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.
We lamented President Obama’s decision to swiftly end the D.C. voucher program, noting that his administration, which doles out billions of dollars for careless bankers and failed automakers, couldn’t find a trifling $15 million for poor children in the District of Columbia. The Post reports today that the president has yielded to his better judgment and is proposing a fairer method of ending a program, which ideally would not end.
The program provided school vouchers for low-income children in the District to attend private schools for two-year stints. Those in the program showed modest academic improvement and parents were much happier with their chosen schools. It’s no secret that teachers’ unions are hostile to school choice, since it risks diverting public funds from the failed schools they control to the private and parochial schools in which they have little clout. The unions pressured Congress, which is now majority Democrat, and Congress obliged by refusing to renew the voucher program.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan swiftly rescinded the vouchers for the upcoming year, pronouncing the program dead.
The president is now proposing a compromise: the children currently enrolled in the program will receive vouchers through their high school graduations, but no new students will be admitted to the program. This is an improvement over the previous plan, which would have kicked kids of modest means to the curb come September.
The president is right to strike a compromise— compromises are necessary in a democracy— but the president’s choice to compromise on this subject is worrying. On one side are children from low-income families that have few choices for quality education. On the other side are powerful, deep-pocketed teachers’ unions that oppose reform or real accountability measures that might inconvenience or shrink their membership.
Ideally, Mr. Obama would expand the program to afford more low-income District children the ability to escape the city’s schools, which are among the worst in the nation. Mr. and Mrs. Obama, upon moving to the White House, passed over the city’s public schools in favor of the private Sidwell Friends School. Why are the Obamas’ neighbors any less deserving?
Normally it is good for a president to compromise, and this compromise is likely the best he could achieve with this Congress. Nonetheless, this compromise suggests a moral equivalence between low-income children looking for a good education and powerful teachers’ unions looking to protect their privilege.
Update:
On a positive note, the president is proposing $517 million for merit-pay programs. Let us hope this is not window-dressing.
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.
Washington's Security Theater
How the fear of terrorism limits public access and wrecks Washington's elegance.