Civil Rights

It seems a number of people, in arguing against marriage equality, believe there is a broader agenda at work here.  Leaving aside the untenable logic of the claim that you might oppose a reasonable reform because you fear the next reform will be less than reasonable, I think marriage equality has taken on a symbolic importance in the broader movement toward civil rights for all.

While I believe marriage equality is an important step, as it begins to equalize critical institutions, and gives same-sex partnerships the same legal status of protection that others enjoy, at the same time I believe it might not even be the most important of changes still to be achieved.

Supporters of Prop 8’s ban on same sex marriage want to have it both ways.  On the one hand they will point to the expression of popular will in the Prop 8 vote, but at the same time they wish to ignore the sea change of public opinion, not just in California but nationwide, on this subject.

Last week, Nate Silver analyzed eight national polls on the same-sex marriage question and found, “The consensus of these polls is that support for same-sex marriage now exceeds opposition to it; on average, the polls have 51 percent saying they approve same-sex marriage, and 43 percent saying they are opposed.”

Mayor Krovoza Signs onto Mayoral Opposition to Prop 8 – It has been more than four years since California passed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.  In August 2010, a federal district court invalidated Proposition 8 on the grounds that it violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, by taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry without a sufficient governmental interest.

U.S. Federal Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker, in a 136-page ruling, said “Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.”

By Dan Aiello

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) is following through on his promise to reform California’s prisons with the introduction of a homeless rights bill intended to decriminalize homelessness in the Golden State, protecting “some of society’s most vulnerable members.”

Make no mistake, Assembly Bill 5 is as much prison reform, as it is civil rights, legislation.

I often believe that scientific allegories give us an insight into our culture that we may lack, because ideas presented in a more straightforward way can run into opposition.  For the past week I have gone to a particular episode in the TV Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In a make-believe world of vampires and demons, the tolksfolk in the fictitious California town of Sunnydale were often immune and indifferent to killings.  But a day when two young children were found dead, the town awoke to its problems and rose up in arms in a modern day witchhunt for the culprit – now, it turned out a demon had fabricated the situation to inflame the passions, but the main point is that the demon understood that the vehicle of child victims was a powerful tool that could awake even the most entrenched indifference.

As a father, I found myself, as I watched and listened to the reports, holding back tears, thankful that I knew my children were safe and sound.  Realizing how precarious life really is.

National tragedies like these have a natural course.  There is the shock.  There is the dizzying array of reports, most of them conflicting as rumors and innuendo begin to substitute for substantiated facts.  You always hope for the best, but yesterday we learned that if it was not the worst-case scenario coming true, it was its close cousin.

A new Associated Press-GfK Poll released today finds that almost four of every five Americans now believe that temperatures are on the rise and global warming will become a serious problem if nothing is done about it. The GfK Group is Germany’s largest market research institute.

The most interesting finding is within one subgroup – those people who do not trust scientists on the environmental front.

The Supreme Court of the United States on Friday did what many expected them not to do – agree to hear challenges to DOMA and Prop. 8.

The challenge to Proposition 8 has been followed closely here. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, offered a very limited ruling that really only applied to California.

California has begun, through the long-delayed AB 32 signed in 2006 by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, to implement a carbon cap-and-trade system that would reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

That represents a modest but not insignificant 17 percent cut from where the state’s emission would be without the legislative action. That was the same goal that the Obama administration tried to set nationally in 2009 and 2010, prior to opposition by Republicans in Congress.

It is a day hyped as the biggest shopping day of the year, but Walmart workers are threatening to use that hype to their maximum leverage, as they plan to walk out from a job at American’s largest private-sector employer, whose workers make on average $8.81 per hour with one third of their employees working less than 28 hours per week – thus not qualifying for benefits.