California is not so progressive - Amending the Constitution to take away rights

The L.A Times and KTLA conducted a poll to get Californians’ opinion on our Supreme Court giving same-sex couples the same right to marry (get sick of, then grow old and miserable with each other) as everyone else. I put about as much stock in the average marriage as I do in the average poll. A wise man once said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. That’s basically the way I look at polls. Pollsters only call people with land lines and they only get the opinions people who have nothing better to do than talk to pollsters. This survey revealed the existence of a California schism around same-sex marriage – a statewide cognitive dissonance when it comes to gay and lesbian couples that could threaten our status as the hippest state in America this November.

Historically, California has been ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to individual rights and freedoms. Sixty years ago our state’s Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws designed to prevent interracial marriages (almost two decades before the United States Supreme Court) and now, in 2008, I don’t have to worry about getting the chair for having sex with white women. That’s progress. So is making sure that one person in a couple isn’t denied visitation in a hospital or survivor’s benefits just because they happen to be the same sex as their partner.

This progress could be undermined in the fall. Opponents of equal rights for same-sex couples will get a question put on the ballot asking voters to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Usually, a Constitution is amended to give people rights, not take them away. But apparently when it comes to gay couples, the mission seems to be to stop them from saying “I do” by any means necessary.

I respect ballot questions as much as the next guy, despite the fact that it’s the same process that got an Austrian bodybuilder with only a rudimentary ability to speak English elected Governor. But the California Supreme Court’s decision to grant equal rights to same-sex couples wasn’t made on a whim. It was based on a case that was heard by a trial judge who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, then by an appellate court which overturned that judge’s ruling. So some of the sharpest legal minds in the entire state have had a chance to hear the evidence and weigh in on the case and they say it’s a civil rights issue. In that case, it’s morally wrong to deny these couples their rights, even if a majority of California voters want to. After all, do we really want the average uninformed voter to be making these kinds of decisions? Shouldn’t a question of this magnitude be left to the experts and not to conservative voters in the Central Valley and southern California suburbs to answer? I’m sure the good people of Modesto and Laguna Beach mean well, but do we really want them messing around with our state Constitution?

I won’t blame conservatives if the amendment passes. If these people were the only proponents of the amendment, there wouldn’t be a problem. In the Bay Area alone there is enough opposition to the amendment to cancel out the Republicans who would support it. The problem is there are some Democrats who would vote in favor of the amendment, despite their agreement with the Supreme Court ruling. According to this poll, some male Democrats, specifically.

Apparently, there are a number of men who call themselves Democrats and who agree with the Supreme Court’s ruling, but would still vote in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. The most interesting statistic in the survey is that almost half of the people who have a personal relationship with a gay person approved of the ruling and less than a quarter of those who don’t have a personal relationship with a gay person approved of it.

I think one full day in Provincetown, Massachusetts would do go a long way toward changing these men’s minds. Spending the day browsing the shops and eating in restaurants where 99% of the people they come in contact with are gay, super nice, and not even remotely interested in them sexually would be a real eye-opener for the average straight guy. Or they could travel to San Francisco for the Pride parade. Watching the “dykes on bikes” ceremonially start the parade with thirty minutes of roaring motorcycles ridden by proud, happy lesbians (some defiantly and unashamedly displaying their naked breasts to the world) would be like immersion therapy for undercover homophobia. If enough of these male Democrats see that, they’d be changed forever and there is no way that amendment would pass in November.

A new kind of high - Trapeze School

I don’t do drugs because I have an addictive personality. I know this about myself, so I’ve always been immune to the sales tactics of conventional drug dealers. But flying isn’t a drug in the conventional sense and Jonathon Conant of Trapeze School New York isn’t a conventional drug dealer. Still, I should have known something was up when I met him. He had the same knowing grin on his face when he shook my hand, smiled, and said, “you wanna fly?” that Harvey Keitel had on his face when he warned Robert DeNiro not to go with Jodi Foster in “Taxi Driver.”

By itself, the TSNY rig is simple, yet formidable. Located on the south side of the Santa Monica pier between the Playland arcade and the food court, it looks like four thirty-foot-tall croquet wickets connected by a series of ropes, cables, and wires with a safety net suspended below. On one end is the twenty two-foot-high launch platform and there is a trapeze suspended from each of the two center wickets. The nearest one, the white trapeze, is the one everyone swings from. The other one, the blue trapeze, is only for the professionals. It’s so far away as to be practically in Malibu. You can fly on the white trapeze, but to reach the blue one, you have to soar. It mocked me. I still hear it laughing.

I was there with my friend Joey, a talented acrobat and silk dancer, who is friends with Jonathon and his team, Valerie and Dean. Once I had signed the waiver and strapped on my safety belt, Jonathon walked me through the basics. “Dean’s gonna be up there with you. Put your toes over the edge, hips out, bend your knees, then when he says ‘hep’, you just give a little hop and you’re flying.” I was ready.

Just finishing her flight was a woman named Nancy visiting from Baton Rouge who told me it was the most fun she’d had during her stay in Santa Monica. Unable to contain her smile, she said, “I can’t wait to tell all my circus friends, they’ll be so excited. Look at me, I’m shaking.” I know from experience that when a woman is still shaking and smiling afterwards, she’s never going to forget what she just did.

The basic flight happens in three phases. Phase one, “hep” off the platform with your hands on the trapeze. Phase two, invert and hang upside-down from the trapeze by your knees. Phase three, hands back on the trapeze and dismount. You can also take classes and learn to back-flip into your landing or even (and this is the part that haunts me) launch yourself off the white trapeze and “get caught” by someone hanging upside-down from the blue one.

Joey clipped the safety lines onto my belt and I climbed the two-and-a-quarter stories to the platform where I met Dean. “Hold on to the platform with your left hand and the trapeze in your right hand. Toes over the edge, hips out – I’m holding your safety belt. Put your left hand on the trapeze and bend your knees. When I say ‘hep’ give a little hop.”

Staring out at the pier, the beach, and the sun setting in the late afternoon sky while dangling precariously from a platform twenty-something feet above the ground, I realized that once I “hepped,” I’d be on my own. With a big exhale, I jumped. The drop was severe, but the rush was intense. In one big whoosh, the safety net below me almost instantly became the sky above me. For a split second, I hung suspended in mid-air until gravity kicked in and pulled me back down. Before I knew what I was doing, I had pulled my legs up above my head and was hanging by my knees. As I swung, I arched my back and looked up and thought, “wow, there’s the beach. How weird that it looks perfectly normal, despite the fact that I’m upside-down.” Before gravity kicked back in, I caught a glimpse of the blue trapeze. I flipped back over and dismounted safely, but I’ve been thinking about reaching that blue trapeze ever since.

As it turns out, it’s not just me. Once you fly, all you want to do is climb back up the ladder and do it again. Nancy stayed to watch for a while, Joey had to be dragged away, and a woman named Thu from Redondo Beach who only flew so she could have a good story to tell at work on Monday is now planning to take the classes.

And just like them, I was still shaking afterward.

Lesson Learned? - Protecting students at school

In every profession, there is a line which should not be crossed. In some, there is a line which cannot be crossed. When you work with young people, especially children, you assume the role of protector. Knowing the world is full of things and people who might do them harm, your love and care sends the message that no matter what happens, nothing can hurt them while they are with you. As a parent, teacher, priest, pastor, school administrator, doctor, coach, or babysitter, you’re assuming a responsibility which should be more iportant to you than any and everything else – a responsibility for their innocence.

Unfortunately for about a dozen current and former Lincoln Middle School students, that responsibility wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been. It turns out that alleged sexual predator, Thomas Beltran, had been accused of crossing the line (that nobody who works with young people should even think about approaching, much less crossing) possibly as far back as ten years ago. In 2006, a Lincoln student complained about being touched by Mr. Beltran, the most serious accusation that can be made against a teacher, and no action was taken against him. Make no mistake, I’m not saying the action taken wasn’t strong enough, I’m saying no action was taken. The student was temporarily moved out of his classroom and police were brought in to investigate, but prosecutors didn’t find enough evidence to bring a case against Mr. Beltran, who claimed his touching of the student was “misinterpreted,” and the matter was dropped. The decision was made by then-Principal Kathy Scott to “warn” him not to touch female students and allow him to continue teaching as though nothing had happened. No notice was sent to the School Board and nothing detailing the incident was added to Mr. Beltran’s personnel file. For all intents and purposes, it was like it never happened.

I should say that Mr. Beltran is, of course, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But as the details of his actions became public knowledge over the last week or so, I kept coming back to the same question, “why was a criminal standard being applied to such an obvious question of professional ethics?” I wondered who, besides Mr. Beltran, has a vested interest in seeing him back in the classroom, despite allegations that would certainly qualify as evidence that he shouldn’t be anywhere near teenage girls, much less teenage girls who don’t communicate well in English? The answer, of course, is the Santa Monica-Malibu Classroom Teachers Association. I’m not blaming them or holding them responsible for Mr. Beltran’s alleged crimes, but I am saying that they have a lot more work to do if they want to be considered part of the solution and not part of the problem. Their president, Harry Keiley, didn’t do them any favors with his reaction to the school district and school board’s plans to implement new child abuse policies. “The safety and well-being of children is at the forefront of our concern,” he said. Amazingly, he added a qualifier to that statement, saying, “but it also should be noted that teachers do not check their constitutional rights at their school doors as they walk in.” It’s almost like he said, “we want kids to be safe at school unless that safety potentially undermines what we believe to be the rights of teachers.”

Somebody should tell Mr. Keiley that without young people to educate, teachers’ rights aren’t really an issue because they won’t have jobs teaching. This is Santa Monica we’re talking about. There are a lot of people in this town who can and will send their kids to private schools if public school teachers’ constitutional rights somehow become more important to them than their students. At the same time, you never know whose child you’re educating in a particular classroom. There are some pretty wealthy people with some pretty deep pockets in Santa Monica, and few things motivate parents like getting justice for their kids. God forbid this happens again and the victim’s family decides to “lawyer up” and start chopping heads. Then some tough questions are going to be asked about who knew what and when, and what are the civil and criminal penalties involved.

I sincerely hope that all parties involved (parents, teachers, administrators, the school board, the district, and the Teachers Association) will put their collective heads together and come up with a way to repair whatever damage has been caused by this sad tale. As difficult as it may be, it’s much easier than trying to come up with an answer when a girl who was abused by someone she was supposed to be able to trust asks why you didn’t do anything to stop it.

Truth is stranger than make believe - The real mission in Iraq

Five years ago, President Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” and said, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Though he now says it should have read, “mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,” the truth is the banner was accurate and the President’s real mission, to get us into Iraq by any means necessary, had been accomplished. I can handle the truth, I’m just sick of being lied to about the mission.

The lie was that we had to invade Iraq because Saddam might give a nuclear weapon to Al Qaeda, and in a 9/12 world, the risk was too great. The truth is Saddam Hussein was about as likely to have a nuclear weapon as the Lakers are to see Andrew Bynum in this year’s playoffs. And he was about as likely to give one to Osama Bin Laden as Kobe Bryant was to happily share a locker room with Shaquille O’Neal.

The truth is the President and the Vice President knew that once we went into Iraq, it would be almost impossible to get out. Vice President Cheney (who oversaw the first Gulf War as Secretary of Defense) said, “Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government of Iraq, you can easily end up seeing parts of Iraq fly off. It's a quagmire…If you go that far, and try to take over Iraq.” He went on to say, “The question for the president in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam was how many additional dead Americans was Saddam worth, and our judgment was not very many. And I think we got it right.”

What changed? As Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney discovered there are some duties (like laundry, cooking, and cleaning) the U.S. military believed our soldiers, as professionally trained killers, shouldn’t be doing. He also discovered that “troop morale” could be boosted by providing soldiers with reminders of home. So when he became Chairman and C.E.O. of Halliburton, he basically created the Military Services industry. Through his connections inside the Pentagon, Halliburton and it’s subsidiaries have won billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to provide our soldiers with clean clothes, clean barracks, and all the same fast food they would find at the food court in their local mall. All of this stuff gets to our soldiers via convoys of trucks which have to be guarded and protected by (you guessed it) our soldiers themselves. Meanwhile, the bulk of the casualties (those “additional dead Americans” that Saddam wasn’t worth back in 1991) haven’t come in combat, but from cars and trucks randomly exploding. I’ll bet a dollar to a Krispy Kreme donut that our soldiers in Iraq would happily give up these tastes of home if it meant they didn’t have to risk their lives guarding the convoys that bring them Pizza Hut pizzas, Taco Bell tacos, and Baskin-Robbins ice cream. Meanwhile, the Vice President’s former business associates get richer and richer.

In the President’s case, all we have to do is look at what he did for work before he got into government: He was an oil man, and not a very good one. He has made a lot of money failing to find oil in Texas. I won’t say he was trading on his name and family connections, but just about every company he worked for was eventually bailed out of financial ruin by someone with ties to his father or his grandfather. The point is that he took office owing favors to Big Oil, and his disastrous experiment in Iraq has proven to be a nice payback for the industry. Look at the numbers: When he took office, oil was about $30 per barrel (now $120) and gas was about $1.50 per gallon (now $4.00). Does anyone believe it’s a coincidence that during the oiliest administration in American history, prices for crude and gas have gone up 400%?

I’m not trying to get all “Manchurian Candidate,” but forget all the reasons we’ve been told we’re in Iraq (from WMD, to the “Freedom Agenda”, to checking Iran’s influence) and just follow the money. You’ll find the people who have benefited the most from the Bush administration’s Iraq policy are people who did business with the President and the Vice President long before they took office. Then ask yourself if you can handle the truth.