Simple

With respect to the Prop 8 ruling, a person I know writes to me and asks,

...tell me if it fits with what your understanding of the Constitution provides. One man, overruling a majority in a vote, on a Proposition approved as constitutional by the State Supreme Court.

Yes: good move No: he was one man against the majority...
Real simple.

Since the person wants a simple answer, clearly, it's "Yes. Good move." But, sadly, for what appears to be a majority of Americans, and probably nearly all teabaggers, all the RWS™, it's far from simple. Because these people, these self-described patriots who claim fealty to the Constitution (while wanting to amend it severally and serially and cynically, for votes), don't have a clue about what it says. And, to the extent that they do, they simply ignore it.

To those who are outraged by this decision, this decision by a conservative judge, argued, among others, by a Republican former Solicitor General, I say, READ THE DAMN RULING. You might learn something about the law, and why we are a nation of laws, the role judges have in protecting minorities, upholding principle and law. I admit it's not often seen nowadays; but it's a shining example of judicial restraint. It's the opposite of judicial activism. It's a non-ideological finding of fact. It's, well, conservatism. At its best. Which we rarely see any more.

As simply as I can say it: we have laws, and we have a judiciary whose job -- its most important job, anyway -- is to keep people from running roughshod over those laws. A majority can't legally ignore the Constitution. State courts can't invalidate the Constitution. If people don't like the Constitution -- and god knows Republicans really don't -- there is a constitutional way to change it. You can't do it by state proposition. Period. People who don't get that either fail to understand the idea of constitutional democracy, or don't really love the country as established and defended for the last two hundred thirty four years. Simple.

I get that many religious people are horrified by homosexuality. In the case of many of the most public of them, clearly it's because they loathe themselves for being homosexual. For them, I feel sorry. (I'm a liberal.) For the rest, it's because their interpretation of their religious literature tells them that homosexuality is some sort of an abomination. Okay, fine. Believe it. There's nothing I can do to convince them otherwise, any more than I can convince them the earth is older than six or twelve thousand years, that evolution happens, that homosexuality is not a choice for any but a small percentage, that the climate is changing. Believe what you must. If humans valued fact, we wouldn't have religion. Or teabaggers.

As the judge said, there's simply no argument to be made against gay marriage other than a religious one. None. All the arguments -- about kids, about degradation of straight marriage, about agendas -- are simply false, as was factually established during the trial. Excluding gays from the right of marriage is discriminatory, it's religious based, it's predicated on hate for a class of people the recognition of whose rights produces no demonstrable harm to a state, to the country, to anyone; and the denial of whose rights offers no demonstrable good to those doing the denying, and only harm to those discriminated against. It's obvious. I've been married for thirty nine years. When gays got the right to marry in a couple of states, it did nothing to my marriage. Nothing. There's no way it could. (DOMA. How despicable, what a laughable title for an act. How shameful that Bill Clinton approved it.)

If you don't approve of gay marriage, don't do it. If you don't like gays, don't associate with them. Don't let them in your church or your home. Hold up nasty signs and shout at them if it makes you feel good, if your low self-esteem or shaky sexuality, your perverse view of WWJD demands it. If you think gay is a choice, an infection that you can catch, well, you're sadly misinformed, ignorant of fact, and a perfect match for the Tea Party. Join up. It's your right, it's all your right. What's not your right is to vote away the rights of others.

What in god's name is the harm to you caused by gay marriage? Down the street, around the corner, in another state? What is the state's interest in being involved?

The judge, who must be an incredibly brave man whose life, I'd have to say, is now at risk (given the hatred regularly whipped up by the RWS™), did what any person with open eyes and guts of steel -- free of prejudice, valuing the idea of the rule of law -- would have done. He struck down a law that has no place in America; a law that clearly denies rights to people with no justification; a law for which there is no constitutional argument. That a majority chose to harm a minority is no excuse. It's exactly why we have federal courts. It couldn't be clearer why we need them. And why it's a tragedy that so few people really get it. Even those on state courts.

Judicial review is as basic to America as fruited plains. Without it, we'd be Iran, or Soviet Russia. But that's not simple, it's not easy. It's hard. Democracy is hard. Respect for minorities, for the law, is hard. Accepting the rights of those with whom you disagree is hard. Being a RWS™, being a teabagger, is not hard. It's about wishing away reality, because reality is hard. It's about anger and fear, with no need to produce solutions. It's about giving in to the basest instincts, and calling it patriotism. Or something.

Unless there are more judges like Judge Walker out there, we're on our way to oblivion. And the people who are taking us there, who are responsible, are pointing their fingers in exactly the wrong direction.

And, yeah, the question pissed me off.

[Update, 8/8: I'm not the only one who sees the judge's decision as conservatism at its best.]

Why Do Republicans Hate America?

It really is puzzling. I mean, I know the current batch of Republican congressional leaders are a little thin, neuronally. I get that letting people vote is repugnant and scary to them, and that they distinguish themselves from Democrats, election after election, by actively discouraging -- preventing, as much as possible -- any but white Christians from doing it. Yet they don't entirely reject the notion. It's sort of a basic principle, after all. And we know how much they love the military (not including, unfortunately, paying for their care.) But when it comes to the law, the Constitution, they couldn't be less supportive. While claiming the mantle of law and order, they make no bones about the fact that they don't trust the American legal system, not a bit. Not one damn bit. It's hard to reconcile this with the proposition of patriotism.

And so it is, predictably, that these dim bulbs flip their switches, shine their weak lights into the darkness, and it gets darker. Refractory to all input, ignorant of evidence, believing that "24" is a documentary, yet again they denounce affording terrorists -- even American citizens -- any legal rights. Once again the Justice Department captures a guy, follows the law, gets him to talk, and these congressional Republicans are having none if it. Even though it works, time and again; even though torturing prisoners and ignoring our laws has led to false information and the inability to prosecute offenders; despite the fact (scratch that: BECAUSE of the fact) that the Obama administration is following well-established law, fundamental to our democracy, the screamers are screaming, the dummies are dumbing. I wish it were only pathetic. But it's much more than that.

Hypocrisy, for one. Because even George Bush mirandized terrorists. Tried them in courts, bragged about it. (Well, sure, not all of them. But the ones he did were convicted.) As with deficits, the Republicans seem only to have gotten agitated when that black guy got the white house. But it's more: where's the evidence that using law enforcement and courts the way they've been used for a couple of centuries is inadequate to bring justice? At what point did our laws become disposable? What's the evidence that they can't serve our needs? Since when did torture become a way to get useful information, as opposed to wringing false confessions out of innocents? For originalists, right wingers seem to have forgotten the lessons of Salem. Now those folks knew what torture is for.

So the Obama administration keeps rounding up terrorists, following the law, and getting actionable intelligence. And somehow that makes the crazy right wingers even crazier. What the hell is wrong with him, they want to know. He's blowing away all our talking points. So, Gumbying themselves, they point to success and call it failure. He doesn't get it, they claim. Oh, sure, he gets terrorists. But not it. Following laws that are there for a reason, that have stood the test of time, Obama is, according to those crazies, damaging America. Because he respects it. Which they don't.

Go figure.

Underdog

Other than Barack Obama, homosexuals, and taxes, there's nothing Republicans hate more than "activist judges;" and there's no kind of judge more revered by them than a "strict constructionist." So you'd think there'd be outrage from the right at the decision just rendered by that most "liberal" of federal appeals courts, the Ninth Circuit, seated in San Francisco. I'm waiting.

The case was about the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Not a problem, they ruled, 2-1. Clearly, there's not a strictly-constructed, non-activist argument to be made. So what the judge said was this:

"The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded... [The Pledge] is a recognition of our founders' political philosophy that a power greater than the government gives the people their inalienable rights... Thus, the pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particular sect.

Now, it seems to me, no matter what one's opinion of the Pledge might be, it's impossible to see those words as any sort of Constitutional argument. It's pure opinion (and not a little purple prose.) It's an argument ex cathedra; it's an attempt to rationalize a preconceived conclusion. Activism, in other words, at its most undisguised. Wrote the dissenting judge: "Under no sound legal analysis adhering to binding Supreme Court precedent could this court uphold state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the 'under God' version of the Pledge of Allegiance by children in public schools."

I was ten when The Pledge changed to include those two words, and my recollection is dim. I recall less about my own feelings which, I'd guess, were somewhere between neutral and puzzled, than I do about my parents' reaction. They were upset. And that was at a time when they were sending me to Sunday School.

It's a position that some people will never understand. Too subtle. Not a winnable argument (which is not to say unimportant, as they march, crosses in hand, toward my door). But anyone should be able, with only a minimum of thought, to recognize that the decision just rendered, on whatever else it might be based, had nothing to do with Constitutional law.