By: Paul S. Marchand
Last week, two events of interest occurred in our valley, one of which quite rightly got a great deal of media attention, the other one of which should have received much more coverage than it did.
The first event, of course, was a surprisingly unanimous adoption by the Palm Springs City Council of a resolution in favor of marriage equality.
The other was the annual general assembly of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), held in La Quinta.
History, we are often told, is made by those who show up. Many of the decisions and policies that will affect the destinies of every Coachella Valley resident have their start, or are discussed and debated, at SCAG. It is the largest metropolitan/regional planning organization in the country.
During the time I served as a member of the Cathedral city city Council, I represented the Coachella Valley Association of Governments on two SCAG policy committees, Energy and Environment and Community, Economic, and Human Development. Of all of the lessons I absorbed working with colleagues from around the Southern California region, perhaps none was as important as the criticality of networking and interaction among public officials at every level.
I attended this year’s general assembly as a guest of SCAG, a courtesy extended to all former policy committee members. Though I was no longer a city Council member, I came away, as always, with a renewed sense of how important it is for our public officials to think regionally as well as locally.
Unfortunately, there are any of a number of public officials in jurisdictions around the Coachella Valley, including Cathedral City, who don’t see the importance of thinking regionally, and who do not understand how critical it is for cities to network together, to share information together, to learn from both mistakes and successes, and – where necessary – to form a united front when Sacramento and Washington City seek to burden us at the municipal level with tasks they ought to be undertaking themselves.
The worst enemy of a municipality is parochial thinking; if local officials refuse to network and interact with their peers, that municipality will inevitably and ineluctably be left behind. When decisions are made that affect our lives, our destinies, and our prosperity, every city must have a place at the table.
Too often, however, aspiring politicians seek to pander to ideological components of the so-called base without bothering to parse out the ramifications of their positions. It is easy for a Council wannabe with no knowledge of local government complain in public comment at a council meeting about local officials attending a SCAG function or serving on a commission or committee outside the city. We may perhaps indulge such rantings as the frivolous speech of the uninformed or of the bombthrower, but we must never allow such people to get close to the actual levers of power.
It’s unfortunate that the SCAG general assembly didn’t garner more attention or coverage than it did; its meetings were announced and open, and it’s unfortunate that almost nobody took up the invitation to see how public servants seek to bring back value added information to benefit their communities.
While SCAG’s general assembly passed virtually under the radar, there was no shortage of coverage of the Palm Springs city Council’s 5-0 decision to support marriage equality. I welcome the council’s adoption of such a resolution, and I particularly welcome a 5 to 0 outcome; it gives one hope that in Palm Springs, at least, the city Council is prepared to move beyond the Culture Wars, at least on this issue.
Though I have been an advocate for marriage equality for almost 20 years, — since long before it was fashionable to be such — I chose not to address my neighboring city’s council on the subject. Had I done so, I would have noted that Cathedral City was the first community in the Coachella Valley to adopt a domestic partners ordinance, well over a decade ago, and that I advocated for the ordinance’s adoption, and helped marshal support for its passage. I might also have pointed out that I was one of the first attorneys in California to take on a case challenging California’s then statutory ban on same gender marriage. But in the end, I felt that for me to go before the city Council in Palm Springs on this subject would have been grandstanding; the council needed to hear from its own residents.
Nonetheless, had I spoken, I would also have noted how tired so many of us are in the LGBT community of hearing arguments against our civil rights bottomed upon the notion that somehow our exercise of so fundamental civil right as marriage somehow imposes a burden upon the religious exercise of those who disapprove of our existence.
I grow tired of being told that someone else’s religious discomfort should trump my right of first class citizenship in the Commonwealth. I grow tired of being told that the free exercise clause of the First Amendment is a sword by which I may be deprived of my rights in order to assuage other people’s religious discomfort, rather than a shield behind which all people of faith may rest secure against government intrusion.
For there is simply no legally cognizable intrusion on anyone else’s free exercise of religion if Jonathan and David or Ruth and Naomi are able to tie the civil knot just as are Adam and Eve. There is simply no legally sustainable argument that any opponent of marriage equality can make against allowing Ruth and Naomi were Jonathan and David to be civilly married. Those who conflate marriage with matrimony demonstrate a lamentable and dangerous ignorance of both the law and basic sacramental theology.
What those who base their opposition to marriage equality upon a free exercise claim do not, cannot, or will not, understand is that if society concedes to one religion a veto over the exercise of fundamental civil rights because such exercise conflicts with a particular religion’ s tenets, it necessarily concedes to every religion the right to impose its own orthopraxy upon nonmembers of that religion.
Taken to its logical extreme, the use of free exercise as a sword, rather than a shield, would allow the orthodox Jew or the observant Muslim to veto a Christian neighbor's consumption of a pork roast accompanied by a bottle of Riesling, for both Islam and Judaism forbid the consumption of pork (as being neither kosher nor halal) and Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol. Yet again, I know of no legal argument that would support the right of the orthodox Jew or the observant Muslim to veto my enjoyment of that pork roast or glass of Riesling under color of a free exercise claim.
I will wait to see how other jurisdictions in the Coachella Valley handle marriage equality when, or if, the issue comes before those councils. And while I remain silent in other cities, I will certainly speak when this issue becomes an agenda item before my own Council, and I expect that like many of my LGBT neighbors, I will be keeping score to see which of my former colleagues considers Cathedral City’s LGBT residents to be authentic first class citizens.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served eight years on the City Council. He has been an advocate for LGBT civil rights and for marriage equality for more than two decades. The views expressed herein are his own.
