Harry Jackson, flustered. Opposing civil rights is such hard work.

The bad part about direct democracy is that it empowers the tyranny of the majority to overrun the rights of unpopular minorities.

We have reported before that when the D.C. city council voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, the lone dissenting vote was cast by Marion Barry, who claimed to stand “on the moral compass of God” and opposed the legislation also out of what he claimed to be racial solidarity. Joining him in standing in the schoolhouse door was Bishop Harry Jackson, a District resident (more on that below) who is the pastor of a Maryland church.

Unhappy that the city council passed the civil rights legislation, Jackson threatened to bring the matter to a city-wide referendum, where, as we have noted before, it just might pass.  Jackson hit a snag earlier this week, though, when the city’s Board of Elections invalidated the proposed ballot question since it would deny civil rights to LGBT people, whom the city’s Human Rights Act protects from discrimination. City law wisely prohibits ballot referenda that contradict the Human Rights Act; human rights are not, and should never be, up for a popular vote.

Mr. Jackson is challenging the board’s decision in court, hoping an “activist judge” will side with him and let him put the discriminatory civil rights question on the ballot. Complicating the matter is whether Mr. Jackson has standing as a District resident to propose the referendum. As the Washington Blade has reported, Jackson and his wife own two houses (blessed are the poor?) in Montgomery County, Maryland, and neighbors claim they reside in one of those houses, a $1.1-million mansion. The Jacksons, however, claim neither home as their principal residence according to tax records. For the purpose of voting, Mr. Jackson claims residence in unit 630 in the tony Whitman condominium building in the Mount Vernon Triangle area of DC. Tax records show that a Mr. Joseph Honaker owns this one-bedroom condo and claims it as his primary residence. If these records all hold true, it would appear that Mr. Jackson shares a one-bedroom condo with another man.

Joining Mr. Jackson in his battle against civil rights is Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, former D.C. Delegate to the House of Representatives, former city councilman, and civil rights activist (until now); Rev. Dale E. Wafer, pastor of the Harvest Church in Northeast; Melvin Dupree; Sandra B. Harris, a real estate agent with Cosmopolitan Properties in Shaw; Dr. Patricia Johnson, dean of a local Christian liberal arts college; and Bobby Perkins, Sr., pastor of World Missions for Christ Church in Shaw.  Even if Mr. Jackson is not a bona fide resident, that still doesn’t necessarily stop the ballot referendum since one of these other residents could carry the torch of discrimination.

Nobody knows how the court will rule (our guess is that they will defer to the Board of Elections,  City Council and city attorney), but it is truly shocking to see such strident opposition to civil rights in a supposedly liberal city, where over 90% of the electorate cast ballots for Barack Obama.  Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Bishop Harry Jackson, who, while a District resident, is the pastor of a Maryland church and is pushing to put civil rights up to a popular vote. The Post reports that he is going to try to bring to a referendum the city council’s near-unanimous vote to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.  (Councilman Marion Barry, claiming to stand “on the moral compass of God”, was the lone dissenter)

Though we have worried before that such a referendum might pass, the city council could avoid a ballot measure altogether by inserting the marriage language into the city’s human rights code. According to existing statues, the District’s human rights code is not subject to voter referenda— this is wise, as civil rights should never be put to a popular vote.

However, even if Mr. Jackson fails to get the question on the ballot and even if such a question were rejected by the electorate, Congress could always intervene.  In fact, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma) have introduced a bill to prevent the city council from recognizing same-sex marriage.

It’s unlikely such a bill would pass.  Soon the District will be added to the list of American juridictions that have ended marriage discrimination.

Gov. George Wallace stands in the doorway of the University of Alabama, refusing a Federal order to desegregate the school.

Civil rights advanced today in the District of Columbia in spite of Marion Barry, who cast the lone vote in opposition to the city’s recognition of same-sex marriage.  The former mayor, drug convict, habitual tax-cheat, and overwhelmingly re-elected councilman from Ward 8 justified his vote with an outrageous claim of racial solidarity:

What you’ve got to understand is 98 percent of my constituents are black and we don’t have but a handful of openly gay residents.  Secondly, at least 70 percent of those who express themselves to me about this are opposed to anything dealing with this issue. The ministers think it is a sin, and I have to be sensitive to that.

That’s completely irrelevant. Mr. Barry believes that civil rights should be up to the popular vote, though he, of all people, as a former civil rights activist, should know how morally problematic that is.  Individual rights (especially the right to equal protection) are for individual citizens to have and not for others to take away; this is the absolutely essential foundation of a free constitutional democracy.

Furthermore, contentious civil rights never pass on popular vote— if they did, they wouldn’t be contentious.  The purpose of federal civil rights laws and Constitutional rights is to prevent the tyranny of the majority from abridging the rights of unpopular minorities.

Mr. Barry, completely oblivious to the fact that his very same arguments have been used to justify racial segregation, disenfranchisement, and discrimination, predicted alarmingly that the council’s vote would provoke a “civil war.”

The language of civil war was also a favorite of Gov. George Wallace (pictured above), who infamously promised “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” in his inaugural speech standing at the same exact spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy.  Whereas Mr. Wallace decades later repented for his dreadful segregationism, Mr. Barry (yet again) has no shame.

After the 2004 election, some asked what’s the matter with Kansas? After this incident and after noticing that Mr. Barry was re-elected to the council with an astonishing 91% of the vote, we wonder, what’s the matter with Ward 8?

President Obama’s recent decision on the torture memos (to release the memos, but not to prosecute the authors), though dissatisfying to many, is politically a good compromise.  It partly addresses the need for accountability for Executive Branch abuses by exposing public officials and their support of torture.  The president’s decision not to investigate and prosecute further, though not the ideal solution to upholding the rule of law, will spare the country and Congress from a protracted political argument that would prove to be a needless distraction.

Though some in the administration have justified the end of the torture policy as a way to deprive al-Qaeda and its sympathizers of a recruitment tool, it’s hard to believe that suicide bombers are recruited to their cause solely because of a far-off country’s limited violation of the Geneva Conventions.  That said, it is hypocritical for the former vice-president Dick Cheney to demand the full release of all the memos that might suggest the efficacy of torture.  During much of his tenure, he defended the administration’s secrecy as necessary for national security.  How quickly he changes his mind when it suits his political opinion.

Even if CIA records reveal the efficacy of torture (we believe the CIA can probably torture information out of a suspect provided they find the right suspect), that does not make it right.  Mr. Cheney’s utilitarian argument for torture is wrong: we cannot sacrifice human rights in the pursuit of terrorists.

We agree with the president’s decision—certainly a difficult decision for him—to move on.

"Marriage is not a right." Bishop Harry Jackson of Beltsville's New Hope Christian Church voice his own interpretation of civil rights.

We wrote before of the fact that an astonishing 70% of black Californians voted for Proposition 8, which prohibited same-sex marriage.  We also wrote before that when we extrapolate the California results and apply them to the District, a similar city ballot question would pass if one considers income, education, or race.*

Just a few weeks ago, to our surprise, the city council unanimously passed a bill to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. That very same day, the Vermont legislature stole much of the media thunder by overriding the governor’s veto and legalizing same-sex marriage in the Green Mountain State.  Nonetheless, it was a bold move for Washington, a city whose every decision can be vetoed by a Congress looking to make a statement. The issue of marriage is usually portrayed in the media as a religious-secular struggle and another side of the issue rarely discussed: race.

The relationship between race and opinion on same-sex marriage— a relationship so quietly whispered it dare not speak its name!— has come out of the closet in DC, a city that votes overwhelmingly Democrat and is also 56% black.

Several area churches (all predominantly black and some of them suburban) spent part of Tuesday protesting the city council’s recent decision and lined up outside the Wilson Building on Freedom Plaza to voice their displeasure. (See the Post’s video of the event)

Bishop Harry Jackson (pictured above) of the New Hope Christian Church— which is outside the District— recently penned his own opinion on the matter in Newsweek lamenting his own “robbery” at the city council meeting by those dastardly “equality vigilantes”!

I felt robbed and disenfranchised as I observed “equality vigilantes” setting up an unjust concept of civil rights.

Mr. Jackson seems to have his own peculiar interpretation of civil rights.  In the Post video above, he states:

Marriage is not a right.  Brothers and sisters can’t get married. People who are related can’t get married.  You can’t marry a three-year-old.  There are parameters that are for the benefit of the society about marriage.

Wrong.  In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that marriage is a basic civil right.  To deny a civil right on account of sex (that is, to disqualify a woman from marrying another woman solely because she is a woman) requires a compelling state interest.  Some states have decided there is such an interest, some have found there is not.  Nonetheless, in American jurisprudence marriage is a civil right.

Mr. Jackson, who, as the Post’s Marc Fisher has noted, has strong connections to the national conservative movement, continues, “I’d rather be politically courageous than politically correct.”  That’s a noble sentiment, for sure, but it is certainly possible to be selfishly courageous, too.

Lynne Breece, a District resident and a bystander at the event, offered some hope that not everyone shares Mr. Jackson’s views:

As a black woman, I know a lot about discrimination on both ends, and I know what it feels like.  And for us, of all people, black ministers to use the pulpit to oppress another minority and then to cloak that bigotry using the bible! This happened to black people!

Indeed, though Dr. Martin Luther King cited scripture to demand equality, Jim Crow supporters and defenders of slavery never hesitated to quote the good book either.

Councilman Marion Barry, who didn’t show up to vote on the bill, but who previously promised to vote for same-sex marriage, managed to make it to the rally and profess his new-found opposition.  Why the change of heart?  Barry provided a great gem of a quotation:

I am a politician who is moral.

Dream on!

Even with Barry’s opposition, the rest of the council and the mayor have all voiced support for eventual same-sex marriage licensing in the city.  Messrs. Barry and Jackson notwithstanding, justice and fairness shall overcome someday.

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

So said Kanye West in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when hundreds of poor, mostly black, residents of New Orleans were stranded in the Superdome and atop flood houses in the Big Easy.

No matter, with the election of Barack Obama, surely the Federal government now attends to the best interests of disadvantaged minority populations, right?  Not always.

In 2004 Congress passed the District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act, providing vouchers of up to $7,500 for low-income children in the District to attend private schools. Since the District’s public schools are among the worst in the nation and considering that poor parents love their children, too, it’s no surprise that parents jumped on the opportunity with such enthusiasm that the program developed a waiting list. A recent U.S. Department of Education study found that children in the program scored about the same in math and slightly more in reading.  Nonetheless, voucher parents were much more satisfied with their chosen schools than public school parents were with their schools.*

The voucher program operated with the strong support of the mayor, the District’s “state” superintendent, and the low-income parents of the voucher recipients (90% black, 9% Latino), who finally got the chance to give their children what their neighbors Mr. & Mrs. Obama give to their children: a quality private education.  The parents were happy and the kids’ performance improved modestly.  In an era when the Treasury hands out hundreds of billions of dollars to shoddy banks and failed carmakers, certainly the voucher program’s modest success was worth the paltry $15 million annual cost.

Not so fast!  Enter the teachers’ unions and their partner-in-disparity, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s non-voting Delegate to the House of Representatives.  She made clear her opposition to the program, telling the Post, “…the Democratic Congress is not about to extend this program.”

With Democratic majorities in both houses and at the behest of the teachers’ unions, Congress, fresh from passing $410 billion budget bill, callously failed to renew the voucher program.

If we ran our elections the way we run many of our public schools, there would be civil rights investigations and lawsuits to match.  Instead, when public-sector mediocrity denies poor children their right to a decent education, thereby reducing their future life opportunities, the Right doesn’t much bother with an issue it never noticed anyway and the Left willfully averts its eyes toward its well-heeled funders.  If voting patterns still hold true, the beneficiaries of these programs would vote overwhelmingly Democrat anyway; the G.O.P. has nothing to gain, the Democrats have nothing to lose.  Sadly, the children have much to lose.

In noting the disparities in the quality of public education in America, Rev. Al Sharpton, in a rare moment of clarity, stated why public education continues to fail millions of Americans:

The people standing in the schoolhouse doorway now are people we thought were our friends, liberals wearing suits not bibb overalls, principals and teachers who want to uphold the status quo — condescending bigots who perpetuate a system we know is profoundly unequal.

Conservatives typically don’t make public education their issue, except when it comes to biology (evolution), health (sex), and school prayer.  Liberals typically advocate the use of government power to equalize social opportunity and even equalize social outcomes.  Even though one would normally expect the Left to advocate policies that best benefit marginalized populations, the Democratic party still knows that both money and ballots talk: the nation’s two big teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, support Democratic candidates with massive investments, volunteers, and votes.  When the interests of the unions conflict with the interests of disadvantaged children of color, the former constituency holds the trump card.

Tellingly, Ms. Norton also told the Post several months ago, “We have to protect the children, who are the truly innocent victims here.”  Indeed they are.

In his 2007 book Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, legal scholar Anthony Lewis chronicles the  history of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.  Though the amendment was ratified in 1791, it wasn’t until the 20th century, that the Supreme Court ever overturned a law as a violation of free speech.  Though the history of America’s broad speech protections is younger than we might think, these protections are products of the Enlightenment spirit— that the elevation of knowledge and rationality are the keys to human flourishing.  (French author Michel Houellebecq disagrees, but that’s another matter.)

Lewis drew the title of his book from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s dissenting opinion in U.S. v. Schwimmer (1929):

[I]f there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.

Since popular opinions need no protection in a democracy, the First Amendment’s raison d’être must be the protection of unpopular opinions— including the thought that we hate.

In previous times, including the times of Holmes, the hated thoughts included pacifism and communist sympathy.  Congress and states banned various expressions they deemed seditious, usually limiting the political debate that the more philosophical Founders had likely wanted to foster.  In more recent times, contentious speech is typically the opinions and rantings of racists and bigots convinced that society is far too tolerant of this or that group.  (How ironic that the intolerant demand tolerance of their own opinions!)

Though we have lamented speech restrictions before at the University of Maryland, in the supposedly libertine Netherlands and in holier-than-thou Canada, the slow repeal of free expression in western democracies is on the march.

An op-ed in the Washington Post’s Sunday Outlook section chronicles the slow disintegration of speech protections in many western countries as the concern for multicultural tolerance conflicts with the more xenophobic views on the European fringe.  The author lists some troubling cases:

• French actress Brigitte Bardot has been convicted four times in France for demeaning Muslims and gays.
• A 15-year-old Briton was arrested for holding up a sign stating, “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult”.
• An Austrian legislator narrowly avoided jail, but was fined, for accusing Mohamed of pedophilia.
• A Dutch cartoonist, as we wrote earlier, was arrested for drawing cartoons denigrating fundamentalist Muslims.
• Italian prosecutors launched an investigation into an Italian comedienne for insulting the pope.
• A British political aide was arrested for anti-Semitic rants directed at a TV in a gym.
• A xenophobic Dutch parliamentarian was denied entry into the U.K. for espousing anti-Muslim opinions deemed too dangerous.

Yes, many of these controversial views are blatantly racist, mean, and (more importantly) specious, but that doesn’t warrant their restriction.

Anthony Lewis, though on the Left, actually thinks America’s First Amendment protections might be too broad.  He believes the state is justified in squelching the incendiary recruitment speech of Islamic radicals, even if these radicals do not call for immediate lawlessness.  Their ability to persuade alienated young men inclined toward eventual violence warrants state intervention, he writes.

We disagree, however, and are curious as to whether Mr. Lewis would extend this interventionism to non-Muslims who speak to alienated groups.  Under Mr. Lewis’s reasoning, one could argue that Martin Luther King, though decidedly non-violent, should have been muzzled (well, more so than he was).  Such a speech restriction could open the door to the prosecution of anyone demanding significant socio-political change, as there are surely unrestrained elements of any otherwise legitimate movement.

Furthermore, determining what is controversial is easy, but it is indeed too easy.  If one could unleash the local prosecutor simply on the grounds that one feels “offended”, we will have to hire more prosecutors, as there are infinite opportunities to take offense, and enough delicate sensibilities to feel offended.  Don’t like that someone called same-sex marriage unnatural?  Call the prosecutor!  Don’t like that gay-right supporters call you a bigot?  Call the prosecutor!

The Left and Right will find ways to litigate and counter-litigate every provocative utterance out of the public realm.

There is plenty of despicable speech, no doubt, but any attempt to regulate it— to determine what is legitimate and what is not— could easily lead to capricious and unfair restrictions, where the well-counseled quash the obscure bloggers, where political parties sue newspapers for their opinion pages, and where courts rule that emotions trump truth.  A speech regime will cause many more problems than it fixes.

The best response to blatant nonsense is an articulate rebuttal exposing lies and reinforcing the truth.  Justice Louis Brandeis, who sat on the court with Holmes, famously wrote that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

During my four years at the University of Maryland, I was satisfied with the academic freedom afforded students.  The university imposed no speech codes or speech zones on students and faculty and I even witnessed faculty publicly contradict and vehemently disagree with administrators.

As a public university, the University of Maryland’s budget is a matter of public record, thus limiting (though not eliminating) the shadowy policy-making that often plagues private universities.

During my four years, the Maryland General Assembly never intervened to impose politicized restrictions on academic freedom or speech.  How times have changed.

Upon hearing that the student-run theater on campus was going to screen a pornographic film Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, one member of the Maryland Senate, Andy Harris (R-Baltimore County) introduced an amendment to cut all state funding from any state university that showed a hardcore pornographic film on campus.

Shamefully, under threat of the amendment’s passage, the university administration promptly put the kibosh on the screening, striking a blow to free speech on campus.  Students are planning to screen the film elsewhere at an undisclosed lecture hall, but the prudish Senator’s threat still stands.  Sadly, lest they be labeled soft on hardcore porn, a majority of Senators probably would have approved the measure.

Though threatening to withhold funding for the university, likely shutting it down, is a political stunt that we’re sure plays well with Mr. Harris’s constituents, it threatens the beginning of a slippery slope toward speech codes.  What qualifies as pornographic?  And why end there?  Perhaps Mr. Harris would like the library to burn Peyton Place and the Canterbury Tales, and redact the cruder parts of Shakespeare.

Though the General Assembly has the right to review and determine the university’s budget, it is unwise for the General Assembly to politicize the university and it is likely illegal for the state to define content-based restrictions that do no serve any compelling state interest.

We predict that the movie will be shown elsewhere on campus and that the General Assembly will not follow through on its threat.  Even still, this quarrel will have a chilling effect on speech.  It is a sad day for the so-called Free State and its university.

Today The Post and the Gray Lady are publishing several good op-eds on Obama’s policies and methods.

Michael Gerson argues that Obama’s promise of change now rings hollow.  While Gerson’s criticism of Obama’s governing style and the Limbaugh affair are largely irrelevant, he rightly notes that the President is continuing with business-as-usual, i.e. promising everything for the price of nothing:

The pledge of “honesty” and “sacrifice” has become the deceptive guarantee of apparently limitless public benefits at the expense of a very few…. None of this is new or exceptional — which is the point. It is exactly the way things have always been done.

Charles Krauthammer argues that Obama’s stem cell and science policy is unsophisticated and contains a significant logical contradiction:

[The President declared] that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction.”

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science?

Eugene Robinson defends Obama’s method of confronting all challenges (i.e. banking, health care, entitlements, infrastructure, education, etc., etc.) all at once.  He astutely dismisses the critics:

What these critics really want, though, is to delay or derail the progressive reforms that voters elected President Obama to carry out.

Judging by the scarcity of fiscal discipline over the past few years, it’s probably wise to characterize the opponents of the all-at-once agenda as really just opposing the agenda part, not the all-at-once part.

We, however, still hold by our belief that when governments rushes policy, the results are rarely wise (e.g.).

David Brooks (a conservative!) praises Obama’s nascent education policy as recognizing the importance of familial influence, teacher accountability, and charter school competition.  He writes that the President “has broken with liberal orthodoxy on school reform more than any other policy”.

Image source: LA Times

Much has been made of the surprise passage of California’s Proposition 8, which amended the Declaration of Rights of the state’s Constitution to state that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”  What hasn’t received much attention, however, is that the city council of Washington, DC, may move in the coming months to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.  In the past, the main obstacle cited is Congress; even if the city council approved a same-sex marriage bill (probably with near-unanimity), Congress, which has legislative authority to overturn any DC law, would overturn it in a heartbeat.

But since the Democrats now control Congress and the White House, the city now faces the best opportunity to introduce a marriage bill that would face the lowest chance of Federal opposition.  However, even if the measure escaped a snarling Congress, the measure would likely face stiff opposition from a large bloc of city residents.  If the civil rights measure is put to popular vote in Washington, DC, voters may in fact reject it.

Since there are no public opinion polls of District residents gauging opposition to same-sex marriage in the city, it is hard to predict how a ballot question would fare.  However, if we extrapolate November’s exit-poll results on Proposition 8 from California, the civil rights landscape in DC looks a little bleak.

In the best scenario, a DC vote would reflect the results among California’s urban voters.  Forty-five percent of California’s urban voters opposed Proposition 8.  Since all DC voters qualify as urban voters, if the proportions voting for and against held the same, a ban would lose.

(All the following data are drawn from CNN’s exit-poll of California and extrapolated based on each cohort’s share of the DC electorate as provided by MSNBC’s exit-poll of DC)

If we extrapolate from other measures, the outlook isn’t as good.  Based on income group, the results show a ban would just squeak by.  Interestingly, among all income groups, only those making less than $30,000 and those making more than $150,000 opposed Proposition 8 by a majority.  The vast middle supported it.  Now if we multiple each group’s support and opposition in California by each income group’s respective proportion of the DC electorate, a same-sex marriage ban would pass in DC by a slight majority.

It gets worse.

In California, 53% of college graduates opposed Proposition 8, whereas only 42% of those without college degrees opposed it.  Though 58% of District voters are college graduates, that is still not enough to stop a ballot measure in the city.  Based on education, a ballot measure in DC would ban same-sex marriage with a 52% majority.

Finally, race is the pink elephant in the room few want to bring up.  Traditionally, black voters, gays, and those with socially liberal views overwhelmingly vote  for Democrats.  However, on the issue of homosexuality, one Democratic constituency, blacks, holds views strong opposed to those held by other Democratic constituencies (social liberals, gays, etc.).

An astounding 70% of California’s black voters cast ballots in favor of Proposition 8 and an even more astounding 75% of black women voted in favor.  Proposition 8 only found greater support among self-identified 2004 Bush voters (80%), white evangelicals (81%), Republicans (82%), McCain voters (84%), weekly churchgoers (84%), conservatives (85%), and those who approve of the war in Iraq (85%), among others.

When we extrapolate each ethnic group’s vote in California to adjust it for each group’s proportion of the DC electorate, a same-sex marriage ban easily passes by 61% of the popular vote in the District.

Admittedly, California and DC, though both Democratic strongholds, differ in some important ways.  DC is entirely urban, whereas California is home to urbanites, a huge portion of suburbanites, and sizable rural counties.  Furthermore, unlike DC, California is more ideologically diverse and contains some very conservative areas (San Diego and Orange Counties, most notably) as well as liberal enclaves such as San Francisco, Hollywood, and Berkeley.  Washington’s singlemindedness leans decidely leftward, but in California the tilt, though still to the left, has counteracting forces that DC largely lacks.

Nonetheless, it’s premature for the city council and gay civil rights campaigners to assume that everyone shares the same view of what constitutes a civil right.  Though same-sex marriage might not raise eyebrows in upper Northwest, not all DC residents are ready to embrace a progressive view of marriage.  When the council starts to debate such a measure, don’t be surprised when you hear opponents ironically claiming civil rights for me, but not for thee.

Black voters in California voted overwhelmingly to elect Barack Obama—and to write discrimination into the state’s constitution.  The Post writes:

Any notion that Tuesday’s election represented a liberal juggernaut must overcome a detail from the voting booths of California: The same voters who turned out strongest for Barack Obama also drove a stake through the heart of same-sex marriage.

Indeed the New York Times reported earlier the worry among the proposition’s opponents that a high turn-out among California’s blacks would likely increase the measure’s passage while simultaneously ensuring Obama’s election.

Exit polls show that a bare majority of the state’s white voters voted for the measure, 53% of the state’s Latinos voters voted for the measure, and an astounding 70% of black voters voted for the measure.

One Californian discussed what drove her to vote to reduce the state’s civil rights commitment:

“I think it’s mainly because of the way we were brought up in the church; we don’t agree with it,” said Jasmine Jones, 25, who is black. “I’m not really the type that I wanted to stop people’s rights. But I still have my beliefs, and if I can vote my beliefs that’s what I’m going to do.

“God doesn’t approve it, so I don’t approve it. And I approve of Him.”

The overwhelming rejection of same-sex marriage by black voters was surprising and disappointing to gay rights advocates who had hoped that African Americans would empathize with their struggle.

The article continues with other quotations from people who wish to rework the state Constitution’s equal protection guarantees to suit their prejudices.  I’m sure many of these same people would decry any state measure that denied them rights or privileges solely on account of race, but it’s sad to see that they deem it acceptable to do the same regarding sex.

The proposition faces challenges in court (it was passed as an Amendment, though some argue that should be a Revision since it partly nullifies equal protection guarantees).

Nonetheless, Dr. King famously said that “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” Perhaps we shall overcome.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran an article about men who had lost their jobs due to their failure to register with the Selective Service, the government registry of all adult men in the nation.  The registry’s aim is to compile a list of potentially combat-ready men in the event of a military draft.

Several men who failed to register in their youths have lost their government jobs for that fact alone and are now challenging the constitutionality of the Selective Service law.  The law is a clear form of sex discrimination in that it compels men, but not women, to register and can thus only deny federal employment to men on this account.

Furthermore, the law’s discrimination is unnecessary since women serve widely in the military and in fact more than one hundred women have died in the current Gulf War—evidence of their role, even if unintentional, in combat.  Though the Supreme Court in 1981 upheld the law (as did a Federal Court a few years ago), its premises and conclusion are rather flimsy.  The law’s basis is

1. That all young men are possibly suitable for combat, but no young women are (not true); and
2. That a draft should only include those who can serve in combat roles (not true);
3. Thus only men would need to be drafted in a military emergency. (not true)

Furthermore, the application of penalties to men, but not to women, is sex discrimination and the Feds lack strong arguments to justify a state interest in the continuation of this discrimination.  The law should be changed so that all young men and women are required to register or that nobody is required to register.

All together now.

I have complained before of the arrogance of Western liberals who wish to judge other societies by Western standards of human rights and democracy.  Some societies traditionally care more about social harmony and the respect for authority than they care about constitutional government and individual liberty.

Two op-eds this week interpret the well-choreographed Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing as a sign that success is also possible with collectivist, non-Western values.  Harold Meyerson in the Post writes:

If ever there was a display of affable collectivism, it was filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s opening ceremonies, which in their reduction of humans to a mass precision abstraction seemed to derive in equal measure from Busby Berkeley and Leni Riefenstahl.  …. The subject of Zhang’s ceremonies was a celebration of Chinese achievement and power, at all times stressing China’s harmonious relations with the rest of the world.

David Brooks in the NYT agrees:

The opening ceremony … was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.

Brooks discusses some interesting psychological studies in which Westerners tend to see people as individuals whereas Asians tend to see people as parts of their contexts.  The submission of individual rights to group interests illustrates a political philosophy perfectly aligned with the latter weltanschauung.  Any Western critique of Confucianist authoritarianism is arrogant at most and culturally insensitive at least.  The imposition of more liberal policies on these societies, either by force or through economic or political coercion smacks of modern-day imperialism.

Does this make the Western human rights campaigner wrong to advocate human rights?  Only if he, like many on the Left, truly believes in the importance of “celebrating diversity” and promoting tolerance of other cultures.  To avoid hypocrisy, the Westerner must admit that Western notions of government and rights should precede the traditional values of other cultures.  I’m not sure, though, how many of these advocates are willing to admit that.

We obey.

The American Prospect writes that globalization’s western hallmarks such as IBM, Google, Cisco, and Yahoo! are not globalizing democracy as many techno-utopians had expected, but are frequently enabling authoritarian governments, especially China’s, to suppress domestic dissent.  In order to win and maintain their contracts, these companies curry favor with authoritarian governments by apologizing for their clients’ behavior.

Like nearly every western media outlet, the American Prospect is critical of the practice of enabling authoritarianism.  However, if certain societies are more docile, compliant, and welcoming of authoritarianism than most, why should western companies try to change that?  Thus, the modern western liberal is conflicted: in standing for human rights (or at least the western notion of human rights), he is likely to criticize these companies for their complicity in Chinese oppression.  The multiculturalist in him, however, must defend the authoritarian leanings of cultures that have never known anything else.  Among the western Left, their notions of human rights usually trump multicultural tolerance.  Thus, the western Left really needs to admit what it really believes: that multiculturalism is dead and that western ideas of human rights should triumph over all else.

Gregorius Nekschot

In left-leaning modern democracies, one wonders what happens when the freedom of expressions is brought to the high altar of multiculturalism?  In Canada, as we have reported, it may be illegal to publish speech “hateful and contemptuous” of any ethnic group.  In the Netherlands, long a safe haven for political and religious dissenters, one particular cartoonist by the pen name Gregorius Nekschot (Gregory Shot in the Neck) has been arrested for drawing offensive cartoons of Muslims and other minority groups.

The Dutch police have released him, but he is to face a trial in the near future.  One can rest assured, however, that Dutch intolerance of undesirable speech is not only reserved for the ethnic majority:

The prosecutor’s office notes that it has also taken action against Muslims suspected of discrimination. A Moroccan-born Dutchman was recently convicted of discrimination for writing in a blog that homosexuals should be tossed from rooftops and thrown down stairs. A court ordered him to do community-service work.

Smoking weed may be legalized, but voicing unpopular opinions is not.  The Dutch parliament is investigating the cartoonists arrest, lest the prosecutor’s office reverse the country’s famous permissive speech policies.