ON MEMORIAL DAY: BENDING OUR AMERICAN ARC TOWARD JUSTICE

SUMMARY: Memorial Day began after the Civil War as a commemoration of those who had fallen in America’s greatest struggle for social justice.  Though we have engrafted additional layers of meaning onto Memorial Day, that original subtext is still very much at the heart of our commemoration of those who have died in this country’s service.  If we are to do right by those who have laid the costliest of sacrifice on the altar of freedom, we must ensure that the arc of America’s moral universe continues to bend toward justice and toward a more perfect and inclusive Union.
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By: Paul S. Marchand

Of all the various holidays that festoon our American calendar, two specifically force us to confront the reality of war and sacrifice.  Veterans Day (or Armistice Day as it is still called in some quarters) should rightly turn our minds toward those who have fought in our wars, facing foreign shot, foreign shell, and foreign steel on our behalf.  Veterans Day is a time to think about the moral and social debt we owe to those who have gone to war and returned.

By contrast, Memorial Day is a time to commemorate those who have fallen in this country’s service.  It is a time to give thanks for their service, but also a time to think carefully and critically about larger questions of war, peace, and the limbo in which societies often find themselves between the two, as we have found ourselves since the end of World War II.

On Memorial Day, I find myself ineluctably drawn back to words spoken half a century ago at West Point by Douglas MacArthur as he accepted the Sylvanus Thayer award.  Addressing the Corps of Cadets, MacArthur spoke of hearing in his dreams “the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”

For most of us now living, America has been at war or involved in military operations for more years than she has been at peace.  The background music of the greater part of our lives has been “that strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”
Now Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, a commemoration of the Union’s Civil War dead.  Though the passage of nearly a century and a half has led to considerable accretions of symbolism and meaning onto Memorial Day, it began, and remains still, a commemoration of the greatest struggle for social justice in American history.

For if the Civil War began as merely a fight to preserve the Union, it ineluctably evolved into a far larger moral confrontation as Americans realized that the Union could not be saved except by overthrowing once and for all the Peculiar Institution of chattel slavery.  If the Union were to be saved, it could have no more truck with the proposition that it is ever permissible for one human being to own another.

Since then, the arc of our moral universe, however long, has bent, however slowly, toward justice.  Starting with the abolition of slavery itself, America has engaged, over and over again, in a series of often agonizing internal struggles over who and who is not a part of our American body politic.

It has taken more than a century to rid ourselves of the grosser inequities and iniquities of the Peculiar Institution.  Even now, with an African-American president in the White House, racial insecurities continue to bedevil our political discourse.

It has taken more than a century to accept the basic proposition that women ought to be entitled to all of the badges and incidents of first-class citizenship.  Women’s suffrage means little if women can legitimately discriminated against in hiring and compensation or be denied access to basic reproductive autonomy or contraception.

We are still involved today in a great struggle over whether America’s queerfolk should even be allowed to exist, let alone enjoy first-class citizenship as out people in the Commonwealth.

Yet, the arc continues to bend toward justice; it continues to bend toward a more perfect Union and a more inclusive Commonwealth, even if some in our society find themselves apoplectic at such a prospect.  But a society that cannot find room for people of color, for women, for the queer, and for all who are in some way Other, is a society that has yet to do right by those whose final resting places are to be found in our national cemeteries, who in this country’s service laid down what Abraham Lincoln so movingly called “so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom.”  We must make it right.

On this Memorial Day, as we recall the sacrifice of those who fell for us, we should remember two things.  First, let us remember that America is always at her greatest when she seeks purposely after justice.  Second, let us remember that from the earliest days of our history, those who have died for America have been of every sort and condition of human being.
 
Male and female they have died for us. 
Old and young they have died for us.
Straight and queer they have died for us.
From every creed and confession they have died for us.
From every tongue and nation they have died for us.
From every race and region they have died for us.
And in the equality of their resting place, we have only one word for them: American.

Requiescant omnes in pace, et lux aeternam luceat super omnes.  Amen.
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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served for two terms as a member of the city council.  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, legal advice, though effective Monday, white shoes may be worn without risk of committing a fashion felony.

A JUDGE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT, OR FOR ALL OF US?

SUMMARY: Campaign materials from a candidate for Superior Court judge in Riverside County claim that he is “Law Enforcement’s Choice.  Irrespective of whether such claims are accurate, they still raise disturbing questions about whether the candidate, if elected, can impartially fulfill the judicial function.  Judges need to be impartial if the public is to have any confidence at all in the justice system.  Nothing is more frustrating to cops or crime victims than to see a good collar go south because the judge didn’t preside impartially over a criminal trial. 

By: Paul S. Marchand

Normally, watching a judicial retention election in California is about as exciting as watching paint dry.
Not this time.

At least not in Riverside County, where a number of sitting judges are being challenged.  The campaign materials for one of the challengers declare that he is “Law Enforcement’s choice” for the bench.  Without reaching the issue of whether the candidate’s claims can withstand factual scrutiny ---a doubtful proposition at best--- such claims ought to be cause for grave concern.

In California, judges must stand for retention at the first general election after which they are appointed to the bench, and every six years thereafter.  Usually, the whole process is a quiet one, and it is unusual for a jurist not to prevail in a retention election.

Indeed, so exceptional is it for a judge not to be retained that such elections become news.  In 1978, in part of the same voter upheaval that saw the passage of proposition 13, a well orchestrated conservative campaign was able to secure the removal of then-Chief Justice Rose Bird, and Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso from the California Supreme Court.

In 2006, to the shock and surprise of just about every judge, attorney, and court-junkie in Los Angeles County and throughout the state, a relative unknown named Lynn Olson, a non-practicing lawyer running a bagel shop, knocked off Judge Dzintra Janavs, a highly experienced jurist who had been rated “exceptionally well-qualified” by the Los Angeles County Bar Association.  Like many other attorneys who had appeared in front of Judge Janavs, I can attest that what she didn’t know about Writs and Receivers probably wasn’t worth knowing.

Though Judge Janavs was promptly appointed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to a new open judgeship, and though Ms. Olson has actually learned her craft well enough to become a somewhat effective jurist, the whole affair raised disturbing questions about the extent to which the judicial retention process can be skewed by inappropriate considerations.

Thus, when I saw campaign materials for one of the judicial challengers in the upcoming retention election, I was more than a little disturbed by the bald claim that the challenger in question represents “Law Enforcement’s choice.”

You don’t have to be an attorney --- or have served, as I have done, as an independent neutral yourself --- to find such an assertion out of character for what a judge ought to be.  I think most of us would be extremely offended, for example, to see campaign materials touting a candidate for judgeship as “The Insurance Industry’s choice,” or “The Plaintiffs’ Personal Injury Attorneys’ choice,” or “Big Pharma’s choice,” or “the Criminal Defense Bar’s choice.”  We would rightly question whether any such candidate could be a truly impartial, independent neutral.

Because in a justice system that depends for its viability upon a public perception that judges will decide the cases before them impartially on the basis of the law and the evidence in the case, nothing could be more dangerous to public confidence in the system than the idea that a particular jurist entertains a predisposition in favor of a certain class of litigant, whether that be a PI plaintiff, an insurance company, a drug company, a criminal defendant, or even the prosecution in a criminal case.  

Every party before a court needs to have some sense that he or she will have a fair trial.

In recent years, for example, the United States Supreme Court has taken two significant body blows to public confidence in its integrity.  In 2000, the Court was widely, and justly, condemned for awarding the presidential election to its preferred candidate in Bush v. Gore, and its more recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC has brought more popular obloquy upon it than perhaps any decision the Court has rendered since Dred Scott.

So when a judicial candidate declares, or allows others to declare on his behalf, that he is “Law Enforcement’s Choice,” we may justifiably express concern on two counts.  First, will such a judge be able to give a criminal defendant the fair trial that our system considers critical?  Second, will such a judge be able to overcome a predisposition in favor of institutions over individuals?  Such a concern is particularly appropriate in civil cases involving, for example, wrongful termination or workplace harassment.

Here in Riverside County, there has been an unfortunate history of prior District Attorneys tending to view our Superior Court as nothing more than an obedient adjunct of the District Attorney’s office.  Not only did this create potential fairness and due process issues for criminal defendants, but it also had the effect of making it difficult for civil litigants to have their day in court.  On two occasions in the last decade, for example, moratoria on civil trials had to be declared in order to clear up a hugely clogged backlog of criminal trials.  We all understand that criminal trials take priority, nevertheless, at some point a civil litigant needs to have his or her day in court, too; even in civil cases, justice delayed is justice denied.

Now some may find my concerns frivolous, or even “socialist.”  Some may seek to misrepresent my views as some kind of attack on law enforcement.  Some may claim, equally falsely, that I am seeking to insult the court of which, as an attorney, I am an officer, and some may try to claim that I am seeking to undercut the First Amendment rights of candidates for judicial office.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Indeed, having worked with law enforcement during my tenure as an elected public official ---and having been the victim of crime--- I know how critical it is for both cops and courts and crime victims that if a suspect is apprehended, tried, and convicted, the conviction be the result of a manifestly fair and impartial trial.  Nothing is more frustrating to a cop --or causes more anguish to a crime victim-- than to have a good collar go south because the trial judge failed to preside impartially, and instead took on the function of a super-prosecutor.

So, while an aspiring judge may want to brand him or herself as “Law Enforcement’s Choice,” he or she should probably refrain from doing so, notwithstanding his or her abstract First Amendment right in the matter. 

That one can do a thing does not mean that one should do a thing. 

 The positions one takes or the pronouncements one makes can, and do, cause people to draw conclusions about one’s fitness for the bench:
    “Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
    Watch your words, for they become actions.
    Watch your actions, for they become habits.
    Watch your habits, for they become character.
    Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

I won't be supporting the judicial candidate who is somebody's particular “choice;” instead, I’ll be supporting the candidate who will be everybody’s impartial jurist.
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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 Cathedral City City Council.  In more than 20 years as an attorney, he has appeared in front of all manner of state and federal judges, and has himself served as an independent neutral.  He believes that the best jurist isn't necessarily the one who rules in your favor all the time, but the one who gives both sides a fair chance to make a case, and who favors neither.   "'Tis better to lose before a fair judge than to win before a venal one."  The views and opinions set forth herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which it is associated, and are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice, though he always remembers advice from then-U.S. District Judge Allan Sharp of the Northern District of Indiana:  "Never interrupt the Article III judge when he's talking."

ON MOTHER’S DAY MOMS RULE: AFTER ALL, THEY’VE SEEN US NAKED....

SUMMARY:  Moms rule the world.  As children, moms raise us.  As adolescents, they put up with us.  As we mature, if we are lucky, they become our friends, too, and that’s the best part of all.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Moms rule the world.  The rest of us just live in it.

“I brought you in this world, and I can take you out.”

“Be good to me....”

The lines may come from Bill Cosby and Tina Turner, but I know more than one mom who has taken them and made them completely her own, especially when dealing with teenaged boys.  As a mother of my acquaintance (who had herself raised boys) once suggested to me, being pregnant was a commando raid; putting up with teenaged boys was like fighting the entirety of World War II.

And inside every man living, straight or gay, there is still an adolescent boy, with occasional outbursts of adolescent boy angst.  Were this not the case, of course, Corvette sales to middle-aged men would tank.  It doesn’t matter whether we are gay or straight, guys can snap back to being seventeen at a moment’s notice.

For that reason, and for many others as well, Bill Cosby’s and Tina Turner's lines, as appropriated and spoken by moms everywhere, never go out of use or style.  After all, no matter how old we are, every human being with a mother living knows one indisputable thing: mom has seen us naked, and may well have the pictures to prove it.

And in truth, there are only two beings before whom we are at least metaphorically naked.  To God and our mothers, “all hearts are open, all desires known,” and “no secrets are hid.”  And if, to quote the old Russian proverb, “God is high and the Tsar is far away,” our mothers may be neither so high as God, nor so far away as the Tsar, as kids, we often wished it so. 

Because for most of us as kids, mom always had a kind of sixth sense to know when we were doing something we shouldn’t be.  “I was convinced my mother had eyes in the back of her head,” one of my cousins used to say.  Of course, those eyes in the back of my aunt’s head were actually the eyes of every mother or grandmother in the neighborhood, and all of them were alert to the goings-on of the neighborhood kids. 

For my cousins and me, growing up an a close knit neighborhood in Los Angeles’s Hollywood Hills, the West African proverb about it taking a village to raise a child wasn’t a political sound bite for conservative pundits to rage against.  It was a simple, matter-of-fact, day-to-day reality.  The urban village of our childhoods was a village of moms and gramdmas with an inter-maternal communication network that would make Facebook look tame.

Of course, I shouldn’t try to make our little bit of L.A. sound like some sort of Arcadia (in the classic sense, not the zip code).  Of course it wasn’t.  We had our own rough passages, and our own share of crises, but we navigated them; with the neighborhood moms leading the way, we somehow saw each other through.
Indeed, seeing each other through seems to be part of a mother’s basic job description.  Not only have our mothers seen us naked, they’re there when we get our childhood scrapes, sprains, and strains.  Mothers and sons (and, I am told, fathers and daughters) form bonds that can run the gamut from conversation to sheer conspiracy (“Don’t tell your father what we got him for his birthday....”).

If we are lucky, as we grow older, we get past that stage of viewing mom as a hopeless, antediluvian luddite who knows nothing at all, and develop something more precious than even a bare, biological relationship; we become friends. 

When I was fifteen, my mother knew nothing and I knew everything.  Or so I thought.

As I make my way through my fifth decade, I’m amazed at how much my mother has learned in the interim, and how much I’ve unlearned.

All irony aside, my mother will always be my mother, and she’s still seen me naked, and probably still have the pictures to prove it, but she has also become a dear friend, and that is something I cherish more than any words I could possibly write.

And so, to my mother, whom I call The Duchess: Happy Mother’s Day.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, CA.  The views expressed herein are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization or entity with which he is associated.  They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice, though Mr. Marchand would suggest that you be good to your mother, because she brought you in this world, and she can certainly take you out.

WILLARD ROMNEY: Bully Then, Bully Now.

SUMMARY: Mitt Romney’s bullying, homophobic past has apparently caught up with him.  As a student at Michigan’s Cranbrook school, he and a group of co-conspirators attacked and forcibly administered a haircut to a fellow student whom they perceived to be gay.  Not surprisingly, Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, abolished a state commission set up to confront the bullying of queer youth in the Commonwealth.  Some things never change, and in Romney’s case, once a bully, always a bully.  That’s not an example we can afford to follow in Cathedral City.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Being bullied isn’t only no fun, it is also an experience that can come close --- even if only psychologically --- to being raped. 

It hurts.

Worse than anyone who has never been bullied can ever imagine.

The news cycle yesterday was dominated by revelations that as an 18 year old student at the Cranbrook School, a private Michigan boys’ school, Mitt Romney was the ringleader of a “posse,” or more properly a gang, of students who had targeted a younger boy for a bullying attack that, like so many bullying attacks, came close --in a psychological, if not a legal, sense--  to rape.

According to the Washington Post, Romney led a group of fellow students down a corridor in a residence hall of that upsale boys’ school to the room of a student who had apparently returned from spring break with a bleached blond hairdo and what my generation might call a “Flock of Seagulls” flap of hair down over one eye.  While his co-conspirators held the boy down, and the victim called for help as his eyes filled with tears, Romney cut off the boy’s hair, lock by lock.

For any of us who have ever been the target of bullying, the account of what happened hits us in the gut.

Like many queer boys and girls, I know what it is like to have been bullied.  I know what it is like to live with the fear of one’s perceived sexuality being used as a justification for bullying.  

So, I have little sympathy for defenders of Mitt Romney who claim that he “was just a kid,” who deserves the benefit of the doubt because he was still in high school.

Bullshit.

At eighteen, one can:

• Enlist in the Armed Forces, be shipped overseas, bear arms for, and possibly die, for this country;
• Enter into binding contracts;
• Marry; and
• Be charged and tried as an adult for crimes, including the crime of assault and battery which Romney and his co-conspirators apparently committed against their victim.

By the time I myself turned eighteen, I had already begun to come to terms with the reality of being queer, with what that meant at the beginning of the 1980s, and what my queerness consequently cost me.  I walked away from the opportunity for a full ride Navy ROTC scholarship because I was afraid of falling afoul of the so-called 123 Words –- the Reagan Administration prohibition on service in the armed forces by LGBT people.  My country bullied me, and I carry the hurt to this day.

So, when I heard about what Mitt Romney had done, all the old hurt came back to my memory.  For in truth, bullies don’t often change.  A President of the United States can evolve --- and has evolved --- on the issue of marriage equality; after all, most Americans have evolved with Barack Obama on marriage equality.  Bullies, on the other hand, don’t often have “Road to Damascus” experiences that change their perspective.

Unfortunately, Mitt Romney seems to have been too entitled ever to understand that being a bully represents one of the worst aspects of human nature.  This is, after all, the same man who as governor of Massachusetts abolished the Commonwealth’s state commission that had been tasked with helping LGBT young people at risk for suicide and bullying.

Apparently, to Mitt Romney, queer youth in Massachusetts were no more deserving of consideration and respect than the queer kid at the Cranbrook School whom he and his co-conspirators thought it was okay to torment, and upon whom they inflicted what amounts to the psychological equivalent of rape.

I suppose that what angers me so much about the revelations of the Willard Romney’s behavior is that, even now, he doesn’t get it.  He doesn’t seem to understand that queer kids are still being bullied, are still being victimized, marginalized, and told that their lives don’t matter.  I would be curious to know if Willard Romney has the slightest idea of how many queer kids have taken their own lives in the twelvemonth last past.

Does he have any clue what it’s like to wake up every day wondering whether you can get through that day without being beaten up, made fun of, or having somebody in one of your classes yell “attagirl” every time you open your mouth to speak, as he used to do at Cranbrook?

I don't think he does.

Here in Cathedral city, we know what it’s like when kids get bullied.  Whether it’s the emo kids, the tomboys, the Goths, or just the kids who are in some way a little bit different, bullying doesn’t just affect the immediate target, it affects his or her family and friends as well.

So I wonder, what can Mitt Romney say to the queer kid at Cathedral City High School?  What can Mitt Romney say to a kid over at Mt. San Jacinto Continuation School?  What can Mitt Romney say to the middle schooler who may be uncertain about her or his own sexuality?

Not much.

Some bullies are so because they are fearful of something within themselves that they dare not face, let alone admit.  Other bullies, like Mitt Romney, act out of a sense of sheer entitlement.  As the son of the governor of Michigan, Mitt Romney never needed to worry that he might be called to account for actions which we today would consider criminal.

And we should consider bullying criminal.  When a teenage girl slits her wrists in the bathtub, or boy hangs himself in his bedroom because she or he can no longer bear to be bullied, something is wrong.

Perhaps we have been lucky in Cathedral City that we have been spared the horror of a young person taking his or her own life because of bullying.  Nonetheless, we dare not indulge in the feckless luxury of believing that to close it has not happened here it cannot happen here.

Because it can.  And because it can, we who have survived the experience of being bullied need to rally to our at risk youth, letting them know that it in fact does get better.

Without intending to, Willard Mitt Romney has managed to make bullying a part not merely of our national conversation, but of our Cathedral City conversation as well.  In a community as small as this one, we do not have the luxury of either tolerating bullying or of ignoring its existence.

Now is the time, thanks to what we now know about Mitt Romney’s behavior, to take a stand here, in the most richly diverse community in the Coachella Valley, for all of our young people, irrespective of their race, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or immigration status.  

To the extent that we do not have a single person to waste, all of us --- from the Mayor and City Council (and candidates for those offices) on down through every citizen--- need to take a stand against the kind of bullying that, unfortunately, Mitt Romney seems to embody, exemplify, and personify.

We owe it to our kids.

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

EVOLVED!

By: Paul S. Marchand

After years of “evolution” on the subject of marriage equality, Barack Obama finally came out and said what so many of us have been waiting to hear.

In an interview today with ABC’s Robin Roberts, the president left no doubt as to his position:

    "Over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that 'don't ask, don't tell' is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

While a number of us in the LGBT community had expressed frustration over Mr. Obama’s careful, deliberate “evolution” on this issue, we should take a moment not merely to express our appreciation to the President for taking a stand in favor of marriage equality, but also to acknowledge his courage in doing so immediately after North Carolina’s thumping rejection of marriage equality by a margin of nearly two to one, and during an election season when it is clear that his Republican opponent will seek to campaign on social wedge issues, including marriage equality.

Of course, part of the President’s so-called evolution on this issue can be attributed, at least in part, to the careful, deliberate “No Drama Obama” mystique which he and his administration have cultivated.  Yet, it may well be safe to say that even so politically savvy an operator as Barack Obama may have been taken somewhat by surprise at the accelerating pace of the public’s “evolution” on the issue of marriage equality.

Back in 1993, I was one of the first attorneys in California to challenge our state’s then-statutory ban on same gender marriage.  Those of us who litigated the issue at the time knew that we were on uncertain ground.  Only one other state, Hawai’i, had given a thumbs-up to marriage equality, in a case called Baehr v. Miike, which had found that denying same-gender couples the freedom to marry violated the Equal Protection clause of Hawaii’s constitution.  (Not surprisingly, marriage equality opponents, including the Mormon church, soon put an initiative on the ballot which overturned the Baehr decision and marched Hawaii’s GLBT community right to the back of the marital bus.)

Using the Hawai'i decision as potential persuasive precedent, my clients and I took a flyer, arguing that California’s equal protection clause should lead to the same result, that the state had no compelling interest in prohibiting same-gender couples from getting married.  At a time when roughly 75 percent of Americans (including, by the way, many queerfolk) either opposed same-gender marriage, or didn’t even know that the issue was on the table, we were not surprised when the California courts denied our petition out of hand.

At the time, a colleague in the legal profession suggested --- correctly, it turned out --- that America might be ready for same-gender marriage after, and only after, a lengthy societal conversation had occurred, and only after our straight neighbors had begun to get past their own uncertainties or discomforts with the idea.  We were, he posited, 20 years, even a generation, away from even being able to contemplate some kind of marital parity for LGBT people.

Well, it has now been just a little less than 20 years since my colleague and I had that conversation.  Even among many Republicans, George W. Bush included, the idea of some form of legal solicitude for same gender families has taken root.  While Mr. Bush made no secret of his steadfast opposition to full marriage equality, he did actually go on record stating some degree of support for some form of civil union for same-gender couples.

Of course, even as polling shows again and again that a majority or pluralities of the American public have come to support marriage equality, opposition to it still remains a staple of conservative politics, and routinely carries the day; given the chance, voters have never avoided the temptation to use the ballot box to write discrimination against minority groups into law.  Consequently, we should certainly be prepared for the inevitability that President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality may trigger a fabricated firestorm akin to that which erupted when then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom instructed his city clerk to begin solemnizing the marriages of same-gender couples.

The open question then is whether opposition to marriage equality will be as useful a tool in the GOP box as it was eight years ago, or whether the ground has shifted enough that it is actually safe for a Democratic president to endorse marriage equality without losing part of the base, or --- perhaps just as important --- damaging the electoral prospects of Congressional, state, and local Democrats.

Here in Cathedral City, on whose diversity I have previously commented, President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality may well become part of the conversation over the future direction of our community.  In a previous post, I suggested that wedge issue Culture War or Tea Partisan rhetoric might well fall on indifferent or hostile ears, especially given the criticality of other issues confronting us. 

Indeed, the issues and challenges facing Cathedral City are similar to those facing other working communities throughout the country.  They involve things like fiscal solvency, decaying infrastructure, a loss of revenue base, and increasing doubts about the basic competence of some of our “leaders.”  The pothole on Ramon Road that just ate three sedans and an SUV is indifferent to either the party registration, the immigration status, or the sexual orientation of the owners of the vehicles in question.  That the city may be facing a significant fiscal crisis is not the result of two gay men in the Cathedral City Cove having gotten married, any more than it is the result of two straight high school sweethearts tying the knot.

Let me suggest, therefore, that the extent to which those who aspire to lead us seek to divide us by opposing marriage equality or casting Cathedral city's substantial LGBT population as some kind of dangerous Other is an almost perfect barometer of their fitness to lead.  The more someone harps on the evils of marriage equality for GLBT people, the less he or she understands or cares about the kitchen table issues that matter in a community made up of workers, school-age kids who hope one day to enter the workforce, and seniors increasingly concerned about their own security in what should be a time of gracious retirement.

As a gay man, I will certainly support those who support me, and who understand that for me, and for the community of which I am a part, marriage equality matters.  At the risk of seeming simplistic, I may not necessarily support a candidate simply because he or she supports marriage equality, but I will certainly withhold my support from any candidate who opposes marraige equality, especially if that candidate makes it a centerpiece of his or her campaign.

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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 any organization or entity with which he is associated, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

BETTER TO MARRY THAN TO BURN, EVEN IN CATHEDRAL CITY

By: Paul S. Marchand

SUMMARY: with a majority of Americans, including many prominent members of both political parties, now supporting marriage equality, strident conservative opposition to marriage equality may no longer be a politically viable strategy, especially in Cathedral City, with its substantial LGBTQ population.  Incumbents or challengers in this Fall’s Cathedral City municipal elections be warned, divisive and homophobic Culture War appeals may well fall flat.

Joe Biden, Arne Duncan, Bill Clinton.

Aside from being prominent Democrats, what do these three straight, white guys have in common?

Among other things, all three have recently come out publicly in support of marriage equality.  While President Obama’s own position continues to “evolve,” the Biden-Duncan-Clinton position seems to be carrying the day even among many Republicans and evangelical Christians.

What a change since 1993, when a Hawai’i Supreme Court decision ---ultimately overruled by a state constitutional amendment pushed by the Mormon church--  upholding marriage equality in that state triggered a nationwide backlash, and when I was one of the first attorneys in California to handle a marriage equality case.  Today, while anti-marriage equality laws remain on the books in a majority of states, California --sadly-- among them, popular sentiment has swung ever increasingly toward marriage equality.
 
Of course, my own position on marriage equality has never evolved; it never needed to.  I have always been an open supporter and advocate for marriage equality in particular, and for LGBTQ rights in general.  It is a record from which I have never felt any need to hide, and on which I have thus had no need of modifying my views. I was thus pleased when Rancho Mirage Mayor Scott Hines earlier today signed the Mayors for the Freedom to Marry statement, and I hope that other Coachella Valley mayors will follow suit if they have not already done so.  If, two decades ago, supporting marriage equality might have been political suicide, today it betokens nothing more than a commitment to inclusion and sound policy.

Of course, while mayors coming out for marriage equality has been only part of the national conversation about the place of queer people in commonwealth, it has reflected the way in which our straight neighbors are coming round to the notion that we, too, are entitled to ride at the front of the bus.  As we’ve watched the evolution of opinion among our straight neighbors, we queerfolk have noticed two different, yet paradoxically related, phenomena.  On one hand, the American right has portrayed us with increasing stridency as an enemy Other, a Sum of All Fears upon which they seek to project every one a the insecurities by which they are so dreadfully hagridden.  On the other, of course, is that increasing consensus in American society that being queer is simply “not strange” and certainly not dangerous.

It is that growing public sense that we are “not strange,” together with the related sense that they are losing the Culture Wars that has sent so many cultural conservatives into paroxysms of anger and backlash.

Yet, the overwhelming, clear and convincing evidence of empirical, day-to-day experience, suggests that by this point in our history pretty much every American has had some degree of interaction with a queer person.  We are truly everywhere.

We are certainly present in substantial numbers here in Cathedral City, where --depending upon whose numbers you use-- anywhere between 35 and 45 percent of the population is GLBTQ.  (Given the clunkiness of the acronym, dear reader, I hope you’ll indulge me in the use of the word “queer,” which so many of us have been working to reappropriate from those who use it as a term of opprobrium.)

When I first started coming to Cathedral City a generation ago, and acquaintance of mine suggested to me that while Palm Springs may be more like West Hollywood, Cathedral City has a definite Silverlake vibe.  Either way, the not insubstantial queer presence here in Cathedral City has been an integral part of our experience as perhaps the most richly diverse community in the entire Coachella Valley.  It is perhaps for that reason that our local politics have been remarkably free from the kind of Culture War appeals that have often besmirched other communities.

Nonetheless, as we approach an election season in which Culture War issues will probably make up a large part of Mitt Romney’s campaign appeals, we need to be alert and resistant to such appeals becoming a part of our own political discourse.  No one should seek political office in Cathedral City who is not prepared unequivocally in advance to disavow divisive Culture War strategies and tactics. 

In a city that is roughly one half Latino, no incumbent or challenger should be elected who pledges to represent “the other fifty percent” that is presumably non-Latino.  By the same token, in a city that is anywhere from one third to almost one half LGBTQ, no incumbent or challenger deserves anybody’s vote who is not prepared to acknowledge, accept, and respect our queer place in Cathedral City’s body politic.

For if opposition to marriage equality is becoming increasingly obsolescent and unviable at the national level, where polls are now showing a majority in support of marriage equality, it is equally true here in the Silverlake of the Coachella Valley.  Culture Warriors and Tea Partisans take note, Cathedral City can neither afford nor accept the frivolous luxury of a divisive, homophobic wedge issue politics directed against a substantial portion of the community.

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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.  The views set forth herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated.  They are not intended to constitute legal advice, and should not be so construed.  Mr. Marchand was one of the first attorneys in California to challenge California’s then-statutory gender-discriminatory marriage law.  Like his patron saint, Paul the Apostle, Mr. Marchand believes that it is “better to marry than to burn.”

DOOMSDAY?

By: Paul S. Marchand

Summary: the election of Socialist François Hollande to the presidency of the French Republic has already begun to spark apoplexy and fulminant outrage among the American right.  Perhaps, instead of trashing our oldest ally, American conservatives should ask whether the defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy may have something to do with the unsustainability of austerity policies advocated by conservative governments and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.
Est-ce que le commencement du fin? (Is this the beginning of the end?)

Socialist François Hollande is the President-elect of France.

Actually, the results of today’s presidential election in France are a bit of an anticlimax.  Incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy’s chances of another term had been deflating with the same slow inevitability as air leaking from a punctured tire.

If nothing else, Sarkozy’s defeat seems to signal a growing European disenchantment with conservative austerity policies which have been found insufficient to address the economic challenges facing the continent.  While it is probably too soon to be writing the political obituary of the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition in Britain’s House of Commons, today’s results in France ought to send at least a bit of a shudder through David Cameron and Nick Clegg; Ed Miliband and Labour can probably be excused this afternoon for feeling a bit of satisfaction.

Among American conservatives, long accustomed to regarding France, our oldest ally, as a bête noire, the advent of the first socialist president of France since François Mitterrand was elected in 1981, has called forth a reaction that can charitably be described as apoplectic.  In comment threads, the blogosphere, and social networks, the recurring right wing theme and talking points have been that the election of François Hollande spells Doomsday.

Such domestic conservative reaction (all of which, by the way, seems to be derived from the same set or sets of talking points) tells us more about American politics than it could possibly tell us about the politics of France’s Fifth Republic.  As we ramp up the general election campaign between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, both sides can be expected to project onto foreign elections their own particular domestic spin and agenda.

Indeed, the reaction of the American right to M. Hollande’s election has been not merely angry, but also fulminant and frustrated.  Like M. Sarkozy, Mr. Romney seems to have trouble closing the sale, not only with people in his own party, but also with the independents whose votes he will need to pick up if he is to have any realistic chance of ever being more than an unwelcome visitor at the White House.

Of course, angry right-wing reaction to the coming of a Socialist president to the Elysée Palace will no doubt trigger the same kind of infantile, asinine outbursts that led to “Freedom Fries,” and Freedom Toast,” lest, God forbid, we might have to use the words “France,” or “French.”  Such unseemly bashing of our oldest ally is far easier for American conservatives than facing the daunting question of whether the economic policies advocated by right-wing governments and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are either sustainable or equitable.

It is far too early to tell what effect the policies the François Hollande administration develops and implements will have on France and on the larger European Union of which she is a part.  But we can expect, however, is that at least for the foreseeable future, American conservatives will have a new enemy against which to rail.





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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated, and are not intended, and should not be construed as legal advice.  To this day, notwithstanding his French surname, he still has no idea why the French are so enamored of Jerry Lewis.