Over the weekend the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco fired back against me for asking them to pay the city transfer tax the law says they owe to the City and County of San Francisco.
The Archdiocese called my decision to ask them to pay transfer taxes shameful, and the spokesperson for the Archdiocese insinuated that my decision was based on the city’s budget deficit, the Churches position on Proposition 8, or even on political considerations.
Here’s news for you folks – if I was taking on one of the world’s oldest and most powerful institutions for “political considerations,” I am not a very calculating politician.
What I am is Assessor-Recorder of San Francisco with a sworn duty to treat everyone equally under the law. And the law in this case is clear, despite this recent press offensive which is designed to muddy the waters. (edit by Brian, see the flip...)
Dangerous Things are happening in America these days, we are told, and the once-innocent citizens of Iowa and Vermont have already been exposed to the hazard...and now it looks as though the contagion might spread to States across New England.
But lucky for us, our friends on the Right are here again to save to save us from...(insert horror film music here)...
...The Gay.
The Gay, it turns out, want the opportunity to marry.
Among other complaints, our friends on the Right feel this will destroy religious tradition, which will ultimately destroy first Christianity, then the Nation. Therefore, religious tradition must be protected at all costs.
Well as it turns out, there are some people from our past who know a few things about religious traditions and how they distort reality-and today, we'll examine the lessons they have to teach us.
In the first day A.M. (After Marriage), amazingly enough not every couple in California spontaneously divorced as a result of city clerks handing out licenses with "Party 1" and "Party 2". There actually are still married people out there, and now they've been joined by thousands of LGBT couples. And here are some of the highlights from today:
• It seems like every couple has an accompanying news article chronicling their wedding, but I think it's a good thing for now (though I long for the day when this is unexceptional and not a news event). Putting a human face on what can often be an abstract discussion about legal rights seems to me to be vital. There's a great series of videos featuring couples in the LA area at this link.
• There are of course detractors, although most of them are staying quiet for now. One group who isn't is the LA Archdiocese, which posted a statement denouncing "redefining marriage, which has a unique place in God's creation." Maybe this is just me, but after the events of the last decade, I don't think the Catholic church should be making any statements about sexuality whatsoever.
• True Majority and The Human Rights Campaign are but two of the organizations delivering petitions in support of marriage equality. I expect many more.
• In Bakersfield, where Kern County clerk Ann Barnett has halted her office from officiating all weddings, an under-the-radar recall campaign has commenced. By the way, there's nothing new about such actions; historian and author of "Nixonland" (which you all need to read) Rick Perlstein reminds us that this is exactly what school districts in the South did after the Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka decision, shutting down entire school systems rather than integrating them. They called it Massive Resistance.
Of course, the people who thought like that then-here's an excellent article on one of them, Lester Maddox-are now looked upon as history's losers, as monsters, as embarrassments, and have no defenders. Now, every conservative claims to have always been on the opposite side of the Lester Maddoxes of the day. The people who think like this now will look just as bad to history as Maddox did then. I try to mention this every time I speak to a conservative audience: that I pity them. They should take care to stay off the record when they oppose basic human rights, because it will eventually come back to bite them on the ass.
But ultimately, I'm not worried about them (though if I were a Christian, I'd worry for their immortal souls), because, twenty years down the road, most will successfully maintain they were for marriage equality all along. Moral relativism has its advantages.
(Hannah-Beth Jackson was an excellent legislator before being termed out, and is now continuing her work with SpeakOut. Thanks! - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
This blog [post] comes after there was a response to a request for the increase of reimbursement rates for planned parenthood to continue providing preventive reproductive health care.
Steve Maviligio and Robert Salladay post today on a new coalition that has united in favor of compassionate immigration reform.
More than a dozen California evangelical churches have joined a coordinated nationwide effort, Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, to call for humane treatment of illegal immigrants, stronger border enforcement, guest worker programs and smoother paths to citizenship.
The group has begun an advertising campaign in Washington, DC this week and has sent 200,000 letters to members of congress.
This news comes on the same day as the launch of a new sanctuary program for illegal immigrants. Several churches around the country plan to take part, although it will start modestly in Los Angeles today with an area Catholic church and Lutheran church each sheltering one person from the threat of deportation, operating under one key assumption:
Organizers don't believe immigration agents will make arrests inside the churches.
