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.

-xxx-

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.