Tag: gay marriage

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Accountability general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies responsibility term limits

Today’s Leaders

democracy, the people, politicians, cowardice, marijuana, asset forfeiture, initiative, term limits, police brutality

We have a new president. Many people put a lot of trust in him — and many more hate him and seek to bring him down. In both cases, presidential politics takes up an inordinate portion of our brain space.

Over the weekend I twice wrote about four heroic senators, standing up to the insiders in their own party. Getting a lot of deserved attention.

But remember: the real leaders are not in Washington, D.C.

Right now, a half dozen issues are undergoing revolution. Legalized gay marriage swept through state after state; meanwhile, Democratic leaders (Clinton, Obama) lent none of their prestige to the cause.*

It was local and state activists who led. And even wide swaths of “the people” were out in front.

Not politicians.

Marijuana legalization has occurred in state after state, mostly by initiative petitioning. It wasn’t the politicians who pushed this through. It was activists. 

And, again, the people.

The politicians — including, now, the new Attorney General — largely obstructed the advance of freedom on this issue.

Much the same can be said for improving police-​citizen relations with mandatory cop cams and transparency protocols. In the past, much the same pattern could be seen regarding term limits and tax limitation measures. In most cases of progress, politicians have actually represented the rear guard.

Which should give us something to think about. We face a looming sovereign debt crisis, the pension system bubble, and ongoing culture wars regarding campus (and general) free speech.

If you think something should be done, minds should be changed, don’t look for a national figure. Look locally. Look to yourself. Go online. 

Master the mechanisms of social change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*That is, these politicians “became leaders” on the issue at the point the issue needed no leadership. They remained opposed to change until the last moment, when the direction was firmly set and most of the watershed marks had been made.

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Categories
Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies too much government

Just Doing Our Jobs?

Barber Shop, discrimination, police abuse, Collage, editorial

I didn’t really want to talk about Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-​sex couples. Last week, she got put in jail for not doing her job; this week, she got released.

Generally, I’m for people doing their jobs. Especially, those in government.

However, when they are instructed to do something destructive, I’d prefer they refrain. Unfortunately, government workers too often select the wrong things not to enforce. I could use a lot more “blue flu” over Drug War efforts, or stealing our property through civil forfeiture, or shooting pet dogs.

No such luck, usually.

Recently, a 17-​year-​old boy was charged, as an adult, for child pornography. But the “child porn” was a naked picture of his own body on his very own cell phone. A law designed to protect him from sexual exploitation was turned against him, making him a “sexual predator.”

The police and prosecutor in this North Carolina case didn’t really do their jobs.

In Washington County, Pennsylvania, a barbershop has been fined $750 for refusing to cut one woman’s hair. The owner claims he has nothing against doing women’s hair, but merely that this particular shop wasn’t set up to handle women’s typical hair concerns. Public servants fined him anyway.

Do we really need government to patrol beauty salons and barbershops for “discrimination” “crimes”?

After all, they cannot even patrol themselves coherently. Witness the messy case of Kim Davis, Democratic County clerk in rural Kentucky. About which I hope I need not say more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Just Doing My Job, Collage, editorial

 

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meme

The Logic of Angry Crowds

“Inclusion in civil society” is an admirable goal, but what if we destroy civility in the process?

Shared ideas matter. Please pass this along to friends.

Get a high-​resolution screensaver by clicking on the image below:

mobInclusion

 

Categories
general freedom judiciary

Refusal of Service?

“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

Not a sign of the times.

Businesses, in these United States, may not discriminate against people on the basis of race, religion … and now, in nearly half of the states, because of sexual orientation.

This came up in New Mexico, recently. Elane Photography had refused to visually record the civil union ceremonies of a gay couple. The couple sued, and a court ruled in their favor: “[A] commercial photography business that offers its services to the public, thereby increasing its visibility to potential clients, is subject to the anti-​discrimination provisions” of New Mexico’s Human Rights Act, and “must serve same-​sex couples on the same basis that it serves opposite-​sex couples.”

The old idea was that governments were not to discriminate against this person or that, because all are owed justice. But businesses do not sell justice, and, since no one is owed a particular service, private persons and groups, including businesses, were allowed to discriminate in ways forbidden to governments.

This changed with 1964’s Civil Rights Act. Not only did it repeal the evil Jim Crow era public mandates for discrimination (further enforced by organized private violence), but the Act forbade private business discrimination, enforcing open access … leaving us with what B.K. Marcus calls “the right to say ‘I do’” but without any “right to say ‘I don’t.’”

The case will be appealed. “We believe that the First Amendment protects the right of people not to communicate messages that they disagree with,” say the photographers’ lawyers.

The ACLU declares this notion “frighteningly far-reaching.”

Well, yes. Justice is supposed to be that. Far-reaching.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary U.S. Constitution

No Right to Defend Your Rights

You have no right as a voter to defend your interests as a voter. Not in federal court.

So decides the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, a case about a controversial California ballot question. The court ruled 5 – 4 that petitioners “lack standing.” Their interest wasn’t “particularized” enough. 

Passed in 2008, Proposition 8 amends the California constitution to stipulate that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Two questions must be distinguished. One, whether Proposition 8 is consistent with the U.S. Constitution. The high court could have agreed with the lower one that it isn’t. Two, whether voters – in this particular case, the official state recognized proponents of the measure – may judicially defend a law brought to ballot by themselves and duly enacted, when state officials decline to defend that law.

I’m no fan of Prop 8. But for the land’s highest court to rule that voters and petitioners have no “standing” here is a horrid precedent. It tells government officials to take heart if they dislike a law that voters have passed. Maybe not enforce or defend it at all, say — and regardless of any constitutional finding. After all, what can We the People do? It’s not as if we have standing!

Justice Kennedy, in dissent, pinpoints the default: “the Court fails to grasp or accept … the basic premise of the initiative process …  The essence of democracy is that the right to make law rests in the people and flows to the government, not the other way around.”

Oh, yes, the people do have standing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
U.S. Constitution

Setting the Policy

Vice President Joe Biden got the big headlines over the weekend, with his Meet the Press comments on same-​sex marriage. He was quoted everywhere. There was much talk of how this fit (or didn’t fit) with the administration’s official ideology:

I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights — all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.

But immediately prior to the above, he said this: “I am vice president of the United States of America; the president sets the policy.”Joe Biden on gay marriage ... and the presidency

And that’s where I begin to wonder.

It could be he’s only saying that he’s second banana in the administration (if even that high in the banana tree), and that he can’t speak for the top banana.

But too often, these days, when people talk about the president “setting the policy” or “making decisions” (remember George W. Bush’s self-​description as “The Decider”?) they seem to suggest something approaching a dictatorship by the president. What the head man says goes.

That’s what Biden’s statement does more than imply.

According to the Constitution, on the other hand, Congress sets policy. Not the president. The legislative power is concentrated in the House and the Senate.

Biden’s kind of loose talk is an artifact of what’s called the “imperial presidency.” Leadership (and followership) of both parties have pushed it. It has a long history.

I don’t know about you, but it gives me a lot more concern than the idea of two dudes marrying.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.