The Republicans have made a lot of political hay about “the massive” health care reform bills — comparing them to Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace, often cited as the world’s longest novel.  Once again, their political hay is full of little more than hot air.  It’s easy to expand something written by increasing the margins, enlarging the font and setting extra wide margins.  While that may make it easier to read, much like the large print books for visually challenged readers, those tricks don’t make it longer.  It just kills more trees.

The official version of the Senate’s health care bill has been printed in the Congressional Record.  It comes in at 208 pages — not over 2000!

A more accurate way of gauging the length of a written piece is to count words.  The House version of the health care reform bill comes in at just over 318,000 words;  the Senate bill is some 1500 words shorter.   As a matter of comparison, No Child Left Behind came in at 280,000 words.  Tolstoy’s War and Peace, depending upon which translation is used weighs in at a whopping 560,00 or even 670,000 words!

So, once again, the GOP leadership is using sleight of hand deception to create the image of big government.  Let’s be honest.  The conservatives would like nothing more than to see 100% of the federal budget used for defense.  All these regulations just get in their way.  And if that’s what you like, I would caution you to consider what has happened to our economy each and every time in our history when unfettered capitalism gained primacy.  The stock market crash of 1929, followed by a decade-long Great Depression; deregulation of the savings and loan industry, followed by its collapse in the early 1990s; and our current financial debacle.  The common causal thread in all of those events was a distaste for regulation and the inevitable greed that deregulation unleashed.

Republicans as a group seem to be plagued by short memories.  While ignorance of history might be understood (not forgiven, just understood), Dana Perino’s latest pronouncement takes the cake.  After demonstrating her ignorance of “ancient” history (apparently defined as anything prior to her birth) when she allowed as how she didn’t know about the Cuban Missile Crisis, she has topped that by stating on Fox News that there wasn’t a terrorist attack during George W. Bush’s term while condemning the Fort Hood attack as terrorism.  To be sure, 9/11 happened before she became Bush’s press secretary, but it cannot be denied as a seminal event of his presidency.  Pathetic.  Ignorant.

How do you solve a problem like Afghanistan?  It’s a puzzlement.  On the one hand, Gen. McChrystal is asking for more troops.  Lots more troops.  Perhaps upwards of 40,000 more troops.  On the other hand, other voices are saying that more troops isn’t the right answer.  The pundits have, understandably, taken sides, too often shedding more heat than light.

The first thing to understand is that troop numbers (and other resource levels) represent the tactical level.  The president has said that he’s doing an in depth analysis of the situation in Afghanistan.  Expecting a decision on troop levels before that analysis is complete may be good for scoring political points, but it’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.  It’s starting at the wrong end of the discussion.  It’s beginning at the end and working back towards the beginning.

The beginning of the analysis is defining precisely how Afghanistan figures into the national interest of the United States.  And national interest includes more than simply national security.  It does (or should) include economic interest and other areas of concern.   If the current relationship with Afghanistan doesn’t contribute to our national interest, what are the ways in which it does not? That defines our strategy.  The answer to that question leads directly to a discussion of how best to improve that relationship.  That discussion, in turn, results in mission definition.  This analysis doesn’t happen in a day or even a week.  And it couldn’t be completed so long as the Afghan election results weren’t known.

Then, and only then, can decision-makers arrive at the appropriate resource levels.  It’s easy to assume that a goal of improving our national security leads automatically to a military solution.  But that’s a very simplistic answer and assumes that force is the only way we can wield power.  It also assumes that we have unlimited military resources at hand.

A second fact needs to be understood and factored into the public understanding.  The general in the field is looking at what he needs for his particular mission.  He doesn’t and shouldn’t concern himself with actual or potential needs in other parts of the world, or even if the military can field the requested numbers without putting other current or potential conflicts at risk.  Those are things that are the responsibility of the Joint Chiefs to consider in advising the Commander in Chief.

The President has said that our effort in Afghanistan is aimed largely at training an Afghan army so that the country can defend itself.   Yet, is that possible given that the country ranks second only to Somalia in corruption?  It can even be argued that Somalia lacks a government at all, and Karzai’s control doesn’t extend much beyond Kabul.  It’s neither irrational nor unpatriotic to argue that no amount of US support — military or otherwise — will change the situation in Afghanistan.  And yet, simply to pull out would be immediately attacked as being weak on defense.  So there are domestic political considerations to be weighed as well.

If the President decides to send more troops, as it appears he will, how many can he spare?  Our military is far smaller than it should be to fight two wars at the same time.  And even though we are disengaging in Iraq, our forces are exhausted.  Most have served multiple tours — some as many as five — already.  How much more can we ask of them?  We cannot ignore the long-term costs of these deployments on their minds and spirits as well as on their bodies.  Costs that go well beyond monetary ones.  There may well not be the number of troops available that the general is requesting.  One reason there have been so many contractors providing support services in Iraq is that our military is too small to allot the needed numbers to non-combat roles.  Do we need to re-institute the draft if we’re going to continue to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and who-knows-where else?  That is a tactical question, but first we need to determine our  goals in that part of the world.

These are the sorts of questions and considerations that President Obama must address before making his decision.  His trips to Dover and to Arlington and to Fort Hood are part of his duty.  They are also a solemn reminder of the cost of war.  It is right that he understand that cost.  The cost of war should not be remote and impersonal.  It’s not a surprise that the military and diplomatic men on the ground have different views of how to “solve” the problem.  The former has been taught to advocate for a solution by force while the latter has been taught the potential benefits of so-called “soft power.”  Both have their place.  The question is which, or which mix, is the most likely to achieve the desired ends.

A deliberately controversial public service announcement has been receiving air time on the Web.  In it, the viewer takes the role of the abuser, guiding blows to the woman’s face via his/her mouse.  The violence level of each blow is identified, until bruised and battered, the woman falls to the floor.  At that point, 100% IDIOT is displayed on the screen.  The spoken message, in Danish, is “break the silence.”

I have a very mixed response to this PSA.  I’ve been on the receiving end of such blows, so I understand the importance of breaking the code of silence and shame that accompanies domestic violence.  Yet, is this in your face approach the best way to make the point?

And let us not forget that there are other forms of abuse that are just as insidious, perhaps more so, than physical abuse.  When one is beaten, the bruises remind you of why you hurt.  But there are other injuries — those that result from verbal and emotional abuse.  Those don’t leave visible marks, but they result in scars just the same.  And because there are no obvious physical manifestations, it’s easy to minimize them, to ignore them and even to deny them.  I know I did.  For years.  Decades even.  I was more fortunate than many women.   During an active recovery period from years of alcoholism, my abuser was able to confront the issue with me and to take responsibility for his actions instead of continuing to blame me for everything that went wrong in our relationship.  But that didn’t make all the pain go away.  I still struggle with some of the emotional scars.    For years, I was told  that I was always wrong.  Eventually, I began to believe it.

Yes, ending the silence is essential.  Because the silence perpetuates the shame.  Shame that somehow we are responsible for the actions of another person.  I fully accept that my actions may on occasion provoke a negative emotional response.  However, I am responsible only for my actions and my words, not for those of another.  If another person chooses to respond inappropriately — with physical, verbal or emotional abuse — I am not responsible for his action or words.  Abuse comes in many forms, and it’s not ok.  Ever.

One aspect of the health care discussion hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention.  This nation is woefully short of primary care physicians.  And, assuming something passes that brings at least some of those currently uninsured into the health care system, providing that care via primary care docs will be a huge challenge.  The reality is that doctors can make more money (and thus pay off the debts incurred during college and medical school) in a specialty rather than as a front line provider.  So, rather than leaving more people out of the system, let’s look at creative ways to encourage more medical students to go into internal medicine, family practice or general practice.

A generation ago, California lacked teachers to educate the baby boomers’ kids.  So, a policy was adopted to forgive 10% of a student’s debt (up to 50%) for every year they taught.  I benefited from that policy, as did thousands of other people.  Today, New York City has a program to pay for teachers’ masters programs if they teach in the inner city schools.  My niece’s daughter has a masters degree from Fordham University, courtesy of that program.  In the process, she gained experience as well as education, having taught two years in a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-sponsored school.  Why couldn’t we do something similar to encourage doctors to go into primary care?  The need is great, and there are a number of things we can do both immediately and in the long term.

Urgent care facilities:  Hospital emergency rooms are the most expensive option to obtain primary care.  Yet, many cities and towns have urgent care centers that are closed at night.  These are a lower cost option than the hospital emergency room.  Why open them at night and come up with a way to pay them to service the uninsured until we can get everyone covered?

Physician assistants and nurse practitioners: These professionals can provide routine care.  They need to be utilized to the maximum extent possible as front line providers.  While there are limitations in what they can do to provide care, their skills are not only adequate but appropriate for routine health care needs, freeing up physicians for those cases that require more detailed diagnosis and treatment.

Recently my husband spent about eight hours in the ER for a situation that required attention in the middle of the night but which was not life threatening.  We arrived at about 3 a.m., and like most ERs, it was busy and became busier once the sun came up.   Patients were stacked up waiting for a bed to clear, and during the wait, there were two and three EMTs for each patient who had to wait until their patient could be transferred from their gurney to a bed.

Here’s my proposal for immediate implementation:

Develop urgent care centers that work in concert with hospital ERs.  A triage process already exists to ensure that critical cases are seen ahead of non-emergency ones.  Those non-critical cases could be diverted to the urgent care facility.  And the urgent care centers could be staffed with physician assistants and nurse practitioners, with a physician available if needed.  The physicians there would not need to be emergency medicine doctors, as the cases seen there would have already been determined not to require that level of training.

In the mid-term range, if we lack sufficient PAs and nurse practitioners, a crash program could be initiated to increase their numbers.  Incentives to encourage people to enter this profession could come in the way of forgiveness of loans or even paying outright for their professional education, provided they commit to a given number of years of service — at prevailing wages.  It’s an investment in our health care future.

In the long term, the need for additional primary care doctors remains.  Yet, the same incentives outlined above could be used as incentive for doctors — albeit with a longer commitment of time.

Do we really need more plastic surgeons to do face lifts and breast implants?  I think not.

My current Congressman is a conservative Republican… not so conservative that he falls into the wingnut category, but close.  I’m what someone called a faint blue light in a sea of red.  So I make a point to communicate with him fairly regularly, if only to remind him that he also represents people with views that don’t conform to his own.  And if I get any response, it’s a blanket canned one repeating all the GOP talking points.  It’s as if he doesn’t have an original thought in his head but simply responds out of obligation, using the same pre-recorded message to everyone.

My most recent communication was on health care.  I use the term recent rather loosely, because I had forgotten what I said.  After reading through the tirade on how we must protect the insurance industry from the inevitable collapse that would result from “government-run” health care — at least he’s gotten off the death panel bit — my blood pressure was rising, so I fired off a response.

I pointed out to him that when he first ran at least 5 terms ago, he promised to serve only 2 terms.   So much for that promise.  I also pointed out to him that he was already receiving government run health care as he is eligible for Medicare.  Whether he also uses one of the health insurance plans available to Congress and all other federal employees, he is automatically enrolled in Medicare Part A.  I challenged him to give up his government-funded, government-run health care programs.  Will he?  Certainly not!  So I asked how he figured he could in good conscience participate in something that he obviously didn’t think his constituents were worthy of.

I’ve probably had a wider range of experiences in the health care system than he has.  I benefited from the federal health care system for a number of years, thanks to my former husband’s employment as a civil servant.  I’ve had employer-provided health insurance (and paid my portion of the premiums).  I’ve been in the private insurance market, with its high-cost-low-benefit policies, been denied coverage, had coverage canceled after filing a claim, and been uninsured.  I have experienced first hand the limitations of “managed care” with its gatekeepers, limited choice of providers and the like.  And next year, my husband’s company has eliminated choice of plans altogether — there is one insurance plan for all employees.  In contrast to my own experiences, this summer I’ve seen how Medicare with a private supplemental policy works, thanks to my mother-in-law’s health crisis.

If I had a vote on health care reform, it would be Medicare Part E (for everyone).  It is a system that has been in operation for over a generation — i.e., no new bureaucracy and a proven track record.  Participants pay a monthly premium of about $100 and most supplement that with a secondary, private plan.  By bringing millions of additional people, many of them healthier than the senior population, into the system, per capita costs would automatically go down.  Everyone would be covered.  And the insurance companies would be able to sell those supplement policies to a huge pool of people.  Just as they do with the current Medicare supplements, insurance companies would compete with each other in that secondary market.

Medicare cannot refuse people because of a pre-existing condition — nor can the insurance companies who provide Medicare supplements.  And they cannot cancel your coverage when the bills start coming in.  Everyone 65 or older is included now.  Why not simply remove the age restrictions?

It is true that reimbursement rates for Medicare are lower than for other insurance plans.  But doctors would be able to streamline their administrative activities.  The bills would automatically go to CMS for payment.  Currently, doctors must maintain a billing department whose function is to deal with insurance companies — getting prior approval for treatment and fighting for payment afterward.  That cost of doing business would go away, more than making up for the reduced reimbursement rates.

Younger people argue that they are paying for the care of the elderly because their own medical costs are low.  True, UNLESS you get into an accident or contract an illness.  And if they do have a medical catastrophe, those who are uninsured can still get treatment.  If they can pay, they are generally bankrupted.  If not, the providers absorb the costs.  And those of us who are insured pay for the care of the uninsured — to the tune of about $1000 each per year in increased premium costs.  Every rational person admits that the current system isn’t working.  The challenge becomes how to have a real discussion — looking at what is best for the American people, rather than how to preserve campaign contributions.

The battle for “net neutrality” is heating up, and just like in the health care debate, the misinformation campaign on the right is beginning as well.  The FCC has proposed regulations that will preserve the open architecture of the Internet, guaranteeing that all content providers are created equal in terms of access.  Not surprisingly, the telecoms are jockeying for a model that can best be compared to the Priority Mail system at the Post Office.  That model would charge providers a fee to ensure faster delivery.  Large providers such as Google could pay the telecoms extra to make sure their packets of data are pushed ahead of content by others who choose not to pay to play.

The beauty of the Internet is that it’s open to everyone.  Users pay a connection fee to the telecoms — a fee that is in part based on delivery speed.  The faster the connection (via Ted Steven’s infamous series of tubes), the more you pay.  But everyone has equal access to those tubes.  Nobody’s content gets priority delivery.  The Internet has a democratizing aspect.  People can communicate across political and geographic borders at near real-time speed.  During the aftermath of the Iranian election last June, the Internet proved a vehicle for getting the truth out — that a significant segment of the Iranian populace were willing to stand up and publicly criticize the government for what they saw as a fraudulent vote.  Would news of their demonstrations, and the violent response of the government and its henchmen, have gotten out but for the Internet?

That’s what makes the response on the US right to net neutrality both intriguing and predictable.  Sen. McCain claims that net neutrality would make the Internet subject to government take-over.  Glenn Beck calls it a threat to free speech.  How Orwellian can they get?  Precisely the opposite is true.  Both of them are dancing to the beat of their corporate overlords.   McCain’s position is laughable given that a year ago he couldn’t even manage to do his own email.  Now he (or more likely one of his aides) twitters.  Not surprisingly, McCain has benefited significantly from telecom campaign contributions.  And we all remember his “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” quip.  Is it really any wonder that he wants as much corporate control over the Internet as possible?

And then there’s Glenn Beck, who is convinced that President Obama’s rescue of General Motors means that the government can now track all GM owners via OnStar.  I guess he really wants GM to fail, too, right along with President Obama.  His latest insanity is claiming that having an open Internet architecture impinges on free speech.

Next we’ll have the equivalent of death panels.  So, what’s the solution?  Read the various bills and amendments.  Follow the discussion.  And research the ties between various members of Congress and the organizations and corporations that fund their campaigns.  Then, using facts, speak out and speak up.  Lobby your representatives.  Yes, this in addition to lobbying your local and state representatives.  Remember, democracy is a contact sport.  Unless we let them know that we know, they will continue to represent the special interests.  If we stay asleep at the switch, we give up our power.

We’ve heard for years that all politics are local.  My community will be electing city council and school board members next week.  But once again I feel I don’t know much about the candidates.  Our local paper has, not surprisingly, endorsed the status quo.  I’m not satisfied with the status quo, but getting information about the other candidates can be a challenge.  One is a perennial candidate who runs largely self-funded campaigns just about any time there is an election.  Once elected, he tends to play the role of agitator — not necessarily a bad thing — but his tactics are such that his ability to influence changes is limited.

As a “small blue light in a sea of red,” I find local elections particularly depressing events.   In recent years, the school board in a neighboring community was convinced (as a result of a young man attending a single school board meeting!) to add intelligent design to the science curriculum. While a depressing events, this can also be seen as the ability of a single voice to effect change.  So that’s the focus of this post.

We progressives need to recognize democracy as a contact sport.  Unlike our opponents, we tend to think in terms of national elections.  We need to get active at the local level.  Naomi Wolf, in “Give Me Liberty,” lays out a road map of how to effect change.  President Obama, during the campaign, reminded us that we are the change we’ve been waiting for.  That means we need to be at least as active as our opponents have been.  And, if democracy is a contact sport, we need to engage at the local level.  It’s not enough to vote every four years and think that will do it.  Conservatives get it.  They’ve been active at the local level — attending city council meetings, planning commission meetings, and school board meetings.  If that single young man could make a difference, so can we.

It’s scary to speak up.  I understand how much easier it is to write our Congressional representatives.  We can be relatively anonymous that way.  There’s a certain amount of safety firing off an email or even a hand-written letter or a phone call.  Showing up at a local meeting means we have to claim our beliefs.  We might get booed, or even shouted down.  But in speaking up, we provide evidence that there are other views — not only to the powers that be but also to the others in attendance.  If we can make our case intelligently and with conviction, we can have an effect.  We need to remind our local representatives that we are watching and voting.  And we may affect the others in attendance — showing them an alternate viewpoint and challenging to rethink their views.

Now, have I done this in the past?  No.  But I’ve become convinced that it is necessary.  It’s difficult and time consuming.  And it becomes all the more difficult when we have family obligations — dinners to fix, homework to supervise, etc., especially after a long day at work.  But here are a few suggestions that will make juggling those obligations a bit easier.  Find someone who shares your views and tag team at meetings — divide them between you, take notes and share them.  Find someone who can’t attend meetings but who will research the issues. Watch the meetings on your local access station and then follow up with letters and phone calls to local officials.  Make  your voice heard.  When election time comes around, host candidate meet and greet events so that you get to know where they stand on the issues.  Voter pamphlets, at least here in California, are notoriously poor at communicating much about the candidates.  Some states don’t even have them at all.  And there are organizations that will, for a fee, send out official-looking “endorsement” flyers that are meaningless when it comes to providing voters with useful information about the candidates.  Robo-calls rarely provide much information and are more often push-polls designed to damage the opponent or calls from someone in a higher office endorsing one or more of his cronies.

While there is gang activity here, like in many cities, it concerns me when the candidates for school board seem to be focused more on policing in the schools than on curriculum or figuring out how to reduce the dropout rate.  To be sure, schools need to be a safe place for our kids to learn.  But let’s not forget that most kids will rise to meet expectations that challenge them to be better and to learn more.  And engaged kids are less likely to be disruptive.  This band-aid approach to treating symptoms is endemic in many areas of society.  Rather than doing the hard work, the hard thinking, about what causes a particular problem, it’s easier to apply a band-aid, regardless of whether that will do anything to remedy the situation.

In the months since President Obama was inaugurated, many people who voted for him have been disappointed that change hasn’t happened more quickly, that some of the cherished changes haven’t happened yet.

Sen. Reid has just announced that he is sending a consensus health care reform bill to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring.  The good news is that a public option is still alive and well.  Apparently, the “opt-out” version is the one that will be going to CBO for scoring.  This represents huge progress for the millions of Americans who are struggling to pay for health insurance and health care.  And it demonstrates that when people speak up, the Senators listen.  Despite repeated polls that consistently showed public support for increasing choice and competition, the lobbyists’ voices seemed to be carrying the day.  Late last week, the tide began to turn.  Why?  Because hundreds of thousands of people took the time to telephone their elected representatives, voicing support for the public option.

True, the proposal Sen. Reid is sending to the CBO may not be as robust as some would prefer.  It’s a long way from single-payer.  But it represents a sea change from what health insurance reform looked like just a few weeks ago.  The opt-out system as currently proposed would give individual states a year after implementation to decide they don’t want their citizens to be able to participate in a publicly-run, not for profit, self-sustaining insurance plan.  The challenge facing the Senate leadership is essentially a political and procedural one — how to ensure that a threatened filibuster can be avoided or broken.  That requires all 58 Democrats and the 2 Independents who caucus with them to stick together.  Should any one of them not vote for cloture, meaningful reform could not happen.  A final vote would require only 50 Senators to approve it, with the Vice-President casting the tie-breaking vote.

Sure, in an ideal world, this issue would have some measure of bipartisan support.  But as Sen. Reid pointed out, unlike in previous years, he can count the total number of moderate Republicans on two fingers.  In the past, moderate Republicans were able to work with Democrats to forge the kinds of compromises necessary to get bills passed.  Things have changed.  Those two GOP moderates are under enormous political pressure to block change.  So Democrats must go it alone.

One of those moderates, Sen. Olympia Snowe, prefers a trigger to the opt-out plan.  It presumes that the industry will voluntarily comply work to lower rates.  Absurd!  Rather, the public option should be open to anyone who is dissatisfied with their current insurance, not just those who are currently or find themselves uninsured.  And it should be implemented much sooner than 2013.  Else, like the banks have done in anticipation of the new credit card regulations taking effect that would limit interest rates, rates will rise before the new requirements are implemented.

My personal belief is that health insurance companies should not profit from the misery of their customers.  Being not-for-profit doesn’t mean that they should operate as a charity or that their executives shouldn’t be compensated, but the greed that is an inherent component of capitalism shouldn’t get between consumers and their health care.

The lesson of the past few weeks in the health care reform debate is that concerned people do matter.  As horror stories of real people who were denied coverage, or had coverage rescinded or found that despite insurance, they had been bankrupted by medical bills began to cut through the stories of doom and gloom promoted by the industry, people got angry.  And they spoke up.  On a single day, over 300,000 calls came into Congressional offices.  Think about it.  One in ten people took the time to get involved.  We are, in fact, the change we’ve been waiting for.  We just need to take action.

Reality TV has become a staple of the network lineup.  These shows are cheaper to produce, thus maximizing profit for the studios.  But is there a hidden cost that we need to address?

It appears that the parents of the so-called “Balloon Boy” are now being suspected of staging an elaborate hoax to catapult them onto their own reality show.  But are they all that unique?  There is the Duggar family whose claim to fame is 18 kids and counting.  And there is the Gosslins with their brood and their disintegrating marriage.  There are other families whose situation is outside the norm, whether due to size or physical challenges.  They’ve managed to parlay their situation into a financial bonanza.  Is it surprising that the so-called “Octo-mom” figured that a reality show would alleviate the financial burden of raising 14 children?  Or that the Heenes looked at a reality show as a way to improve their economic future?

I wonder about the effect of these shows on the children involved.  It would appear that, for example, the Gosslins’ original motivation was to provide for their unexpectedly large family.  But such a decision can have unexpected ramifications.  Whether the perks include tummy tucks, hair transplants, fancy vacations or big, beautiful homes, at what point do the potential for those to increase viewership result in exploitation of the family and especially of the kids?  It would be very difficult to turn down some of these perks, even if the family has that degree of control over “creative content.”

And what culpability do the rest of us bear in all this?  Viewership determines ad rates, and whether we like it or not, that’s the raison d’etre for TV — to make money for the corporate owners.  Programming is simply the hook to get us to watch the commercials.  If people stopped watching these shows, they would cease to exist.  But some of us seem to enjoy watching train wrecks…  So it’s unlikely that reality shows will go away completely.  But I can hope.

One of the standard arguments against same sex marriage is that it somehow threatens “traditional” marriage.  In my previous post I said that to date no one had been able to provide a rational explanation of how that threat works.  Well, Federal Judge Vaughn Walker has the same concern.  And to nobody’s surprise, the attorney for the group that sponsored California’s Prop 8 couldn’t provide any evidence to back up his claim.  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” exclaimed lawyer Cooper.

Let the evidence be heard.  I’m sure there will be some “independent” studies that will attempt to demonstrate that somehow same sex marriage is the threat the right wants to convince us of.  But I suspect their studies will be as independent as the one Price Waterhouse Cooper did at the behest of the health care lobby — one that ultimately even Price had to admit was flawed because of the limitations placed on them.  So they distanced themselves from it to retain some shred of credibility.  Hopefully, Judge Vaughn and ultimately the Supreme Court justices will be able to separate fear from reason.

To provide some background, several years ago, San Francisco began performing same sex marriages — clearly an attempt to bring the issue to the courts.  The California Supreme Court ruled that the issue had to be decided by the state not at the city level.  It later ruled that same sex marriage was legal in California.  That prompted the opponents of same sex marriage to sponsor an amendment to the state constitution that defined marriage as between one man and one woman.  Following passage of the amendment (Proposition 8), the court chose not to overturn it on the narrow grounds that it didn’t represent a “major” change under California law, thus requiring legislative initiation.  Supporters of gay rights have now taken the issue to the Federal Courts, where the challenge is based on the “equal protection” clause.

One might ask why the Supreme Court of California seems to be of two minds on this issue.  The answer is that in California, Supreme Court justices are appointed by the governor but retention is subject to popular vote.  This situation certainly limits their independence…  In the past, a Chief Justice was unseated for her opposition to the death penalty.  California is definitely a purple state.  The urban and coastal areas tend to be more liberal while the interior and rural areas are more conservative.  Additionally, California’s initiative process allows the people to vote on issues that would be confined to legislative action in other states.  And Californians, like people in every other state, can be persuaded to vote their fears rather than their hopes, their better angels.

It is up to our judicial system to look beyond the fears, beyond the narrowness of mind to look at the larger issue involved — that of equality.  It’s really very simple, although some people try to use fear to try to confuse us.  Remember, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  To date, when judges and justices — even ones appointed by Republican presidents — have ruled in favor of equality and against discrimination, the cry has been heard throughout the land that they are those nasty judicial activists, legislating from the bench.  One can only wonder how much equality would exist were the rabble to have its way.  So, what we need is judges and justices with sufficient spine to make the Constitution serve us all, to live up to the idea that we were all created equal.  Brown v. Board of Education ruled that separate is inherently not equal.  While the issue at hand was segregated schools, the principle is the same.

The battle for equality has already taken a long time.  It may take longer.  But it will be won.  When our schools became more integrated a generation ago, those kids learned that they had far more in common that they had previously thought.  We are all the better for it, despite the tensions that still exist in many communities.  Most of us now have friends of various races.  That is a big change from my parents’ circle of friends.  A similar generational shift is occurring relative to gay rights.

There is an understandable impatience with the pace of progress.  It is painfully slow.  And those who oppose gay rights use fear in abundance to try to persuade us.  Remember, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.   For those who are impatient that President Obama has not yet overturned Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, I would ask them to reconsider any decisions to pull back, to criticize how he’s holding the mop.  Clearly, the state of the economy has had to be at the top of his priorities.  And he views health care reform as critical to an economic recovery.  Those two things affect each and every one of us –both straight and gay.  Wouldn’t we want him to place those at the top of his agenda?  Well, the economy is beginning to recover, and health care reform is wending its way through Congress, albeit progress is painfully slow on both fronts.  I recall Candidate Obama reminding us that we must be the change we want.  We must not become discouraged at the pace of progress, even though we would prefer greater change and faster change.  We must not opt out.  We must not sit back and complain.  We must work harder.  We must write our representatives at all levels.  We must lobby them as hard as those who want the status quo to continue.  Else we have nobody else to blame for failure.  We worked hard for Obama’s election.  We must keep working to overcome the voices of intolerance.