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11.05.08
This Is Who We Are And This Is What We Want
posted by Absinthe | 9:58 PM
Nobody ever listens to me. I throw up a perfectly coherent and cogent post linking ham to sexuality and bigotry, and what happens? By fiat of 1/40th of the voting public – that’s the shift required to swing the measure the other way – Lucy pulls the marriage football away from the gay Charlie Brown one more time.
Government by proposition is … well, I was going to say dumb. But no. Goldfish are dumb. Hatstands aren’t terribly bright. But government by proposition is giving the vote to goldfish and hatstands and expecting common sense to carry the day, which it won’t. It starts sensibly, with clean water for everyone and a mandate for felt-lined hats, but before long some nimrod is championing the Cyclonic Metal Extrusion Act and everything is chopped to bits by a storm of spinning saw blades. Bloody scales and splintered bits of hatstand everywhere. Plus since we didn’t factor in the potential rust impact all the survivors have tetanus.
Look, ultimately we can have whatever kind of government we want. If everybody agrees in a sufficiently vociferous fashion, we can build a system whereby on alternate Thursdays randomly selected lottery winners are catapulted into orbit, sans life support, as a sacrifice to the moon men. (Luck being what it is, there’s a possibility this might work out better for almost everyone.) Representative government makes it harder to pull this kind of thing off – it turns out that people are less likely to vote for a bizarre, despicable idea when there’s a chance they might get fired for it, a sort of constitutional handbrake that isn’t available when you go direct to the ballot box.
The rub as I see it – there’s always a rub – is that a more “flexible” state constitution like California’s, which has been amended more than 500 times, is that much more vulnerable to attacks on first principles. A simple majority is apparently plenty good to enshrine bigotry in the document that’s supposed to be the state’s foundation, when the fact is that even a unanimous vote shouldn’t get the job done. Two steps forward, one giant leap back.
[Glyphic mentioned something in comments worth bumping, since I originally intended to include it in the post anyway: a constitution is an operating system. It's time to reinstall ours.]
Popularity: 4% [?]
Topics: Human Interests, Random Thoughts | 10 Comments »
November 16, 2008 at 11:23 PM
November 6, 2008 at 12:48 AM
Deciding the budget by proposition is especially dumb:
http://www.studioglyphic.com/blog/2003/09/15/california-recall-election-voter-guide-prop-53/
In my opinion, we ought to have one final ballot initiative to convene a Constitutional Congress and ctrl-alt-del the whole bloody mess.
November 6, 2008 at 9:12 AM
Let’s give this a little clarity:
Proposition 8 overturns a May California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay nuptials and rewrites the state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Exit poll data showed seven in 10 black voters and more than half of Latino voters backed the ballot initiative, while whites and Asians were split.
Though blacks and Latinos combined make up less than one-third of California’s electorate, their opposition to same-sex marriage appeared to tip the balance. Both groups decisively backed Obama regardless of their position on the initiative.
Obama has said he is not in favor of gay marriage but supports civil unions. The president-elect opposed Proposition 8.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/11/05/state/n111547S31.DTL
November 6, 2008 at 9:17 AM
I was thinking about a reboot/ OS reinstall metaphor but decided to leave that for someone else. But yeah, we have a bloated, crufty operating system.
November 6, 2008 at 9:47 AM
Easy: what am I, your wiki? If I wanted clarity in this space I’d hire an editor.
Uncertain as to your point, but okay, fine, here’s some clarity. If marriage is a civil construct, the first principle of equal protection says gays get it. If marriage is a religious construct, the first principle of separation of church and state says the state has no business in it in the first place.
November 6, 2008 at 3:21 PM
There was no real point…other than the fact that the people have spoken. Under this iniative system, I envision this issue to come up regularly, and it will probably change to the way you would like it to be. Change is a slow process; it took for African Americans 40 years or so to go from segregated bathrooms to the Presidency. I’ll guess it’s going to take 10 more years for pro-gay marriage to be a majority position, even in California.
I guess my overall point is, have patience.
November 6, 2008 at 10:56 PM
It’s easy for me to have patience since the issue doesn’t affect me directly. (And while the people may have spoken – marginally, which isn’t a real good way to determine the rights of a minority – it’s still up in the air as to whether the amendment was allowable under constitutional precedent, so yay for activist judges.)
And attacks on first principles create incredibly slippery slopes.
November 7, 2008 at 8:41 AM
I was really surprised that CA voted for Prop 8, but I am even more surprised at some of the reactions, including yours. The reality is (and I’m speaking from a legal perspective), homosexuals are not a protected class of people, unlike racial minorities, genders, the disabled, and certain age groups. Now, that might be shocking to you or I, but it has been the history of this nation, and apparently over 50% of voters in CA agree with this concept. I’m not against rallying for social change, but I think allowing a proposition to be voted on by the general populace is a BETTER system or at least a more DEMOCRATIC system than placing it only in the hands of elected officials. Are you suggesting that the public is stupid and should not be given the right to vote? Or is it just that you don’t agree with the public on this one? I think it’s the latter, and while it sucks that intolerance and bigotry may have played a large role in the end result, it’s still democracy at its best, even if the results aren’t ideal.
November 7, 2008 at 9:37 AM
If this blog were written in 1858, you could have put “slaves” in that sentence and it’d have made perfect sense. You can probably figure out where that went wrong. Unless you’re signing up for a collar around the neck when 51% of the people decide it’s a good idea, I guess.
If it makes you feel any better, I have no use whatsoever for weed, but man would you want me on the jury if you get popped for it.
November 8, 2008 at 4:05 PM
The best solution, in my opinion, would be to take the concept of “marriage” out of our laws and let the battles be fought in the religious and cultural spheres. If policymakers want to continue to promote two people promising to stay together until they don’t, then revise the laws surrounding taxes, inheritance rights, and divorce rules so they can apply fairly to everyone. But before we do that, let’s have a long discussion about why we even have these kinds of perks.