korea, and of course the old Soviet Union, all of which have become absolute economic powerhouses. In fact, the only quasi-socialist countries with strong economic growth that I can think of are China and India... and both of those economies started growing only when they jettisoned much of their Marxist, Maoist, and fatalist socialist systems and embraced a significantly more robust capitalism than you find in the failed European social-welfare states of Scandanavia.

So yeah; brilliant conclusion, Mr. Democrat: let's solve our economic problems by becoming more like the economic basket cases of the world. That makes perfect sense -- to a liberal: if socialism fails everytime you try it, then the natural reaction is to redouble your efforts.

Let's hope that a single man, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a self-made capitalist, can see clearly enough to veto this bill... and the illegal-alien drivers' license bill as well.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 30, 2006, at the time of 4:40 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

July 6, 2006

California Marriage: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

California is often so far ahead of the rest of the country, we may as well be on another planet. Fortunately, we're usually not the bellwether.

(Curiously, twenty years ago, I wouldn't have characterized that as "fortunate." But that was then, this is now: twenty years ago, California was at least planted on one of the inner planets fairly near Earth's orbit... not the frozen gas giant we evidently orbit today.)

The "far-out"-ness of my home state is especially true anent same-sex marriage... though at least this time, we're not the Judas goat: that "honor" falls to Massachusetts, still the only state actually to enact same-sex marriage -- albeit at judicial gunpoint.

Still, California's liberal legislators are itching so hard to foist "gay marriage" upon us that I'm taking up a collection to buy the state legislature a gigantic vat of Calamine lotion. They tried once already last September, notwithstanding California's Proposition 22, enacted overwhelming in 2000 (61% to 38%), which restricts marriage to a union between one man and one woman.

But now, a state judge has ruled that Prop. 22 is unconstitutional, and the appellate courts -- and possibly the California Supreme Court -- may uphold that ruling. To that end, a couple of different groups are circulating petitions for initiative constitutional amendments to define marriage as one-man, one-woman; it would take a constitutional amendment actually to protect traditional marriage from the rampaging Democrats in this state.

Note that I do not argue the case for traditional marriage or against same-sex marriage in this post; the case is assumed. I've argued it before -- for example, in a column here, and in this blog in The Mythical Three, With This Ring I Y'All Wed, and The Value of Uniqueness -- and will do so again.

But this post is solely about the Machiavellian matrimonial machinations and madness currently sweeping the state: the good (and personal), the bad (and judicial), and the ugly (very legislative).

So abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Slither on, dude...

The Good

First the unalloyed good news (without even Sergio Leone's question mark), which is probably of only the most academic interest to the rest of you: my sister Julie is getting married on Saturday. Three cheers! Mazel-tov! (And about time!) She's marrying her long-term boyfriend Aaron; and of course Sachi and I will be in the wedding party.

For some reason, Julie turned down my offer to be a bouncer at the wedding; but I'll be doing something, I suppose. Sachi won't be a bridesmaid; she has some other role, but we won't be enlightened what either of our tasks will be until the rehearsal tomorrow night.

The Bad

Almost four months ago, on March 14th, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer gave his ruling in the case Woo v. Lockyer, overturning California's Proposition 22:

On March 14, 2005, Judge Richard Kramer of the Superior Court for San Francisco County, in a decision on six consolidated cases, ruled unconstitutional the two sections of California’s Family Code (sections 300 and 308.5) barring same-sex couples from access to marriage. Judge Kramer based his decision on the equal protection clause of the California constitution, concluding that California’s prohibition on marriage for same-sex couples failed to survive rational basis review, the test of legislation most deferential to the state. Furthermore, he concluded that the marriage law was subject to, and failed, the strict scrutiny test because it involved a “suspect classification,” namely gender, and a fundamental right under the California constitution, the right to marry.

The case was appealed to the Court of Appeals, First District, in San Francisco, where it's supposed to be argued on July 10th. Judge Kramer's ruling is stayed pending the appeal, of course. If the appeal fails and the ruling is upheld, then presumably the state Supreme Court will hear arguments next year (I cannot imagine they would refuse). But both the appellate court and, to a lesser extent, the state Supreme Court are liberal -- and it's entirely possible that Prop. 22 will be struck down.

Après ça, le déluge. The state legislature already passed a same-sex marriage bill in September, 2005, which was vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger precisely because it flew in the face of Prop. 22; if the latter were struck down, the legislature would immediately act to pass the same bill again... and this time, especially if it were after the November election, Schwarzenegger would have no reason not to sign it (he personally favors civil unions but hasn't really said what he thinks about same-sex marriage).

Thus, if Prop. 22 is struck down and not replaced by a stronger initiative constitional amendment, Californians will wake up to having become the second state to have legal same-sex marriage (the first to do so without being forced)... and likely very quickly also polygamy, as the same proposition banned both -- and as most of the lefty activists advocating "gay marriage" also agitate for polygamy and group marriage. If Judge Kramer isn't willing to so rule, some other, even more liberal San Francisco judge will be found; it's not hard.

Traditional marriage in California is at grave risk... and nobody on the Left is paying any attention to what the citizens themselves want (now, there's a shock).

Interestingly, on the larger canvas, two states, New York and Georgia, dealt a blow today to supporters of same-sex marriage and other weird variants:

Activists had hoped to widen marriage rights for gays and lesbians beyond Massachusetts with a legal victory in liberal New York, but the Court of Appeals ruled 4-2 that the state's law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman was constitutional....

In Georgia, where three-quarters of voters approved a ban on gay marriage when it was on the ballot in 2004, the top court reinstated the ban Thursday, ruling unanimously that it did not violate the state's single-subject rule for ballot measures. Lawyers for the plaintiffs had argued that the ballot language was misleading, asking voters to decide on same-sex marriage and civil unions, separate issues about which many people had different opinions.

Excuse me... can we borrow the New York or Georgia courts, please?

The Ugly

Given the concerted attempts to subvert the will of California citizens and voters by ramming same-sex marriage down our throats, in spite of the overwhelming vote against it in the 2000 initiative statute Proposition 22 (it won by nearly 23%), it's not surprising that those of us who strongly support traditional marriage and vehemently oppose same-sex marriage (as well as "domestic partnership" laws that are marriage in all but name) want to put another initiative on the ballot... but this time as a constitutional amendment, so a San Francisco judge cannot simply brush it aside.

(It didn't occur to anyone in 2000 that an amendment that read, in its entirety, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," was in danger of being declared unconstitutional.)

The initiative process, however, is about as ugly as they come. All it takes is a few signatures -- 598,105 -- by an arbitrary deadline, after first crashing through the thicket of court rulings designed to prevent citizens from horning in on the parade of professional legislators.

The high signature threshold itself requires that any petition be backed by substantial money to hire professional signature gatherers... and that's just to get it on the ballot. Once there, millions will be required to pay for commercial advertising for traditional marriage; otherwise, the Democrats will redefine it into oblivion. (Did you know that anyone who supports traditional marriage hates gays, wants to restore the ban on interracial marriage, and engages in ritual human sacrifice?)

Despite the danger and despair, there actually is a ballot initiative circulating that would do just that. Unfortunately, there is also another ballot initiative circulating that would also do just that, and the authors appear to be quite unfriendly towards each other.

One group, Vote Yes Marriage, is led by Larry Bowler, Ed Hernandez and Randy Thomasson; their website is Vote Yes Marriage. The other, Protect Marriage, is led by Ivan Megediuk, Nikolay Bugriyev and Richard N. Otterstad, Jr.; they can be found at Protect Marriage... however, the front page hasn't been updated since January (!), so I'm not sure what their status is.

There is a tussle going on between these two groups. The Protect Marriage initiative favors using very simple language in their proposed amendment:

This is simple and easy to understand and very likely to get overwhelming approval from the voters. However, the Vote Yes Marriage campaign worries that it will be pecked to death by the ducks of the California judiciary, trying to find loopholes; they favor a more legalistic and complicated version:

Both initiatives would ban not only same-sex or polygamous marriage but also overturn California's civil-union law, which is basically marriage in all but name. I would certainly actively support and campaign for either or both. (If both pass on the same ballot, then the one with larger number of votes prevails.)

But I'm torn which is the better; there is no question in my mind that the first, shorter version is more likely to pass. But I agree with Vote Yes Marriage that it's also more likely to be twisted into a pretzel by the California courts. What I hope is that both campaigns combine and offer both propositions on the ballot: let the people decide by voting.

According to the website of California's Secretary of State Bruce McPherson (a liberal-to-moderate Republican), the long-form version by Vote Yes America failed to get on the ballot for the 2006 general election in November.

Daniel Weintraub of the Sacramento Bee (and the excellent Bee-blog California Insider) tells me via e-mail that it failed because of insufficient signatures... which makes me believe it's having money problems, possibly because of the kerfuffle with Protect Marriage. There are certainly enough supporters that they should have been able to clear the 600,000-signature hurdle.

Vote Yes Marriage is circulating another petition to get it on the ballot for 2008, for which the deadline is listed as November 27th.

Protect Marriage is also circulating a petition on their own short-form amendment for the 2008 election; their deadline is August 21st.

2008 is actually a better year than 2006 would have been: the appellate court should rule on Judge Kramer's challenge to Prop. 22 by early October (90 days after they hear oral arguments on July 10th, assuming that isn't delayed). If they strike 22 down, then the California Supreme Court will probably take up the appeal and rule either in late 2007 or early 2008. Thus, the insane California legislature could not pass a same-sex marriage bill until then; and we would know before the 2008 election whether or not the California government still believed in real marriage.

Prospects for passage -- if proponents can ever get either iniative on the ballot -- are good: even the Field Poll finds support for traditional marriage strong, with 51% opposing same-sex marriage to 43% supporting it, unchanged from 2004 and 2003.

This would undoubtedly rise if the courts struck down Prop. 22: everyone who voted for it back in 2000 will be even more determined to do so again, since they would feel the courts had just backhanded them in the mouth.

(Note that the Field Poll also notoriously underreports support for traditional marriage; in 2000, just before the election, the Field Poll found 54% of likely California voters supporting Prop. 22; a week later, it was passed 61.4% to 38.6%.)

Interestingly enough, the same Field Poll found 50% oppose amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as one man-one woman (40% support). While this may seem like a dichotomy, it's actually in line with other polls: according to Polling Report (ignore the first poll, which is about flag burning and mistakenly put in the wrong category), most Americans -- myself included -- believe the question of same-sex marriage should be decided by the states, not by the federal government.

And on the state level, we proponents of traditional marriage are winning big time. Initiatives defining marriage as one-man-one-woman have passed in every, single election they've been offered, in every state that has ever allowed its citizens to vote, from the deep South to Oregon to Michigan to the Midwest; no state's voters have ever rejected such a referendum: we're twenty for twenty.

The only two state legislatures that have ever voted for same-sex marriage are Massachusetts (which was responding to a direct order from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts) and California (which has no excuse, but which was at least vetoed by the governor).

Currently 20 states define marriage traditionally in their state constitutions (by referendum), while 43 do so in statutory language (mostly overlap, since we don't have 63 states). Only five states "do not have statutory or constitutional language preserving the traditional understanding of marriage": Connectucut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island. (The Heritage Foundation says six, but that's because they were including New York... whose appellate court just upheld the state's marriage definition.)

In addition, initiative constitutional amendments are on the November ballot in six states and pending in an additional five, while legislation is pending in the state houses of six states.

The End -- At Long Last!

So that's the good about traditional marriage and the bad and ugly about same-sex marriage in California: if the two petition-circulating groups -- Vote Yes Marriage and Protect Marriage -- can get their acts together (literally) and get something on the ballot, it will pass. But this may be after Proposition 22 is struck down and the legislature rushes to legalize same-sex marriage in early 2008.

And this would be a tragedy... not because it would stand; it won't. With that spur, either of the initiatives would pass by 65%. But it would be a tragedy to those poor souls who actually believe that the liberals in the Assembly and state Senate care a snap about them -- other than as a stick to bash Republicans. Many gay couples would rejoice at the law and rush to get married, only to see their marriages annulled just a few months later.

That will likely embitter and enrage them, and it would set back a gay-rights agenda by years... which of course is exactly what the Democrats want. They revel in hatred, anger, and despair, because that plays into their divisive campaign strategy.

Liberal Democrats believe that all permanently aggrieved minorities who feel "disenfranchised" will automatically vote for the Democrats. Enacting same-sex marriage will give nothing to gays but heartache; but it will scrape up a few more hopeless, bitter-end Democrats, so it's a good thing.

(Note that I support gay rights, such as the Supreme Court striking down "sodomy" laws in Lawrence v. Texas; but I argue that legal marriage is not a right but an acclamation that cannot be forced.)

But in the end, the people will have the last word... unless the California Supreme Court finds a way to find the California constitution itself unconstitutional.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 6, 2006, at the time of 5:58 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 7, 2006

Cal-50: Addendum

Although it's likely that Brian Bilbray will fail to reach either 50% (which I anticipated he would) or a 5% margin over Francine Busby (which I actually predicted) -- with 100% of the precincts reporting, the semi-official tall stands at 49.33% for Bilbray, 45.46% for Busby -- we still can't close this one out just yet. If you look at the very top of the page at the link, you will read this little cautionary note:

There are approximately 68500 Absentee / Provisional ballots still to be counted

That total is for all of San Diego County, I believe; obviously, only a small portion of those ballots are for the 50th district special election. Even so, a movement of 0.67% upward (or downward) is entirely possible.

(There was also a 50th district primary for November; the tallies are in, and the nominess are -- wait for it -- Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray! This will be the third of three rounds in the Busby-Bilbray title match, winner leaves town.)

Typically, absentee ballots tend to favor Republicans (though that's changing), while provisional ballots tend to favor Democrats (though that's changing). It is unlikely in the extreme that those ballots will change the outcome of the race; Busby is not going to wake up in a few days and find herself the winner.

But it wouldn't take many ballots, especially in such a low-turnout election as this (126,000 ballots cast), to add or subtract a fraction of a percent to either candidate... and in fact, that is guaranteed: whatever the final results, they will not be exactly 49.33% and 45.46%.

Currently, the two are separated by about 4,872 votes. If Bilbray were to add a net 850 to his total out of however many absentee and provisional ballots have not yet been tallied in this race, that would probably do it; 900 for sure.

It will take a few days to finally resolve all of the provisional ballots, and I doubt California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is going to change the results page again until he can announce the final final results. Bilbray is very close to a majority (less close to my 5% prediction, alas), and he might well achieve it when the smoke clears.

I know a person can grow old just waiting, but sometimes that's the only thing to do.

In evaluating this race, it's important to pay attention not only those who voted for the Democrat or the Republican, but also those who voted otherwise... especially when trying to prognosticate.

While Bilbray got only 49.33% (semi-final, remember), another candidate, William Griffith, got 3.67%; Griffith is an ultra-hard-right conservative who ran against Bilbray by calling him too liberal.

Here's a profile of Griffith.

In addition, the Libertarian Party candidate, Paul King, took 1.53%. There are two kinds of LP members: those whose primary focus is drug legalization, who are apostate Democrats; and those whose main focus is to shrink the government, who are renegade Republicans. (There is a nonzero intersection of people for whom those are equally important, but it's smaller than you would imagine.) King clearly seems to be in the latter camp; he may support drug legalization, in a vague way; I don't know enough about him. But what brought him into the race, he says, is shrinking the government.

Even without adding King, the clear "right-wing" vote in this election was 53%... which is just about what we calculated as the total vote among all the Republicans voting in the April preliminary. I suppose that some of those who voted for a far-right Republican (like Eric Roach, 14.46%, or Howard Kaloogian, 7.45%) just didn't find Bilbray conservative enough for them, so they voted for Griffith, who was barely an "also-ran" (0.82%) in the prelims -- running as an Independent (specifically, the hard-right American Independent Party), as he did yesterday and probably will in November.

If you add King in as a (probable) small-gov Libertarian (as opposed to a pot-puffing Libertarian), that would make it 54.5% voting to the right; there were no candidates running to Busby's left... she got all the Democrats plus all the Leftists who voted.

That means the Right vs. Left vote in CA-50 was 54.5% to 45.5%, just about how the district voted in the 2004 presidential contest (55-44 Bush), despite the huge drop in Bush's job approval since then. Again, this is not a good sign for Democrats in November.

(By the way, centrist Democratic Rep. Jane Harman (70%) easily held off her primary opponent, Leftist Marcy Winograd; Harman won more votes in her hotly contested primary than did Republican Brian Gibson in his uncontested primary -- 26,670 to 20,455. I think Harman is a shoetree for reelection in November.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 7, 2006, at the time of 2:31 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

A Bird In the Bush Ain't Worth Much

It's looking more and more like Brian Bilbray won the critical California 50th district race to succeed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who currently resides in prison. But it's not yet clear whether the second half of my prediction will come true; at the moment, with 96% counted, Bilbray leads by only 4.2%, not 5%... but it wouldn't take much to add an extra 0.8%, so we'll have to wait a day or two to see whether I get a full point or only a half.

But a win is a win, in any case.

However, this retention shines a big, bright light on the Democrats' dilemma: their strategy for taking back the House relies upon winning a bunch of races -- many of which just don't look at all likely to fall to them. They must win virtually every open seat, and they must wrest a number of seats away from Republican incumbents... one more, now that the Cunningham seat will remain with the GOP up through the election.

The main unifying theme of the Democrats this year has been the Republican Kulture of Korruption; but if it's going to work anywhere, it would have to be either in Cal-50 or in Tex-22 (Tom DeLay's erstwhile seat). The Democrats just lost Cal-50 when it was open; I don't think they're likely to win it in November, when Bilbray will be the incumbent. (In fact, he'll probably do better... the power of name recognition, which works even for former congressmen being re-elected in a different district).

And as far as the Texas seat goes, the biggest boon that Democratic candidate Nick Lampson had going for him was that he was running against the indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX, 88%).

But now he's not; DeLay is resigning from Congress this Friday, and presumably his brief replacement in the 109th Congress will be chosen by a special election (open, anyone can run). Thereafter, the Republican parties in the four counties that have voters in the 22nd district (Fort Bend, Harris, Galveston, and Brazoria) will select a nominee to replace DeLay on the ballot for the 110th Congress.

But with DeLay himself, the lightning rod, gone from the scene, it's very likely that Tex-22 will stay in Republican hands in both the special and the general elections.

So where does that leave the Democrats? They staked everything on winning Cal-50 and Tex-22, and it looks pretty unlikely that they'll win either one. There is only one other Republican congressman who is in serious legal jeopardy: Bob Ney of Ohio (88%). And Ney is very unlikely to be indicted before November, if he is at all.

So far, all that the Democrats have against him is rumor and inuendo, and that's nothing like indictment (as in DeLay's case), and certainly nothing like conviction and la calabooza, as with Cunningham. If the Democrats can't make the Kulture of Korruption theme work in those two cases, I'm very skeptical they can make it work for a smoke-but-no-fire-yet representative like Ney.

When all is said and done, I doubt that this election is going to turn on charges of Republican corruption -- especially with the various Democrats who have suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of the law. I believe it will turn on other issues: policy issues, such as immigration, taxes, and the Iraq war.

It's still possible for the Democrats to take the House back; but they will need to have a real campaign after all. Yet so far, they haven't even made the effort to come up with an agenda, let alone a "Contract With America."

And perhaps even more important here in California, the "Meathead" Amendment, Proposition 82 -- taxing the rich to pay for "free" preschool for all California kids, pushed onto the ballot by Rob "Meathead" Reiner -- went down in flames. Go, team!

This is the ballot proposition where Reiner was caught red-handed (shouldn't that be blue-handed?) funneling at least $23 million of taxpayer money into an ad campaign for his pet Proposition 82; so at least in this case, crime did not pay.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 7, 2006, at the time of 4:04 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

May 24, 2006

Stop the Party - Crack Those Books!

We neglected to comment on the May 12th decision by a goofy California state judge to overturn the rule in the public schools requiring students to pass an "exit exam" before they can receive their high-school diplomas. (It was the press of other issues, honest!)

High school seniors who flunk the controversial state exit exam may be able to graduate next month anyway, according to a judge's tentative ruling issued late Monday.

Setting the stage for heated debate in court today between supporters and opponents of the California High School Exit Exam, Alameda Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman said he is likely to rule that the test cannot take effect this year as scheduled....

The court's preliminary injunction against the state would allow students to graduate this year if they've met all requirements for graduation - other than passing the test of basic math and English skills. It would mark a huge setback for state officials, who are eager to implement the test they see as the cornerstone of California's school accountability system.

What's worse, the judge refused to stay his own ruling while an appeal was heard. He clearly hoped the wheels of law would grind so slowly that it would be impossible to require the class of 2006 to actually know what they had been taught.

The basic problem, according to Judge Freedman, is that the test is "discriminatory" -- because predictably, different groups will perform differently on the test. But this same argument can be made for any test in any class, any grade, any imaginable method of evaluating the progress of students: some students will perform well, others will not.

Any evaluation whatsoever is fundamentally based upon "discrimination": discriminating between those who have learnt the knowledge and those who have not. And sadly, so long as different racial subgroups have different, culture-based attitudes about schooling -- and so long as boys are different from girls -- those differences among students will tend to clump into racial and gender classifications.

To be perfectly blunt about it, black and Hispanic male students whose subculture is less oriented towards sedentary study and more towards aggressive, even violent interactions will not do as well on the test (as a group) as Asians, and Jews, whose subcultures are precisely the opposite on this issue... or even black and Hispanic female students, who perform markedly better at this level. The performance of white students will be somewhere in the middle. So far, at least, nobody has found a way to change this.

Thus, for any academic test, Asians and Jews will perform the best (again, as a group), whites and black and Hispanic girls in the middle, and black and Hispanic boys at the bottom. But often, teachers are appalled at the pattern they see... and they use grade inflation to make up for this disparity. Many teachers -- perhaps unconsciously, perhaps in response to school rules -- will "re-norm" black and Hispanic male students upwards, awarding them grades that they do not deserve by their individual performance.

Many of those unfairly re-normed students (and of course individual, poorly performing whites, Asians, and Jews as well) have gone all the way through 13 grades of kindergarten, primary, and secondary schools, received a high-school diploma -- yet have been unable to read, write, or compute at even a middle-school level.

The solution of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit is to keep doing that, but more and harder:

If the tentative ruling stands, "this will be a historic ruling for all children in California because Freedman is telling the state, 'You cannot deny a student a diploma if they have not received adequate classroom materials,' " said Arturo Gonzalez, a San Francisco attorney representing students who have failed the exit exam but passed all other graduation requirements.

"You just can't do that," he said. "Its unfair, and it's illegal."

One of the major purposes of the California exit exam is to serve as a last chance to smoke out those students who have managed to duck education for years... aided and abetted by soft-hearted, soft-headed parents, teachers, and school administrators. When these kids fail the exit exam and realize they won't be graduating until they learn the material, it puts huge pressure on these students to take remedial classes and actually bring themselves up to the standards.

That good benefit was lost when Judge Freedman removed the requirement; he became the chief "enabler" of the cultural rejection of learning. Fortunately, however, some of the adults in the California judiciary are less interested in enabling destructive attitudes that in making sure kids are actually, you know, educated. Today, the California State Supreme Court itself issued a preliminary stay on Judge Freedman's ruling... and they did so in plenty of time to make the requirement possible for this year (since the test has already been given).

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated the state high school exit exam as a graduation requirement for this year’s senior class, leaving 47,000 high school students who failed the test in danger of not graduating.

The high court ordered a state appeals court to hold hearings in the case, but with schools ready to hold commencement ceremonies as soon as this weekend, a resolution appeared unlikely before then....

This year's class was the first in which passing the test of 10th grade English and eighth grade math and algebra was required for graduation.

Five of the seven justices sounded very skeptical of Freedman's decision:

Still, the justices said they were not convinced that Freedman ruled correctly. "At this juncture this court is not persuaded that the relief granted by the trial court's preliminary injunction ... would be an appropriate remedy," five of the seven justices wrote.

The case itself was not decided; it still must work it way through the appellate courts, and only then will one side or the other appeal it to the Supreme Court. But this still is very encouraging; such a clear signal that the State Supreme Court is likely prepared to strike this decision down should make the appellate court less sanguine about upholding it.

Accountability and responsibility must be integral parts of education; because in the end, education is not about teachers teaching... it's about students learning.

Keep your fingers dry and your powder crossed....

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 24, 2006, at the time of 4:51 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 5, 2006

A Herculean Effort to Kick Wal-Mart In the Shins

The city of Hercules, CA, a San Francisco suburb just north of Oakland and located on San Pablo Bay (which connects to San Francisco Bay), is the latest example of a city abusing powers of eminent domain to seize property from one commercial interest to sell to another. But in this case, it appears to be a purely political move out of condescension towards the current owner: Wal-Mart.

The Hercules City Council will consider whether to use eminent domain to wrest a 17-acre property from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. after the nation's largest retailer rejected a city offer to buy the site with views of San Pablo Bay, city officials said Thursday.

Briefly, Hercules decided it was going to build a major, upscale "neighborhood shopping center." When Wal-Mart heard that, it decided it would be good to have a Wal-Mart store there too; so it bought some adjacent property and submitted a plan to the city council.

But the Bay Area liberals decided that a Wal-Mart was too déclassé for their aristocratic image.

(Hercules sits in Contra Costa County, which in 2004 went for Kerry over Bush by 26%. Maybe they just liked Jean le Kerry because he was more of an aristo than Texas George?)

Wal-Mart wants to build a store in the booming East Bay town of Hercules, but critics there say the giant discount retailer would be too lowbrow for upscale locals.

On Thursday, opponents publicized an economic impact analysis that said Wal-Mart serves shoppers with a typical annual income of less than $50,000 -- far less than the nearly $90,000 average in Hercules.

"They (the stores) don't have to be totally upscale, but we need some better things," said opponent Tom Petersen, a psychologist who lives in an area of million-dollar plus homes called Victoria by the Bay.

Aghast at the thought of a vulgar Wal-Mart among the prize doves, the city council was poised to reject the plan, when Wal-Mart withdrew it. In response, the city council quickly tried to buy the land away from the lowbrow company... but Wal-Mart refused to sell.

Instead, it offered a new plan that was more in keeping with the overall design for the upscale Waterford District:

On March 31, however, Wal-Mart submitted a new application that it said substantially conforms to city requirements. The same day the company submitted its revised proposal, Councilwoman Charleen Raines was hardly welcoming, although she said she had not read it.

"What the council has said is that we want to buy the property,'' she said, describing the tussle with Wal-Mart as a "David and Goliath'' struggle. "At this point, we're concerned about moving ahead on this property. It's been hanging over us for a long time.''

(In this case, "a long time" means four months, since Wal-Mart originally bought the property in November, 2005.)

Outraged that Wal-Mart would not take the back of Hercules' hand for an answer -- there'll be floggings, I can assure you! -- the city has now moved to institue eminent domain and take the property by force.

This is precisely what we all feared when the Supreme Court decided the Kelo v. New London case: that cities would begin using eminent domain, the seizure of private property for public use, simply as a weapon in negotiations for buying property: Hercules offers some amount less than Wal-Mart wants for the land; but if Wal-Mart refuses, Hercules will simply seize the property and pay whatever they decide it's worth... possibly less than they originally offered.

It is, quite simply, legalized extortion... for which we have to thank the liberal faction of the Supreme Court of the United States.

So what is the state of California going to do about it?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 5, 2006, at the time of 6:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack