O COME LET US ADORE HIM

Summary: As we remember again at Christmas the Incarnation of the infant in the manger, we remember not only the unwed teenager and her older boyfriend in that manger, but also the angelic voices that proclaimed that saving birth.  Christmas is a time when we stand challenged to preach liberation and justice, over against a reductionist “makers/takers” narrative.  It is for us in these days to proclaim a Gospel that has a preferential option for those who have been bereft of dignity and justice, a Gospel that dares to scatter the proud in their conceit.  The Savior is nigh; O come let us adore Him.

By: Paul S. Marchand

What should we think, well into the second decade of the 21st century were we to encounter a teenage girl, obviously pregnant, situationally homeless, traveling with an older boyfriend who is not the father of her unborn child?

In a society all too quick to condemn and slow to consider, a society quick to judge and slow to understand, a society adept at jumping to conclusions and singularly inept at thinking things out, a society in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven, it would be easy on hearing such a word-picture to be led toward an angry, self-immiserating discourse on the social ills of contemporary American society.

It would be tempting.

Yet, such a word picture also recapitulates the infancy narrative set forth in Luke’s Gospel, describing the birth of our Savior in that famous manger in Bethlehem more than 2000 years ago.

The paradox of the Lucan infancy narrative is that instead of inviting our condemnation of the social transgressions of the pregnant teenager and her older boyfriend, it invites us to declare of this young girl: “Blessed art thou and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.”

Across the millennia, Luke’s Gospel has spoken both to the paradox of the power inherent in powerlessness and of the human compunction ---the sense of “awwwww” we ineluctably feel in the presence of the smallest and weakest among us.  In every generation, we have been drawn to the manger by the bidding of angelic voices.

O come let us adore Him.

For when the sound and the fury are over, the core of the Christmas story is not so much about gift-giving or solemn liturgies or Christmas trees or proclamations or mawkish and sentimental Christmas cards or even Bill O’Reilly’s delusional claims of some sort of war on Christmas.  The Christmas story is about proclaiming liberation, about a preferential option for those who have been bereft of justice and dignity.  It is about proclaiming a radical view of human dignity, inclusion, and social justice over against a dispensation that still, after 2000 years, insists upon organizing the world very much without reference to the teachings Infant in Bethlehem sought to impart to the world.

Christmas is about giving the lie and rebuking the reductionist “makers/takers” narrative that reflexively, even belligerently, takes the side of Dives over Lazarus.  Christmas rebukes a sinful tendency to celebrate without shame the selfishness of the One Percent over the Ninety-Nine Percent.  For into the world comes the Incarnate Word of a liberating God Who, in the words of the Magnificat, “has scattered the proud in their conceit.”

O come let us adore Him.

At Christmas, we stand challenged to proclaim our liberation and our proclamation of a passionate gospel of justice.  At Christmas we stand challenged to bear witness to a passionate God, Whose passionate love for us is passionately expressed in the Incarnation of the Infant in the manger.  Instead of “putting the ‘Christ’ back in Christmas,” perhaps we should put the Mass back in Christmas, in sharing human companionship, human compunction, and human charity, and by breaking bread together both in our holiday meal and in the context of the Holy Eucharist.  These are the gifts that come when we recount the infancy narratives and when we break the bread and share the cup together.

Samuel Johnson once noted that nothing concentrates a man’s mind is so marvelously as the knowledge that he is to be hanged in a fortnight.  By the same token, few things concentrate a family’s mind more marvelously than the birth of an infant.  It focuses the familial mind on what must be done to safeguard that infant and to create a better future.  The infancy narrative at the foundation of our Christmas understanding demands of us the most careful, prayerful consideration of what we must do to build a better future, Urbi et Orbi -- for Cathedral City and the world.  Our Christmas gift, this year and every year that follows, is a renewed commitment to the kind of social justice and Savior in the manger came into this world to proclaim.

O come let us adore Him.

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” Isa. 61:1-2.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, Who shall be called the Prince of Peace.

The Savior is nigh.  O come let us adore Him.

Merry Christmas.

-xxx-

PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City.  The views contained herein are his own; he’s not speaking ex cathedra on behalf of any entity, denomination, diocese or parish.  The views herein are not legal advice, and should not be taken as such.

AFTER NEWTOWN: CALLING BS ON THE JACKASS CHORUS

Summary: Another horror comes among us with the latest mass shooting, this one in the peaceful village of Newtown, Connecticut.  The bodies of the passion-bearers have not even been buried and already the jackass chorus is braying its damn fool notions that somehow this incident is the fault of secularists “driving God out of the public square,” queerfolk, and uppity, pro-choice women.  The damn fools of the jackass chorus may have a First Amendment right to insert their foot into their mouth and chew right down to the bone, but the rest of us, who live in the reality-based community, have an equal First Amendment right to call bullshit.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Oh dear God, not again.
Like a bad folk song with a tiresome refrain that never stops repeating itself, America has once again been shocked by a horrific act of mass gun violence.

When Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Chief U.S. District Judge John Roll were shot, and Judge Roll was killed, last year in Tucson by an apparently unbalanced shooter, I posted in this blog to urge that we all take time for considerate and careful reflection.

What do we think?  What do we know?  What can we prove?

After the horrors of Newtown, Connecticut, and the experiences in Aurora, in Clackamas County, and Virginia Tech, we should have learned by now that the aftermath of events such as these is no time for loudmouths among us to prove conclusively that horses’ asses outnumber horses.

Indeed, without even waiting for the passion-bearers whose lives were cut off so young to be buried, the jackasses are braying.  Former Arkansas Governor and sometime presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee was the first out of the box with his outlandish claim that the shooting had occurred because we had somehow “escorted God out of the public square.”  Huckabee would have done better had he remained silent.  The society that insists upon imposing a sectarian vision of God in the public square will sooner or later use that public square as a venue for the horrors of the auto-da-fé.

But Mike Huckabee wasn’t the only jackass offering damn fool notions about what caused the Newtown shootings.  The latest claim from the Ridiculous Right is that abortion and gay rights were responsible for the shooting; it's all the fault of queerfolk and uppity, pro-choice women.  Bloody fools like James Dobson Of Focus on the Family and heretics like Phred “God hates Fags” Phelps felt it incumbent to weigh in on this issue with foolish, judgmental, hateful, and theologically unsustainable opinions and conclusions.

It all seems to be about God, Guns, and Gays.
Apparently, at least in the Dobson/Phelps view, God put guns in the hands of the shooter to illustrate His displeasure with America’s growing tolerance of gays.



 You don’t have to be queer to find such views ridiculous and indefensible.  Sadly, our social dialogue has reached the point where moral midgets like Huckabee, Dobson, and their fellow travelers on the Ridiculous Right --- the same people who brought us so-called legitimate rape and rape children being part of God's plan --- rejoice in the happening of dreadful events because they look forward to being able to wag their hypocritical fingers.  As an acquaintance of mine put, “whatever some whack job shoots up a theater or a mall or school, some other right wing whack job comes out of the woodwork and starts casting blame.”

No doubt, once the State of Connecticut concludes its investigation, we will have a better sense of the whys and wherefores that led another unbalanced young man to matricide and mass murder.  In the meantime, we should withhold judgment before forming conclusions and opinions.  Sadly, the jackass chorus hasn’t bothered to wait to take that considerate and careful break from jumping to conclusions.

What we can know is that after a dismal season of mass shootings, the President was right when he said these tragedies need to end.  We must have a serious, non-hysterical conversation about the extent to which our embrace of guns has created a social psychopathology.  We cannot have that discussion as long as the jackasses are braying and the NRA -- which should be investigated as a racketeering organization -- continues to try to raise money off of tragedies such as this. 

Already, rumors are circulating that the NRA plans a fund-raising appeal grounded on baseless assertions that “the government is coming to take gun-owners’ firearms away.”  Doubtless, the NRA’s propaganda will soon have black helicopters from the UN descending in our backyards to disgorge foreigners come to seize our weapons and take away our freedoms.  And so the jackass chorus continues.

What happened in Connecticut last week was bad enough without the usual suspects opening their mouths, inserting feet therein, and then chewing down to the bone.  America is a great nation, and damn fools peddling damn fool notions have a First Amendment right to do so.  But the rest of us -- the vast, non-jackass majority -- also have an equal First Amendment right to call bullshit when we hear it.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served eight years on the city Council.  He has no patience for, and is quite willing to call out, bullshit when he sees it, and makes no apologies to prudes and bluenoses who might take pernickety exception to his use of a term that frankly could use a little more deployment in our conversation.  The views contained herein are his own, and not anybody else’s, and nobody has any right to try to veto his expression under claim of some kind of offense.  They are not intended, and should not be construed, as legal advice.

Passing out of living memory: Thoughts on Pearl Harbor Day, 2012

Summary: 71 years on, the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor is rapidly passing out of living memory as roughly 1000 members the “Greatest Generation” pass into eternity every day and as the cohort of living Pearl Harbor survivors shrinks the vanishing point.  As that cohort shrinks, we lose contact with living memory of those events that wrenched America out of neutrality and into the Second World War.  Today, should we see or encounter a Pearl Harbor survivor or survivors in our pleasant Desert, we should take a moment to reflect and remember that day of infamy on which more than 2000 Americans laid what Abraham Lincoln once called “so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom.”

By: Paul S. Marchand


Today’s online Desert Sun contained an article by Denise Goolsby headlined “Pearl Harbor survivors in valley dwindling.”  Reading it, I was reminded yet again of how the so-called Greatest Generation has been passing into eternity at the rate of more than 1000 a day.  Soon, World War II and the attack against Pearl Harbor 71 years ago will have passed from living memory; it will be only a period piece.  There is always something melancholy about a cusp period, about time when some great and terrible event passes out of living memory and into the realm of the historian.

As a late-Boomer child, born in the early 60s, I belong to one of the last age cohorts to grow up in communities in which World War II veterans were an active, substantial, and integral part of life.  In my neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills were numerous residents --- some of them still in their vigorous late 40s or early 50s --- for whom World War II service was a first-hand, personal experience.  Because Los Angeles was, and still is, the quintessential entertainment industry “company town,” drawing workers and talent from a worldwide pool, some of those World War II veterans in my neighborhood actually had seen service with the Wehrmacht or with the Armed Forces of Italy and Japan.  But most of them were part of America’s own “Greatest Generation.”

Yet as the cohort of World War II veterans in general and Pearl Harbor survivors in particular grows ever smaller, now becomes an increasingly opportune time to reflect on the conflict and the cause, and the service and the sacrifice of those then-young men on that Sunday morning in Hawai’i when war came thundering down upon them.

Few, if any, of the young men on duty at Pearl Harbor on that dreadful day expected an attack.  Sunday, December 7, 1941 started like any other peacetime day in what was one of the most desirable duty posts in the United States Navy.  Yet, for Americans, notwithstanding the existence of a war that had been underway in Europe for more than two years, the idea that the United States would find herself essentially dragooned into the war as a belligerent seemed far-fetched to much of the American public.  Nonetheless, Pearl Harbor was Where It All Began.

Not surprisingly, for Boomers and our successors -- for whom World War II was the stuff of vicarious hearsay -- talking to actual veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack always carried a kind of particular fascination.  Few things carry the kind of immediacy and power that a first-hand recounting of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor carries.  Oh, to be sure, those of us with some degree of book learning about the history of the Pacific War may entertain a broader perspective, and may be able to discourse learnedly on the more Olympian aspects of high-level policy and strategy, but none of us will ever be able to summon from first-hand memory the sights, the sounds, the smells, the pressure wave from the explosion of the magazines in Turret II aboard the battleship Arizona (BB-39), or the badly damaged USS Nevada (BB-36) attempting to sortie, struggling to gain maneuvering room at sea, making her agonizing way down the channel in Pearl Harbor before grounding herself at Hospital Point.

Such eyewitness, percipient testimony to such history making events is something we cleave to ever more tightly as the number of witnesses to those events diminishes every year.  And so, if when out and about in our pleasant Desert, one should come across a vehicle driven by an elderly man and carrying a “Pearl Harbor Survivor” license plate, take a moment to remember, before all living memory of Pearl Harbor passes away.  For if memory is the custodian of all our horrors, memory is also the strongbox in which we preserve our inspirations, and also the treasure chest in which we cherish our precious recollections of service and costly sacrifice laid on the altar of freedom.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he spent two terms on the city Council.  When Pearl Harbor was attacked, his late father, then eight years of age, was munching pizza and drinking illegal beer in Patsy’s Bar in the Bronx.  His mom, then a toddler in El Paso, Texas, remembers the sun-rivaling flash of light, visible in El Paso, from the first atomic test, code-named Trinity, outside Alamogordo New Mexico in July, 1945.

ROBERT MARCHAND, 1933-2012, AN APPRECIATION.

Summary: my father’s passing yesterday evening leaves me contemplating the lessons to be learned from a life lived in full. He was a creature of responsibility, yet possessed of an irreverence for shibboleth, fiercely opposed to political meddling in the arts. He was a fierce defender of civilization, of the art of living inclusively in community. These are just some of the lessons I take from a life lived fully. I shall miss him terribly.

By: Paul S. Marchand

My dad died yesterday evening.

He was the best of fathers and the best of friends.

Of course, we draw lessons from every life lived and completed in its fullness. Though it is normal for children to bury their parents, it is equally normal for the critical parental teaching function to survive. The lessons we take from our parents are those we pass on to future generations. Across time and place we live and learn from our predecessors.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I take from the life lived in full that was my father’s was that of John Donne: "no man is an island." My father was a creature of responsibility who appreciated that we are all interdependent beings, that all of our actions ramify outward, and that in a world of intertwined lives, everything we do has an effect upon others. He taught me to be thoughtful of the way in which my actions would unfold their potential upon others. The very idea of bullying was hateful to him; the Golden Rule was his steady vade mecum for conduct.

But my dad’s ethic of responsible behavior toward self and others never prevented him from taking joy from the world around him. He had a healthy irreverence for shibboleth; his sense of humor regarded nothing as being out of bounds. Bluenoses and the easily offended, with their shibboleths and "buttons," had no place in his worldview.

Moreover, to a man possessed of an irreverence for shibboleth, rules themselves were shibboleths. Foolish rules, unreasonable rules, picayune rules, rules in place "for no other reason than that they had been on the statute book since the time of Henry IV," all of these he held up to critical analysis. To the overused cliché "it is what it is," he always came back with one simple question: "why?"

My dad’s willingness to ask the often stupefying question "why?" served him in good stead when, the better part of half a century ago, he found himself in the brand-new field of administering public support for the fine arts. Serving first with the California and later with the Maryland Arts Commissions, he was never afraid to stand up to politicians looking to turn the arts into a tame, compliant, and obedient wing of government. For him, though public support for the arts is an integral part of civilized society, there could be no such thing as an "official culture," nor was the idea of politicians as curators of what we should see, touch, or hear at all congenial to him. If the idea of politician as curator was uncongenial, the idea of politician as would-be censor roused in him a fighting spirit of opposition to the whole notion of political meddling in the arts, and he brought his steadfast convictions to his lengthy service as member, and later chair, of the Cathedral City Public Arts Commission.

For my father was an unapologetic progressive, unembarrassed to be numbered among liberals and so-called counterculture McGoverniks. At a time when Coachella Valley Democrats were, at best, a threatened --- even endangered --- species, when it was less potentially socially problematic to be gay than to be a Democrat in our Valley, my father was unafraid to be an out, loud, and proud Democrat. In the end, he was vouchsafed enough time to see the 36th Congressional District, the Coachella Valley, and Riverside County go true Democratic blue.

Yet blue was hardly the only color in my dad’s spectrum; it included the whole rainbow, reflecting his commitment to a society made up of every sort and condition of human being, irrespective of the way we live, the way we love, the way we look, the way we work, or the way we worship. For a decade and a half, my father served on the board of the Palm Springs-Desert Communities chapter of PFLAG. Having been "an actor, another goddamn actor," before moving into the administrative side of public arts, my dad was well accustomed to socializing and working professionally with LGBT colleagues in the entertainment industry, a history that served me in good stead when I came out to him half a lifetime ago. Indeed, I used to tease him that he was one of half a dozen straight men in the world who were into show tunes.

For these and so many other life lessons my dad imparted to me in the two score years and eight we had together, I am and always will be profoundly grateful.

He was the best of fathers and the best of friends.

I shall miss him terribly.

Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon him. May his dwelling this day be with the saints in the Paradise of God.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms on the city Council. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Riverside County Democratic Party or of any other entity with which he may be associated. They are not intended, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THANKSGIVING

 Summary:  We have many things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving:  our weather, the President's re-election and the strong Democratic performance at the polls, the decision of the Riverside County BOS to look into the fiasco that was our election in this County, victories for marriage equality, and the continuing vigor of the body politic that emerged from the Mayflower Compact.

By:  Paul S. Marchand


Best Thanksgiving wishes to friends, family, and to those who touch my life.

It has become almost a tradition in American society to take stock today of those things for which we are thankful.  It is as if our traditional practice of Lenten introspection had been uprooted and transferred from the season of Lent to those final Sundays after Pentecost just before Advent.  (Caveat: there is an Advent post in our future; I can’t help it.  I’m Episcopalian.)

So, with the greatest of deference and respect, permit me to offer my own litany of things for which I am thankful this day.

THE WORLD AROUND ME
I’m thankful for seasonable and temperate weather this day.  I appreciate that in colder climes, there may be white stuff falling out of the sky.  Having spent three years in law school ten miles from Lake Michigan, and having experienced the reality of so-called Lake Effect snowstorms, I appreciate 80° weather at Thanksgiving.

THE POLITICS OF AMERICA
I’m thankful that Barack Obama was triumphantly reelected to a second term as President of the United States.  I’m even more thankful that Democrats did so well in senatorial and Congressional elections.  I’m thankful for Tammy Baldwin becoming the first out lesbian Senator in history.  I’m thankful that that obnoxious little Tea Party congressman Alan West got his pink slip from constituents tired of his Red-baiting antics.  I’m thankful for Elizabeth Warren, Heidi Heitkamp, and Claire McCaskill.  I’m thankful for Alan Grayson’s comeback; I’m thankful for Raul Ruiz and Mark Takano, and I’m thankful that, with the exception of North Carolina, every single battleground state in the last election went blue.

THE SUPERVISORS’ DECISION TO REVIEW RIVERSIDE COUNTY’S VOTING INFRASTRUCTURE.
I’m thankful that after four utterly botched elections, in which the Riverside County Registrar of Voters could not seem to find rear end with both hands, our Board of Supervisors finally took some proactive steps to try to figure out why the handling of election 2012 in Riverside County was, to put matters mildly, the most rotten show imaginable. 

There is something simply unacceptable about the fact that we can know on election night our president will be for the next four years, but that two-plus weeks after the election, we don’t even know who will be mayor of Cathedral City.  This is now the fourth election in Riverside County where Riverside County has been last, dead last, of all of California’s 58 counties, in getting its electoral shit together. 

After four fiascoes, it is clear that Riverside County needs to get real about its piss-poor electoral infrastructure.  There is simply no excuse for failing to provide the ROV with sufficient resources to be able to ensure that ballots are counted timely and accurately. 

There is simply no excuse for requiring that ballots be transported more than 100 miles from Blythe to Riverside simply to be counted.  There should be regional counting centers, equipped with ample numbers of scanners. 

Four successive election screw ups by the ROV have left Riverside County voters with significantly impaired confidence in the integrity of the electoral process. 
Finally, it is also necessary to spank Secretary of State Debra Bowen.  For years now California has set its face resolutely against electronic voting, citing fears that the process could be hacked.  In truth, there exist secure un-hackable electronic voting architectures which, if adopted, would allow for rapid, accurate voting.  By engineering such architectures to produce paper receipts, the integrity of electronic voting architecture could be protected. 

As it is now, California once again demonstrates her fundamentally schizoid nature: on one hand California leads the world in innovation, yet her government activities are often characterized by a stultifying, Luddite, technological conservatism.


DIAL “M” FOR MARRIAGE
Finally, I’m thankful this fall that three states whose names begin with the letter “M” embraced marriage equality.  Together with Washington, the states of Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota voted “yes” on marriage equality.  How far we have come in barely a generation. 

Just 20 years ago, the idea that Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David could go down to the local courthouse and get themselves civilly hitched was the stuff of visionary dreaming.  Today, the phrases “his husband” or “her wife” have entered the customary lexicon of American speech. 

Things have distinctly changed for the better when it is possible to hear an elected public official talking about his husband or her wife without fear of backlash from angry, homophobic wedge-issue extremists.

THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT
In elementary schools around the country this week, children will be dressing up in Pilgrim costumes to reenact the Plymouth Rock narrative.  While the Plymouth Rock narrative is, to all intents and purposes, a Yankee sectional myth that has little resonance south of the Mason-Dixon line largely because it ignores the Jamestown story that began more than a decade before, it still remains an astonishingly successful cultural story.  We may remain thankful that the body politic which emerged from the Mayflower Compact remains vital and vigorous to this day.

On this uniquely American day, let us always remember that gratitude is one of the noblest of human emotions.  Happy Thanksgiving.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  He serves as an officer of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the California Democratic Party or any other entity with which he is associated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

ANATOMY OF A DEFEAT: HOW THE GOP’S DOOMSDAY MACHINE SCARED AMERICAN VOTERS INTO RE-ELECTING BARACK OBAMA

Summary: having been shellacked on November 6, the Republican Party has been wailing and gnashing its collective teeth, not only over Barack Obama’s triumphant re-election, but also over the way in which a whole series of Republican incumbents and office seekers were either turned out or turned back by turned off voters.  Democrats presented voters with a blueprint for more perfect union; the Republican blueprint was for a doomsday machine.  The election had less to do with the demographics of gender, sexuality, or color than it did about the fact that millions of American voters had the bejeesus scared out of them by the harsh and extreme rhetoric of the Republican Party.  Turned off by a party modeling the crazy old guy yelling “you kids get off my lawn,” voters turned to the Democrats, gravitating toward the Party that seemed more rational and able to get along with its neighbors in the community.

By: Paul S. Marchand

“...there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”  St. Matt. 13:42

The Democratic Party’s comeback from the disastrous midterm elections of 2010 seems to have left the Republicans chasing their metaphorical tails.  A whole series of Republican incumbents (including the Desert’s own Mary Whitaker Bono Baxley McGillicuddy) were turned out, and a whole series of Republican hopefuls (including the Hoosier state’s Richard “rape children are what God intended” Mourdock) were turned away by an electorate that had been thoroughly turned off by what the GOP had said and done.

Those People In That Other Party have been wailing and gnashing teeth since even before Mitt Romney conceded the election early on Wednesday morning, November 7.

Now the GOP is struggling to make sense of the shellacking it sustained.  Having gone to great lengths to insulate themselves from reality, many high-ranking GOP operatives seem to have been absolutely convinced that Mr. Romney would not only be victorious, but that he would win in a landslide.

With President Obama on his way back to the White House with 332 electoral votes in his pocket, Those People in That Other Party are now asking “why?”

We can essay all manner of theories to explain the dismal defeat the GOP sustained eleven days ago.  We can talk about changing demographics, or how the Republicans have become “too old, too white, and too male,” or we can apply Occam’s razor, which in plain English postulates that the simplest hypothesis that fits the data is probably the correct one.

When we apply Occam’s razor to the most recent presidential election, the simplest hypothesis that fits the data is not an hypothesis of gender or demographics.  Women, queerfolk, Latinos, African-Americans, and other communities of color don’t vote monolithically.  What seems to fit the data is what I call the “scared shitless” hypothesis: American voters heard what Republicans had to say and a majority of them found Republican rhetoric harsh, extreme, and deeply frightening.



Both Democrats and Republicans presented American voters with two competing blueprints for America’s future.  The Democratic blueprint was for a more perfect union; the Republican blueprint was for a doomsday machine. 

 The retrograde rhetoric of the Republicans, with its implicit calls to restore in their fullest form the social and economic dispensations of 1912, struck voters in 2012 as so grossly out of touch with reality as to be beyond scary.  A Republican acquaintance of mine, admitting sotto voce to me that he had “crossed over to the “Dark Side” and voted for President Obama, opined that the rhetoric and talking points of his own party had “scared the bejeesus” out of him.

It seems safe to conclude that the GOP appeal to voters simply divided the electorate into those seeking to undo Barack Obama and all his works --- and presumably to make liberalism a crime in this country --- and those who had the bejeesus scared out of them by what they saw and heard from Mitt Romney and other GOP wannabes during the campaign.

It is an open question whether the Republican Party will moderate its transports or seek to reinforce its own ideological purity and look for a “true conservative”, anti-Mitt Romney candidate to run against Hillary Clinton/Martin O’Malley/Andrew Cuomo/Elizabeth Warren/whoever emerges as the Democratic standardbearer in 2016.

If the GOP attempts to retreat into a posture of so-called true conservativism for 2016, it will -- even more than Mitt Romney’s unguarded gaffes -- constitute a gift for Democrats that will keep on giving. 

How many of us in the middle class did not take the quondam Massachusetts governor’s remarks about the so-called 47 percent as a declaration of war upon us?

How many women in America did not feel a frisson of fear when Romney spoke of getting rid of Planned Parenthood?

How many queer people in America didn’t feel slapped in the face by the Republican platform and its out and out hatred for queerfolk?

As and to the extent that Mitt Romney has continued to whine and complain and gnash his teeth about the outcome of the election, complaining, in effect, that the president “bribed” the electorate with a variety of “gifts,” he has set a tone for more and worse angry posturing from the American right.  Certainly, the GOP seems to be recapitulating Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s classic five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

We saw the denial phase in Karl Rove’s refusal to agree with the outcome when Fox News called the state of Ohio for the president on election night.  Over the last few days, we’ve seen Mitt Romney acting out the anger phase of his party’s grieving over their loss.  Soon enough, we may start to see the bargaining process emerge.

Nonetheless, there is something more than a little worrisome about a party that seems to model institutionally the “angry, crazy old man” stereotype Clint Eastwood embodied so perfectly in his harangue to the empty chair at the Republican National Convention in Tampa this summer.  Does anyone really want to vote for the crazy old man standing on his porch waving a shotgun and yelling “you kids get off my lawn”?

What we saw this fall was a contest between rational people who know how to get along with their neighbors and crazies brandishing that metaphorical shotgun yelling “you kids get off my lawn!”  For the more than 50 million Americans who voted for Barack Obama, the choice could not have been simpler.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  He serves as vice chair representing California’s 56th Assembly District on the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Democratic Party or of any other organization with which Mr. Marchand is affiliated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

IN THE NAME OF GOD, GO!

Summary: Outgoing Cathedral City mayor Kathleen DeRosa’s resistance to facts and her refusal to concede the mayoral election to her challenger Chip Yarborough shows a dangerously monarchical conceit, to say nothing of demonstrating the potential existence of a diagnosable psychopathology.  Certainly, DeRosa’s conduct has managed to make her and the city into local laughingstocks.  She should stop fighting facts and concede the election with such small scraps of dignity are now left to her.  Her bad behavior has certainly pounded the last nail into the tawdry coffin of her political ambitions.

 "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

          -Oliver Cromwell, dissolving the Rump Parliament, April, 1653

Yesterday, I blogged about outgoing Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s tasteless and inappropriate behavior in opining that under her successor, Chip Yarbrough, Cathedral City would change for the worse.

In this morning’s Desert Sun, there is an article to the effect that DeRosa is refusing to concede the mayoral election in Cathedral City.  DeRosa seems to have forgotten John Adams’ immortal observation in the trial of the British troops accused of conducting the Boston Massacre: “facts are stubborn things.”

Facts are stubborn things.  They don’t truckle to mobs or monarchs, but demand obeisance from both mobs and monarchs.  Certainly, Kathleen Joan DeRosa has entertained a significantly monarchical conceit of herself as mayor of Cathedral City, but now it is time for DeRosa to adult up and face facts.

Given the unattractive personality traits DeRosa has displayed in such abundance over the last few days, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize the existence of some kind of diagnosable psychopathology or personality disorder.  The implications for Cathedral City’s body politic are sobering.  Once again, DeRosa has managed to make both herself and her city  local laughingstocks.

What is more worrisome, as a number of observers on social media have noted, is the flagrant disrespect DeRosa displays for democracy.  One is forced to ask whether, in the face of bad electoral news --- had she been able to get away with it --- DeRosa would have simply done what dictators around the world have often tried to do.  Would she have simply annulled the results of the mayoral election and had her opponent arrested?  Would she have run some kind of municipal self coup? 


DeRosa’s conduct raises disturbing questions, both about her commitment to democracy, and whether she entertained secret mental reservations and purposes of evasion when she took the oath of office required by Article XX of the State Constitution.  She should remember, if she took the oath falsely, that lying under oath is a crime.

Many DeRosa supporters, repulsed by her churlish conduct, have begun to turn away in disgust.  They have been able to accept the verdict of the voters.  It is a pity that the women they support, the woman who sought to fabricate a cult of personality, appears to think that democracy is beneath her.  It is also a pity that for so long she enjoyed the uncritical support of the Desert Sun and of so many so-called community leaders in the Coachella Valley.  Sadly, Kathleen Joan DeRosa has left behind a legacy of embittered division in Cathedral City.

By refusing to concede and depart with such minute shreds of dignity as might be left to her, DeRosa has tried to pull a Mitch McConnell, instilling in voters lingering questions about the legitimacy of Chip Yarborough’s mayoralty.  We may hope that Cathedral City’s body politic rejects the poison pill DeRosa hopes to administer.

At all events, DeRosa’s unbelievably churlish performance should spell the end of her political career, pounding the last nail into the tawdry coffin of her ambitions.  She has sat too long for any good she has been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with her.  

In the name of God, go!

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity with which he is associated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

NOT CLASSY, KATHY: Defeated Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa's Petulant Post and the Challenges Facing Incoming Mayor Chip Yarborough

Summary: yesterday, defeated soon-to-be-former Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa posted on Facebook an implied concession of the mayoral election in Cathedral city.  She posted that she was “sad because the face of our struggling city will change dramatically and in [her] opinion not for the better.” (emphasis added)  Not only was such a post a classless departure from well-established political norms of behavior for defeated candidates, but also was sadly in character for a mayor known throughout the Valley for her abrasive, confrontational personality.  There appears to be a psychopathology at work.  Incoming mayor Chip Yarborough stands challenged to avoid aping the worst aspects of the outgoing mayor’s personality; he will need to avoid score-settling, vindictiveness, and defensiveness, growing a thick skin as he deals with the slings and arrows that will come his way as mayor, and taking DeRosa’s record as a vade mecum or handbook of how not to govern.  As residents/voters, we must avoid projecting unsustainable expectations onto the incoming mayor; we won’t get utopia in a day, and we must give incoming mayor time to accomplish the work he has set himself to do.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Way to stay classy, Kathleen.  Way to stay classy.  Not.

Yesterday morning, defeated and outgoing Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa posted the following on Facebook: 

    “Good morning, good morning and thank you for your love and support. God has been very good to me allowing me the opportunity to serve the great people of Cathedral City for 8 years. I lost a title, not who I am nor the friends and family that are a significant part of my life.  I'm sad because the face of our struggling city will change dramatically and in my opinion not for the better.” (Emphasis added)

The outgoing mayor likes to talk about so-called norms for council behavior.  To the extent that she was fond of doing so, DeRosa should have recognized and honored a time-tested norm in American politics that if you have been voted out of office, it is incumbent upon you to congratulate your incoming successor and to wish him or her well.   Apparently, that was too much for DeRosa.  Instead, we can probably expect a revisionist narrative in which her loss was not DeRosa’s fault, but the result of her victimization by dark forces out to “get her."
 
To say that the outgoing mayor’s performance and conduct were disappointing, would almost be to understate the case.  Facebook comments on DeRosa’s post were uniformly negative, and the post itself only reinforced the outgoing mayor’s reputation for having an abrasive, confrontational, in-your-face, “New York” personality, as well as having a thin-skinned, monarchical conceit of her own position and role in Cathedral City.  Clearly,there is a psychopathology at work here.

Indeed, the manner of DeRosa's apparently intended departure raises a series of challenges for incoming mayor Chip Yarborough.  The new mayor will be challenged to avoid the excesses of egotism, score-settling/vindictiveness, defensiveness, and sheer thin-skinned stubbornness that were so much a part of the outgoing mayor’s public persona.  Hurling F-bombs at a local businessman is, pace Dale Carnegie, not the right way to win friends and influence people.
 
After eight long, confrontational, winters of DeRosa’s mayoralty, Cathedral City residents and voters will be expecting much from a new mayor whose implicit campaign theme was to restore correct and honorable government to Cathedral City.  Chip Yarborough will need to develop a very thick skin to avoid the slings and arrows that will invariably come his way as mayor.  He will need to avoid the temptation to indulge in the kind of cronyism that so marked DeRosa’s tenure, and he will need to avoid becoming shrill and defensive when confronted by constituents with issues.  In short, Mr. Yarborough should look at the outgoing mayor’s performance as a vade mecum or handbook of how not to govern..

For, when all the sound and the fury are over, Mr. Yarborough will find himself working with a Council and an electorate that chose him precisely because he was not Kathleen Joan DeRosa, and because he offered the hope of something better, of a restoration of correct and honorable government in Cathedral City.

Of course, we who supported Chip must avoid the temptation to project onto him unsustainable expectations.  We will not obtain utopia in a day, and Cathedral City will not magically overcome all of her structural issues and challenges the instant he takes the constitutional oath as mayor.  He will need time and the benefit of the doubt, and he will certainly deserve better than to be sniped at by irreconcilable supporters of the defeated former mayor.


Still, having elected the anti-Kathy, we may dare to envision a better future for Cathedral City, in which our city council pursues a more progressive and inclusive politics than had been the case during the eight long winters of Kathleen DeRosa’s monarchical mayoralty.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City.  He supported Chip Yarborough for mayor, and congratulates him on his victory.  The views set forth herein are entirely his own.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

A GOOD NIGHT FOR PROGRESSIVES

Summary: yesterday’s election was historic.  In returning Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, voters resoundingly rejected the lascivious blandishments of the rabid right.  Here in Cathedral city, congratulations are due to councilmember Greg Pettis, councilmember-elect Stan Henry, and Mayor-elect Chip Yarborough, whose election has broken the heretofore unassailable power of outgoing mayor Kathleen J. DeRosa, who was done in politically by her penchant for bridge-burning and antagonizing just about every constituency imaginable.  Of course, it was a good night all around the country, as Raul Ruiz took away Mary Whitaker Bono Baxley McGillicuddy’s seat in Congress, Tammy Baldwin became the first out lesbian ever elected to the U.S. Senate, Alan Grayson of Florida came back to Congress, and voters in four states gave the green light to marriage equality.  It was a good night for progressives all the way around.
By: Paul S. Marchand

Yesterday’s election may have been one of the most historic in a generation.  Not only did American voters give President Obama a resounding reelection victory, but it was a good day for progressive candidates and causes all of the country.

Moving outward from Cathedral City, permit me a few observations about last night.

Let me start by congratulating my friend Greg Pettis and former police chief Stan Henry on their council wins last night.  Though I myself ran for council, the numbers were not there.  To those who offered me their support and encouragement go my deepest thanks.

Let me also congratulate Mayor-elect Chip Yarborough.

After eight long winters of Kathleen J. DeRosa, Cathedral city residents were clearly ready for change in the mayor’s office.  At the risk of seeming to indulge in schadenfreude, it really was time for DeRosa to go.  Her reputation for divisive politics, bullying, and stab-in-the-back tactics finally caught up with her.  In the end, DeRosa’s reputation as a bridge burner militated fatally against her political survival.  On the other hand, Chip’s ground game was first rate, and created a momentum that brought down the heretofore unassailable DeRosa machine, an alliance between herself, Cathedral City’s Chamber of Commerce, and other local interest groups.

Perhaps the most significant irony of the Cathedral City elections was that of three members of the DeRosa slate, only one, Stan Henry, managed to get elected.  Mr. Henry also ran an effective retail politics, and in running, knocked off longtime reliable DeRosa ally Bud England, who had widely been regarded as a controlled second vote for Ms. DeRosa.  As one particularly savvy Cathedral City political operative suggested to me some months back, “if DeRosa goes, England goes.”  In short, not only did DeRosa not get her trifecta, she wound up well and truly hoist on her own political petard.

With DeRosa and England gone, the makeup of the Council should change significantly.  A formerly center-right body now has an opportunity to adopt a more progressive politics.  Nonetheless, adopting such a politics will not necessarily be easy.  The challenges for Mayor-elect Yarborough will be formidable.  He will need to work swiftly to get Cathedral City’s financial house in order, as well as mend fences with constituencies the outgoing mayor often seemed to go out of her way to antagonize.

It is certainly open to question whether, having been in power through eight winters, DeRosa will accept with equanimity the result of the election.  Will she follow the lead of George Herbert Walker Bush, who, after being defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992, resolved to go out like a “class act”?  Or will she seek to cast blame on her supporters and the electorate, and try to delegitimize the new mayor, as those who had opposed the election of Barack Obama in 2008 sought at every turn to call into question the president’s legitimacy and basic Americanness?.

Having spent much time contemplating the change in Cathedral City’s political dynamic, let me now congratulate the Congressmen-elect from California’s 36th and 41st Districts Dr. Raul Ruiz and Riverside Community College Trustee Mark Takano, both of whom took on the challenge of running in districts that had been considered reliably Republican for decades.

My particular shoutout goes to Dr. Ruiz, who managed to reverse the perception that this district represented a GOP “safe seat” that the outgoing congresswoman would have as long as she wanted it.  To borrow an observation from fellow Democratic activist George Zander, “it’s not their Valley anymore.”

Finally, let me congratulate Senator-elect Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the first out lesbian ever elected to the United States Senate.  Similarly, congratulations to Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill on her reelection, and to Senators-elect Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on their election, and to once and future Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida, returned to the House of Representatives after a two-year hiatus.

Finally, yesterday was a very good day for civil rights.  The long string of electoral defeats for marriage equality has been broken in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and -- presumptively -- Washington State.  Four more American jurisdictions will now allow Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David to get hitched.  While same-gender wedding bells may not be ringing throughout the land, these four victories represent important harbingers of progress to come.  In all four states, there was a direct correlation between age and opposition to marriage equality; the older the voter, the more likely the voter was to oppose marriage equality.  Yet, as certain age cohorts begin to diminish in number through natural attrition, they will inevitably, ineluctably be replaced by those younger voters for whom the idea that Jonathan and David or Ruth and Naomi should be able to marry one another is simply “not strange.”

Speaking last night at a GOP gathering, Riverside County supervisor John Benoit bemoaned the night’s results as a so-called defeat for “conservative values.”  To the extent the late William Buckley once famously defined a conservative as someone “standing athwart history, yelling ‘stop!’,” Supervisor Benoit certainly appeared to be that person last night, standing athwart history, yelling “stop!”  For what the supervisor may bemoan as a defeat for so-called conservative values actually represents a great victory for the basic values of progressiveness and decency for which millions of Americans rose up and fought in this election season of 2012.

To the President, to the progressive victors, to the fighters for civil rights, and to all those who resisted the lascivious blandishments of the rabid right and their moneyed backers, congratulations and thanks.  America and Cathedral City are better places this morning than they were just 24 short hours ago.


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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms on the city Council.  He welcomes the election, after eight long winters, of the new mayor.  The views expressed herein are his own, and are not necessarily those of any organization or entity with which he is associated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

SOMEBODY THINKS WE’RE STUPID: AN INCUMBENT COUNCILMAN’S EFFORT TO TAKE CREDIT FOR THE WORK OF ANOTHER.

SUMMARY: plagiarizing or taking credit for the work of another has always been one of the gravest academic offenses imaginable, carrying with it a very severe sanction.  Yet, politicians often take credit for the work of others.  In a perverse sort of way, I was vaguely flattered by the way in which incumbent Councilman Charles “Bud” England saw fit to take credit for the work I performed making Cathedral City’s downtown energy conservation project a reality, numbering it among his own so-called achievements.  In fact, Mr. England’s sole “achievement” in connection with the project was casting an affirmative vote to move it forward.  That’s hardly much of an achievement.  Mr. England must have a very dim view of the intelligence of Cathedral city’s electorate to try to foist off on it so it easily demonstrable an untruth.  In an educational setting, that’s cheating.  Voters should take such misconduct and cheating into account and give Mr. England a pink slip this coming Tuesday.

By: Paul S. Marchand

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a whopper as “a gross untruth.”  Perhaps we should gloss the definition of whopper as constituting a gross, demonstrable untruth.

When Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney assured an Ohio audience that Jeep would soon be outsourcing its vehicle production to China, he told an easily rebuttable gross untruth.

Whoppers, it seems, are part of the armamentarium of American politicians.

They shouldn’t be.

When I was in school, plagiarizing another’s work or taking credit for the work product of others was considered an “honor code” violation.  The sanction for such a violation could reach up to and include “separation from the institution.”

Apparently incumbent City Councilman Charles “Bud” England seems to have forgotten what a serious violation of good form and basic ethics it is to take credit for work done by others.  In the same way Mr. Romney has developed for himself a malodorous history of whoppers, nasty little fibs, and demonstrable distortions of the truth.  Writing in a New York Times column entitled “Is Romney Unraveling?,” New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow characterized the quondam Massachusetts Governor this way: “Evidence continues to emerge that Romney is one of the most dishonest, duplicitous candidates to ever seek the presidency.”

While Mr. England is no Mitt Romney, he does not seem to have felt a great deal of compunction about taking credit for one of my most significant achievements during my tenure on the city Council.  Specifically, in a piece of campaign literature prepared by him on his behalf, Mr. England claimed as one of his so-called achievements one of the key components of the cathedral City’s downtown energy savings initiative, specifically a solar array composed of more than 1600 photovoltaic panels installed above the top level of Cathedral City’s downtown parking structure.

What makes Mr. England’s claim a whopper is that he took no active part in carrying the legislation that made possible the downtown energy project.  If casting “yes” vote to move the project forward constitutes an “achievement,” then there are very few things that have happened in Cathedral City between 2002 and 2010 for which I could not personally claim credit.

But, in fact, England’s role in the downtown energy savings project was limited to his passive participation and casting the occasional affirmative vote.  For more information on the downtown energy project, please follow this link to the June, 2006 issue of American City and County magazine:  http://www.americancityandcounty.com/mag/government_harnessing_suns_rays.  (NB)  You'll need to copy the link and paste it into the navigation bar of your browser.

The irony inherent in Mr. England’s claim of credit for the work I did to bring the project to the Council and then to shepherd it to fruition lies in Mr. England’s close alliance with embattled Cathedral city Mayor Kathleen J. DeRosa. 

DeRosa, a former employee of Southern California Edison, fought the project tooth and toenail.  While she has been content to claim credit for work done by councilmember Greg Pettis, even she has apparently felt constrained from taking credit for a project she so vociferously opposed.

Perhaps, in a perverse sort of way, I should feel flattered that Mr. England felt the project for which I fought so hard represents a thing of sufficient political value for him to try to appropriate and foist it on the public as his own.

However, in an age where fact checking is as easy as clicking a mouse, Mr. England seems to think that the electorate is not smart enough to do its due diligence and catch him.

Cathedral City voters deserve better than that, and because taking credit for the work of others is an honor violation, should give him his pink slip next Tuesday.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served from 2002 until 2010 on the city Council, and where he is a candidate for council this fall.  Between 2003 and 2005, Mr. Marchand was instrumental in introducing and carrying Cathedral City’s downtown energy conservation plan, which is saving the city well over $100,000/year off its Edison bill, and which is also helping to reduce Cathedral City’s carbon emissions by more than 500 tons/year.  The views set forth herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization or entity with which he is associated.

A FAILED EFFORT AT TRIANGULATION: CATHEDRAL CITY MAYOR KATHLEEN DeROSA’S ATTEMPT TO AVOID TAKING A FORTHRIGHT STAND ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY

Summary:  Embattled Cathedral city Mayor Kathleen J. DeRosa’s attempt to triangulate on the issue of marriage equality, by declaring that as a Catholic, she cannot support marriage equality, but might support some sort of “Civil Union” for LGBT couples is unsustainable.  It fails on two critical grounds.  First, “Civil Unions” is no longer an acceptable “Plan B.” fallback position behind which an un-forthright politician may hide.  Second, to the extent that Ms. DeRosa seeks to justify her position on dogmatic sectarian grounds, her conduct is at unacceptable variance with the obligations she voluntarily assumed when she took the oath of office prescribed in Article XX of the California Constitution.  Ms. DeRosa’s constituents deserve better from her then such tergiversation and triangulation.

By:  Paul S. Marchand

Speaking to constituents at a candidate forum in Cathedral City the other night, embattled fourth-term Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen J. DeRosa responded to a constituent question about her views on marriage equality.  DeRosa stated that, as a Catholic, she could not support same-gender marriage by that name, but that she might be open to calling it something else.  Such a position is unsustainable on two equally compelling grounds.


DeROSA’S POSITION FAILS BECAUSE IT ADVOCATES LESS THAN EQUAL PROTECTION

Unfortunately for DeRosa, her effort to triangulate has been overtaken by events.  “Civil Unions” is no longer an acceptable Plan B fallback position.  Politicians must now take unambiguous, non-triangulating, positions on whether Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David should be able to get civilly hitched and call themselves married.  Marrriage, by that name, not some other, such as “Civil Unions”, is now the default position.

“Civil Unions” came to us in December 1999, when the Vermont Supreme Court ordered that state’s Legislature either to extend the liberty of marital contract to same-gender couples or to come up with a legislative equivalent to marriage for same-gender couples.  Vermont’s solution, “Civil Unions” has now entered America’s political lexicon as a shorthand for something that comes close to being same-gender marriage, without using the M-word.

It was perhaps inevitable that the Vermont Legislature and then Gov. Howard Dean chose “Civil Unions” over the M-word.   Yet, what has rightly concerned the community about civil unions per se is that they represent a risky and problematic “separate but equal” status for gay and lesbian families; the history of “separate but equal” is one in which “separate but equal” has invariably become separate and unequal.  Yet, politics is always about the art of the possible; great advances are often the result of incremental, evolutionary, steps:  as a former senior staffer for the City of Cathedral City used to put matters: You eat the elephant one bite at a time.
   
Yet, with more American jurisdictions embracing marriage equality, the elephant is going down.  Politicians can no longer indulge in the squishy luxury of attempting to avoid taking a forthright position on marriage equality.  Because “Civil Unions” inevitably become “separate and unequal,” DeRosa’s position is unsustainable as a matter of sound constitutional law and principle.

DeROSA’S POSITION IS UNSUSTAINABLE BECAUSE IT INAPPROPRIATELY INVOKES A RELIGIOUS SANCTION TO DENY THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF A SUBSTANTIAL PART OF THE COMMUNITY.

In attempting to rationalize her opposition to marriage equality, the embattled mayor invoked her religious confession, declaring that “as a Catholic” she could not support full marriage equality.  Invoking any denominational dogma to justify denying or abridging the civil rights of a significant and identifiable group within a body politic is inappropriate and unacceptable.

Posting recently on Facebook, The Rev. Canon Susan Russell, of All Saints’ Church, Pasadena, opined that “Religious persecution is when you're prevented from exercising your beliefs: not when you're prevented from imposing your beliefs.”  Too many denominational adherents have falsely claimed that marriage equality represents some kind of attack on their religious freedom.  Such claims of victimhood are trite nonsense.  The free exercise right guaranteed by the First Amendment was never intended as a sword, but only as a shield.  There is no free exercise right to deny, infringe, or abridge the fundamental rights of others in the Commonwealth in order to assuage the claimed religious discomfort of particular sectarian adherents.

Moreover, invoking some sort of sectarian sanction to justify a particular position on policy -- especially one that denies basic civil rights to discrete and insular minority groups within the Commonwealth is not constitutionally sustainable.  Elected public officials in California take an oath to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and of the State of California.  Each of those constitutions contains clauses forbidding governmental establishments of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 

For a public official to justify a discriminatory policy because he or she is an adherent of a particular religious denomination is a naked violation of the oath required of every office holder under Article XX of the California Constitution.  We have a right to expect our public officials to comply with oaths duly taken; we deserve better than such tergiversation and triangulation.
  
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms on the city council and is running to return to the council after a two year hiatus.  In 1993, he was one of the first California attorneys to challenge California’s same-gender marriage ban.  The views set forth herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization with which he is associated.  They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice.

POLICE SHOULD STAY OUT OF POLITICS, DO THEIR JOBS, AND FIGHT REAL CRIME.

Summary: community residents should reasonably expect their public safety services to remain above the political fray.  Efforts to present any candidate as “law enforcement’s choice” for a particular public office represent an unacceptable politicization of the public safety function.  In Cathedral City, the embattled incumbent mayor and the other candidates running on her slate in this fall’s election have sought to present themselves as the implicit choice of Cathedral City’s public safety agencies, raising legitimate questions about the extent to which, should the incumbent mayor’s slate be victorious, our public safety agencies can be expected to remain impartial and resist the temptation to become political enforcers.

By: Paul S. Marchand.
In any community, residents should be able to entertain a reasonable expectation that their police and fire services will hold themselves outside political entanglement.  

As one local resident put it on Facebook, “Police should stay out of politics. The need to do their jobs and fight real crime.”

Unfortunately, as we saw when a group of so-called “Law Enforcement” representatives spoke out publicly against Congressional candidate Dr. Raul Ruiz, the citizenry’s expectations that our local law enforcement will avoid injecting itself into the vortex of political debate have largely been dashed.

Perhaps we should not be surprised.  A recent judicial retention election campaign presented to voters the unedifying spectacle of a challenger to one of our sitting judges unabashedly identifying himself as “law enforcement’s choice.”  In this blog, I was highly critical of such campaign tactics, which I felt reflected poorly on the best traditions of the Bench and Bar, and which tacked unacceptably close to the line that separates permissible campaign conduct from a serious breach of the canons of judicial ethics.

Yet, as citizens, we should still be able to entertain that reasonable expectation that our public safety services will not seek to inject themselves into politics.  I’ve read the unexpurgated Christopher Commission report produced in the wake of the Rodney King incident that rocked the LAPD to its foundations.  I also remember how, on the night the jury in the Rodney King trial came back with not guilty verdicts, then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates --whose disdain for then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was plain for all to see-- was not at LAPD headquarters at Parker Center, but rather was attending a political fundraiser on LA’s Westside.  Such experience has caused me to take a somewhat dim, disapproving view of the politicization of the public safety function.

Here in Cathedral City, an embattled incumbent mayor wants to shoot the moon and take over our city government in its entirety by running a slate consisting of herself, her closest council ally, and Cathedral city’s former police chief.  As offputting as the blatancy and cynicism of the embattled incumbent mayor’s takeover bid may be to many residents of Cathedral City, it also offends because it pulls our public safety services into a political vortex.


Our mayor has a long history of confrontational behavior, and of seeking to cast any disagreement with her as somehow wrong or even criminal.  Can we expect that if the incumbent mayor and her slate are successful in their takeover bid that our public safety agencies will remain apolitical?  Or will those who dissent from the mayor’s viewpoint, or whom she considers enemies, find themselves targeted for investigation and/or prosecution?  Will their 911 calls me timely responded to?  Will our public safety agencies view their role as impartial enforcers of neutral laws of general application, or will they see themselves as the mayor’s muscle, foot soldiers of a political machine?

Given the often full contact nature of local politics here in the Coachella Valley, such questions are hardly unreasonable, given recent events, and they need to be answered.  This incumbent mayor has a long and unhappy track record to account for.  Do her slatemates wants to be held accountable for what they have not done?  Do they want to have to answer for her misdoings, outbursts and F-bombs?  Do they want to be responsible for that which they have not directed? 

Sadly, the mayor and her slatemates have furthered the promiscuous politicization of our police and fire services by creating an unjustified impression that the mayor and her slate somehow represent “law enforcement’s choice,” and that those who do not support the embattled mayor and her slate are not on the side of “law enforcement,” and are somehow rooting for the so-called criminal element.

Do our police and fire departments really want to find themselves subject the lascivious ogling of a political machine?

One would hope that the answer is “no.”

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms on the city council and is running to return to the Council after a two-year hiatus.  The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated.  They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice.

COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!

SUMMARY

I remember Harvey Milk calling on us all to come out.  I remember my own coming out at 26, and how the coming-out age has become dramatically lower.  Since then, we’ve seen our straight neighbors go from tolerating us to becoming habituated to us and -- in increasing numbers -- accepting us as part of society.  On National Coming out Day we remember those whose coming-out made our own comings-out that much easier, and we pay it forward to those young queerfolk who are even now coming to terms with themselves.

By: Paul S. Marchand
I’m just old enough to remember the late Harvey Milk’s famous admonition: “come out, come out, wherever you are!”  I’m also just old enough to remember a time before National Coming Out Day, which got its start in 1988.

Since then, an entire generation of young queerfolk has come into the world and come out of the closet.  When I first came out to my family in 1990, at the age of 26,, the average age for coming out was 26.  Since then, the average coming-out age has dropped precipitously; in 2010, the average coming-out age was 15 or 16.

Certainly, the lowering of average coming-out ages has been a reflection of society’s increasing cultural acceptance of out queerfolk.  Paradoxically, the epidemic of bullying that seems to be occurring in so many of our middle and high schools may well be less of an actual uptick in bullying per se, and more a reflection of the refusal of victims of bullying to suffer in silence.  As Abraham Lincoln famously put it, “what kills a skunk is the publicity gives itself.”  Bullying thrives when no one stands up to it, but shrinks when the intended victim, rather than turning the other cheek, turns on the assailant and fights back.

Still, coming out remains an act freighted with the most profound ramifications, personal, political, and spiritual.  As queerfolk, we must still navigate a society in which our differencing is not readily apparent to our straight neighbors.  Gay essayist Andrew Sullivan once observed that like the Jewish community, the queer nation cannot be detected merely by looking at it.  We are everywhere, and to those who are uncomfortable with our differencing, the fact that we can “pass” relatively easily represents perhaps the most threatening form of cultural dissidence there is.

Nonetheless, our national conversation about sexuality has advanced by light-years since some of our early sisters and brothers dared speak the love that -- as Lord Alfred Douglas once put it -- dared not speak its name.  Like any marginalized minority group, the queer nation has advanced in steady incremental steps.  From toleration, we have moved to habituation, and now that our straight neighbors have become increasingly habituated to us, we may dare contemplate a time in the not-too-distant future when habituation will give way to outright acceptance.

If today even some of our more conservative straight neighbors can get their metaphorical arms around the idea that Ruth and Naomi or Johnson and David should be able to tie the marital knot, we should always remember that their ability to do so is necessarily a function of our willingness as out people to be honest and aboveboard about who and what we are.

As we answer the call to come out, come out, wherever we are, we not only reinforce the simple truth that closets are for clothes, we also pay back the courage of those who went before us, and we pay it forward for the young queerfolk who, even now, are coming to terms with themselves.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served on the city Council from 2002 to 2010.  He is a candidate for city council in the current election.  If you aren’t aware that he is an out, loud, and proud gay man, you may want to have your gaydar looked at. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or agency with which he is associated.  They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice.  For more information on Mr. Marchand’s campaign, visit his website at www.PaulMarchand2012.com

COLUMBUS DAY? DAY OF THE RACE? DAY OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES? WHOSE DAY?

Summary: The day long ago set aside to commemorate the first coming of Columbus to the New World has become an ongoing controversy.  Whose day is it?  Do we celebrate the exploring spirit or do we mourn for our First Peoples?  Does the celebration of the one preclude sober reflection about the fate of the other?  Columbus day is, and will always remain, a paradox.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Cathedral City, October 9, 2012– Yesterday was Columbus Day, as officially observed.  Friday the 12th is traditional Columbus Day.

There is an ironic New Yorker Columbus Day cartoon of some notoriety depicting two American Indians standing in the underbrush by the shore of a Caribbean island.  From three high-castled ships anchored offshore, boats are rowing toward the shore.  In the lead boat, an explorer (presumably Columbus) stands, holding a flag.  The caption of the cartoon has one Indian saying to the other something like “now might be a good time to review our immigration policies.”

The cartoon strikes us as funny because we know the history of the 500-plus years since Columbus’ arrival in the New World triggered the greatest völkerwanderung -a vast migration of peoples- in the recorded history of the world.  Since then, millions of immigrants from all over the world have made their way to the Americas, and the history of their interaction with those who came before has been checkered at best.

Yet, in the last analysis, we all are descendants of immigrants from elsewhere, even Indians.  If my white ancestors came here as part of the Atlantic migrations, my Indian ancestors arrived here tens, perhaps scores, of thousands of years ago, presumably across the Bering land bridge from Asia, and are still ultimately immigrants.  The term “Native American” is thus something of a misnomer, a fact Canada recognizes by designating her Indians and Eskimos as “First Peoples.”

Still, by the time the first Europeans reached America -whenever that may have been, but certainly well before Columbus- the Indians of the Americas had established a lengthy tenure of occupation.  The Americas were not -as used to be taught- an empty wilderness, but a landmass populated by a mass of humanity more diverse by far than Europe itself.  By 1492, the social development of the Americas ranged from primitive hunter-gathering groups to complex state societies ranging from the mound-builder descendants of North America to the Aztecs of México, to the South American empire its Inca inhabitants called Tahuantinsuyu, the Four Quarters of the World.

Within two centuries, all of this had gone.  The westward migration triggered by Columbus’ voyages had grown from trickle to flood.  Wave after wave of migration, particularly to the settlement colonies of British North America, coupled with superior weapons technology, superior agricultural and industrial technology, and the spread of European diseases -trivial childhood ailments to whites, fatal to unexposed Indians- tipped the balance decisively in favor of the pale invaders from across the water.

Thus the history, and thus the deeply conflicted emotions that swirl around any October 12 observance.  Is it Columbus Day?  Is it Dia de La Raza/Day of the Race?  Is it Indigenous Peoples Day?  Whatever one calls it, October 12 can be relied upon to pit the Sons of Italy celebrating one of their own against Native American groups calling attention to what has been called “half-a-millennium of resistance.”  As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, in that no-man’s-land to which moderates and truth-seekers -and indeed, most of us- are exiled.  Do we celebrate the human achievement of the explorers and the immigrants, or do we weep for our Indian ancestors?  Do we call attention to the evils the explorers so often brought in their wake, or do we celebrate the achievements of our First Forebears?

The answer is: all of the above.  We cannot reverse the pragmatic sanction of history; the völkerwanderung that brought my European forebears to the Americans is as irreversible as that which brought my Indian ancestors to this place.  The peoples have mixed too much to separate them; the rate of intermarriage among the Cherokee, for example, is close to 100 percent.  Now is no longer an opportune time for the three Indians in the underbrush of the New Yorker cartoon to discuss immigration policy.  The invaders cannot be marched back onto their Naos and caravels and packed back whence they came; their bones and the bones of their children have also become part of this land. 

The invasion has been a success.  Generations of interpenetration have produced a people that like mythic Coyote -the culture hero of many tribes- is one of shape-shifters.  Millions of Americans carry the blood of both sides in their veins; millions of us are at once both the invading European and the resistant Indian.  In a time of shape-shifting and mixing, Columbus Day, like Coyote, must be a shape-shifter.  It must be an occasion for celebrating the nobility of the exploring spirit, but also for reflection on the duties we all owe to one another as common human inhabitants of the place we all call home.
As progressives, we must particularly be attuned on Columbus Day and every day to what our communities are telling us.  We are a coalition -a movement- composed of communities and tribes and lineages of every sort and condition.  We march with labor, but also support the right of Indians to be accounted as first class citizens of the commonwealth.  We confess many faiths, and none at all.  We acknowledge the right of many Americans of faith to oppose marriage equality within the context of their own churches, but we also insist that America’s queerfolk be treated as first class citizens, too.  We embrace inclusiveness, knowing that ours is the harder choice and the nobler path, one from which the fearful of change turn away.

Columbus Day has become a paradox, laden with so many layers to deconstruct the debate will continue long after those currently engaged in it have passed out of this world.  It is part of our larger American paradox, in which, as Babylon 5 writer J. Michael Straczynski once observed, "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, [and] the future frightens us...."  Whose day is Columbus Day?  It is our day, on which, perhaps more than on any other holiday, we need to reflect on who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is a pale, European-looking, attorney.  He lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the City Council, for which he is running again.  Thanks to an Act of Congress only a lawyer could love, and the fact that he lives on Indian leased land, his government considers him an Indian living on a Res.  Go figure.  The views herein are his own, not those of any jurisdiction, agency, entity, club, or other organization, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

This post is a revision of an earlier post written in 2004.

F-BOMBS AND REEFER MADNESS

Summary: Embattled Cathedral City mayor Kathleen DeRosa’s hurling an F-bomb at a constituent certainly has the community all a-twitter (to say nothing of Facebook as well), but perhaps the most disturbing bit of information to come out of Monday night’s candidate forum was that DeRosa’s closest incumbent council ally, Charles “Bud” England, has no apparent problem denying medical marijuana to sick and suffering constituents living with such diseases as HIV/AIDS and cancer.  Apparently, upholding discredited drug war ideology is more important than relieving suffering and enhancing quality of life.

By: Paul S. Marchand

When Cathedral City mayor Kathleen DeRosa hurled an F-bomb at one of her constituents, restauranteur Mark Carnevale, after Monday night’s candidate forum at DiGS, a local gay bar, many in the community were shocked, but not surprised.  Nor has anybody been surprised at the efforts of DeRosa, her fellow slate candidates, and her supporters to try to fabricate a damage control narrative in which DeRosa appears as the victim.  Such tactics are old hat for her.

Though the discussion over the last roughly 36 hours has been about DeRosa’s un-mayoral conduct, one of the more troubling substantive exchanges of the evening involved the way in which DeRosa and her slate responded to a question concerning Cathedral City’s ban on marijuana dispensaries.

At the same time the Los Angeles city Council voted to do away with that city’s ban on medical marijuana dispensaries, the so-called DeRosa Dream Team, consisting of herself, former police chief Stan Henry, and incumbent councilmember Charles “Bud” England, either hemmed and hawed on the issue, or in England’s case, chose to echo the thoroughly debunked federal position that medical marijuana has no therapeutic value of any kind.

As I noted in my previous post on the subject, spending scores or even hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to shut down a single marijuana dispensary makes no sense at all.  Given Cathedral City’s dire financial condition, such expenditures are even worse than foolish, they are inexcusable.  If Sacramento or the feds want to spend their money taking up the cudgels, they are free to knock themselves out, but --as I noted last time-- we should not be carrying water for either.

(Full disclosure: as a councilmember, I did vote for an initial moratorium, based on my view that we needed some time to develop a considerate and compassionate policy on medical marijuana.  My agreement to the moratorium was subject to the caveat that it be short and have a closed end, as required by California law.  I did not agree then, and I do not agree now, to the city’s efforts to use ongoing, back-to-back moratoria and statutory bans to prevent Cathedral City residents from ever having legitimate and safe access to medical marijuana, as guaranteed under Proposition 215.)

What disturbed me ---and, I expect, many if not most of Monday night’s heavily LGBT debate audience--- was Mr. England’s apparent ignorance of or indifference to the overwhelming body of both anecdotal and scientific evidence that medical marijuana really does have legitimate therapeutic value, particularly for people living with cancer or HIV/AIDS.  By speaking as he did, Mr. England undercut his own claims to be “gay friendly,” and also demonstrated how sadly out of touch he is with the constituency he wants to represent for another four years.  It was hardly surprising that Mr. England’s position was not well received.

Perhaps Mr. England has not known enough people living with HIV/AIDS to have any experience with how medical marijuana can alleviate suffering, particularly among those with HIV wasting syndrome.  Perhaps Mr. England has been insulated from the reality of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and experiencing nausea so awful that they cannot even eat, but who benefit from the nausea-suppressing an appetite-stimulating properties of medical marijuana.  To deprive the sick and suffering of reasonable access to a natural product that can alleviate such suffering is uncompassionate at best and downright hardhearted at worst.
We cannot afford to elect officials who believe in a grimly reductionist “you’re on your own” approach to governance.  Democratic bodies politic survive only as and to the extent that "we all are in this together"; both sound policy and basic decency demand that we not turn our back on the sick and suffering among us.  As the English priest and poet John Donne wrote, nearly four centuries ago, “[a]ny man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind.”

Inasmuch as we are indeed involved in one another, no holder or seeker of public office should ever sacrifice the sick and the suffering on the altar of a foolish drug policy conceived in folly and executed in meanness.


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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  He served two terms on the city Council, and is running again for a seat on that body.  Having worked with HIV/AIDS and cancer patients, he has seen at first hand how medical marijuana can help relieve suffering in such patients.  The views expressed herein are his own, and are not necessarily the views of any organization with which he may be associated, and they are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice.

To learn more about Mr. Marchand’s campaign, please visit www.PaulMarchand2012.com.

ANOTHER WASTE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS: CATHEDRAL CITY’S ELECTION-YEAR EFFORT TO SHUT DOWN A MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY

Summary: Cash-strapped Cathedral City should not be spending scores/hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars trying to shut down a medical marijuana dispensary.  Our city does not need to be, and should not be, carrying water on this issue for Washington or Sacramento.  The federal government’s reefer madness over medical marijuana is unsupported by any competent evidence, and the current effort to shut down the Grass Hopper Collective looks like an election-year effort to position an increasingly unpopular mayor, her do-nothing incumbent council ally, and the former police chief running with them as a slate as the so-called law enforcement candidates in this race.  It certainly seems that compassion for the sick and dying takes second place to seeking political power at any cost.

In a cash-strapped city which has had to ask its employees for repeated givebacks, spending scores or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money (in an election year, surprise, surprise) to try to shut down a marijuana dispensary makes no sense.

Of course, little about the reefer madness of our so-called national war on drugs makes a lot of sense.  I remember how hard-core federal Drug Warriors used to threaten local officials with prosecution for voting the “wrong” way on medical marijuana dispensaries.  Fortunately, somebody in the Department of Justice reminded his or her colleagues that casting a vote is a form of petition for redress, and thus enjoys First Amendment protection.

I also remember the way in which Cathedral City resources were lavishly squandered on prior efforts to drive the so-called demon weed out of our fair city.

But, like the Bourbons of the ancien régime, Cathedral City’s mayor, her staunchest ally on the council, and the former police chief running with them on a slate, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing; Cathedral City is once again pouring money into litigation we do not need and cannot afford.  If there is such a pressing need to get rid of the Grass Hopper Collective, then why has the federal government not undertaken to spend its own money to protect us against the deadly threat of a medical marijuana dispensary in our midst?  Alternatively, if the State of California wants us to get rid of this dispensary, why have they not stepped up with your checkbook?

The simple answer, of course, is that Washington and Sacramento are perfectly happy to let us go broke trying to enforce a solution in search of a nonexistent problem.  The other answer is that we are in an election year, and the mayor and her slate want to be able to position themselves as staunch defenders of “law and order.”

Yet the law itself is uncertain, and the case against medical marijuana, particularly for those living with such diseases as cancer and AIDS, is unpersuasive.

Still, the hard-line Drug Warriors who have invested their professional careers in scaring the bejeesus out of us with their overwrought claims don’t intend to back down anytime soon, notwithstanding the thorough debunking of such overhyped programs as DARE, which turned out to be a waste of time, talent, and treasure.

Indeed, I recall how, during the early years of the last decade, when I was serving on CVAG’s Public Safety Committee, law enforcement representatives would, from time to time, “explain” to me in condescending tones how marijuana was a so-called gateway drug with no possible beneficial use.

When I would ask them for evidence to support their claim, they would offer, in effect, the tautological and circular argument that marijuana was a gateway drug because they said ex cathedra that it was a gateway drug, and that I should accept it simpliciter from them: “it is because we say it is.”

When I reminded them that numerous peer-reviewed studies not only contradicted their position, but also showed that marijuana could have genuine palliative effects on persons suffering from chronic, long-term illnesses such as cancer or HIV wasting syndrome, they would poo-poo the studies, either on an ad hominem basis ("oh, you know the professor who did that study was a liberal who voted for Al Gore") or because (OMG! WTF!) the studies might have come from (gasp!) Europe or the UK, and we certainly couldn’t trust those European cheese eating surrender monkeys.

When I pressed further, reminding them that millions of Americans have at some time or another smoked marijuana and gone on to become law-abiding pillars of society, they hemmed and hawed.

When I reminded them that nicotine is a far more addictive substance than tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and asked them whether any of them were tobacco smokers, they hemmed and hawed even further.

When I reminded them further of the high statistical likelihood that some of them had themselves probably gotten high in their younger years, the result was usually stony silence, followed by a strategically timed phone call they just had to leave the committee room to take.

So much for any defensible argument that we should be prosecuting marijuana users and warehousing them in our already overcrowded prison-industrial complex.

My former Council colleague, Greg Pettis, agrees that this latest effort is a waste of time and money.  The taxpayers of Cathedral City deserve better than to have their dollars squandered on litigation we cannot afford and do not need.  The taxpayers of Cathedral city deserve better than a mayor, a council member, and a council wannabe who turn their backs on some of the sickest in our community, sufferers of cancer and AIDS, simply to hold on to power that they have never used effectively, and should no longer be trusted to wield.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the city Council, and is running to return to the council after a two-year hiatus.  He opposed earlier efforts to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries, and --- having worked with AIDS patients in prior years --- has seen the legitimate palliative effects of medical marijuana.  The views expressed herein are his own, and are not necessarily those of any organization or agency with which he may be associated.