Summary: Embattled Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen DeRosa put in one of the poorest performances of her career last night with her cynical and craven effort to sidestep her responsibilities as an elected official and cast an up or down vote on Cathedral City’s historic marriage equality resolution. Though she claims to be a leader, DeRosa has managed to violate just about every canon of good leadership, displaying the kind of cynicism and cravenness we have come to expect from her during the nine bitter winters of her reign. She has run out of steam, she has nothing new to offer, and it really is time for her to emulate the example of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. She should not let the door hit her posterior on the way out.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Embattled Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa put in one of the poorest, worst and most cravenly cynical performances of her entire time in public office last night when she abstained from voting on the Council’s historic resolution in support of full marriage equality, a resolution that passed with the "aye" votes of every other member of the council present. The word “weasel” comes powerfully to mind.
Judging from the well-nigh uniformly unfavorable comments accompanying the Desert Sun’s story this morning about DeRosa’s action --- or failure of action, she has certainly managed to put her foot in it.
Council member Stan Henry, formerly police chief in Cathedral City, also managed to put his foot in it last night. Apparently, Henry thought it more important to attend a police chiefs banquet in Palm Springs rather than fulfill the duty his constituents elected him to fulfill. In the words of Ricky Ricardo, “Stan, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.” He needs to say his peccavi to the residents of this city with respect to his volitional Sede Vacante last night, and to do penance therefor.
Yet, if Stanley Henry insulted his constituents by absenting himself from his duty to attend a gathering he plainly thought was more important than doing his job, the embattled Kathleen Joan DeRosa insulted her constituents with an epic, coruscant display of calculated political cowardice and cravenness. To describe her performance as an “epic fail” is almost to understate the case.
During the Council vote on the marriage equality resolution, DeRosa read into the record an obviously preprepared statement by which she attempted to justify her abstention, claiming essentially that she had no right to vote and that Cathedral City should not be taking on this issue.
Yet, there remains a significant question as to the lawfulness of her decision to abstain. When I was a freshman member of the Council, we were told in no uncertain terms at ethics orientations and in other contexts, that --- unlike members of the California Legislature, which has carefully, nay, hypocritically, exempted itself from much of its own ethics legislation --- we have a duty to vote unless there exists an actual conflict of interest which would make our voting unlawful. As a general rule, a conflict of interest arises as and to the extent that a Council member might have some kind of pecuniary interest in the matter up for a vote.
DeRosa articulated absolutely no legally cognizable basis for one of the most weaselly performances by which a politician has ever disgraced Cathedral City’s council chambers. By trying to sidestep the issue, and by making obviously mendacious protestations of her support for some sort of ego-defined “equality,” DeRosa has managed to send a message to Cathedral City’s queerfolk that our rights should, by divine ordinance, be lesser things than the rights of our straight neighbors. She also sent a message to every queer boy and girl in Cathedral City struggling to come to terms with his or her sexuality that they have no friend in Kathleen Joan Leone DeRosa.
Of course, DeRosa tried to take the coward’s way out, trying to link herself to President Obama’s “evolution” on the issue of gay marriage. Her claim that she is “evolving” is unbelievably craven. Last night was the time for her to have completed her so-called evolution, and to have demonstrated that she is in fact the leader she has so often claimed to be. Real leaders take stands.
But we should know that despite her claims of leadership, Kathleen Joan DeRosa is no leader. Had she been a true leader, she would not have tried to weasel out of taking responsibility for having told Cathedral City restauranteur Mark Carnevale to “go fuck [him]self,” at an October, 2012, candidate forum at DiGS Bar here in Cathedral City. DeRosa first tried to deny the occurrence, then, when flat denials proved unavailing, she acknowledged the incident, but claimed she had been “set up.” Real leaders don’t point fingers; they take responsibility.
We haven’t seen DeRosa take a lot of responsibility. Her mayoral style has been to fix the blame, not fix the problem. To the extent that she can throw city staff under the bus, she will do so. Her reputation for vindictiveness is unbecoming a so-called leader, but it precedes her throughout the entire Coachella Valley.
She also has a reputation for blaming her poor leadership and bad manners on being from New York. I call bullshit. First, most of my own extended family are New Yorkers; my late father was born and raised in New York City, and in the nearly half a century we had together as a family, I never saw him display the kind of sheer nastiness that I have seen too often from the reigning Mayor of Cathedral City. Second, we are no longer in New York. We are in California, with a different culture and a different mode of interpersonal interaction; those who come here need to adapt themselves to our autochthonous ethics and values, and to leave their condescending colonialism behind. DeRosa has been unwilling or unable to do so.
My own critique of DeRosa’s poor, ego-driven performance as mayor is no secret. I opposed her for the mayoralty in 2008 because I felt she brought nothing of value to the table. Since then, many of my fellow residents of Cathedral City have adopted in varying measures a similar critique. Plainly, DeRosa is running out of steam. After nine long winters, perhaps it is time for DeRosa, like Henry, to give prayerful consideration to the example of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose pontificate formally ended earlier today. Given DeRosa’s frequent invocation of her Roman Catholic belief structure as an excuse to oppose equal rights for her queer constituents, she may profit from the example Josef Ratzinger set for his followers.
Kathy, when the time comes for you to leave, don’t let the door hit your posterior on the way out.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served eight years as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and do not constitute legal advice. They are certainly uncongenial to the reigning Mayor of Cathedral City. Mr. Marchand is aware that his blog posts critical of the mayor are being monitored by the Cathedral City Police Department, which is self-evidently keeping watch on Cathedral City’s political dissidents.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
INSERT FOOT IN MOUTH, MASTICATE VIGOROUSLY, SHOOT SELF IN SAME FOOT
Summary: Councilman Stan Henry has managed to put his foot in his mouth, chew it down to the bone, and then shoot himself in that very same foot. Fearing a political “drill” in which any vote he takes on tonight’s marriage equality resolution of the city Council will antagonize some constituency he should be afraid of pissing off, the quondam police chief has taken a powder, announcing that he has “another engagement” this evening which will prevent him from fulfilling what ought to be his highest-priority responsibility. Worse, Henry has essentially gone on the record as opposing the resolution. Not only does he make no friends among the religious right to whom he and reigning mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa so assiduously pandered, but he’s also managed to piss off Cathedral city’s substantial queer nation. I had not thought it possible that even a freshman councilman could be so politically maladroit.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Cathedral City councilman Stan Henry managed to put his foot in his mouth, chew it down to the bone, and then shoot himself in that very same foot today with his divisive and ill-considered remarks on tonight’s proposed marriage equality resolution of the Cathedral City city Council.
Speaking to the Desert Sun’s Tamara Sone, Henry remarked that:
“As a police officer and then chief of police, I spent most of my adult life making sure everyone had equal rights. Why we are injecting ourselves into something we have no authority over, I don’t know,” he said. “There is already a law for civil agreements. We should be focusing on bringing businesses and jobs into the city.”
To make matters worse, the quondam police chief, a self-identified social conservative, plans to absent himself from tonight’s council meeting, citing “another engagement” and offering a claim --- incredible on its face --- that he’s not skipping out on the council meeting simply to avoid having to cast a vote that will get him in trouble with at least one major constituency.
Plainly, the quondam police chief has a lot to learn about the responsibilities he owes to the voters who elected him.
Yesterday, I observed in this blog that both Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and Mr. Henry were facing a political dilemma known in California as a “drill.” Until is a situation in which any both a politician casts is guaranteed to piss off a particular constituency. In this case, voting in favor of marriage equality would clearly annoy the religious right voters to whom both DeRosa and Henry pandered so blatantly during the 2012 election cycle. On the other hand, voting against marriage equality would antagonize Cathedral City’s vocal, and increasingly political, queerfolk.
Obviously, something has shifted in the political calculus of Cathedral City. To the extent that DeRosa and Henry, along with defeated former councilman Bud England thought that they could get elected, and hold on permanently, to office by courting low information socially conservative voters, national events have disabused them of so foolish a notion. The Desert Sun was right to note that tonight’s vote will force DeRosa to take a definitive stand on an issue which he has tried very hard to triangulate and to tergiversate to avoid having to make any kind of actual commitment one way or another.
Henry’s problem is more simple, yet less deserving of any sympathy. Henry brings with him the baggage of three decades in the police department (and the extent to which Cathedral City has become a Police Department with a municipal corporation attached is an issue for further posts in this blog). Any gay man can tell you from experience that law enforcement has historically tended to regard itself as the guardian, custodian, and conservator of what it believes ought to be “correct” social values, and to police those values accordingly.
Over many years, there has been little love lost between law enforcement and the queer nation. For example, any historian of the City of West Hollywood can attest that West Hollywood became something of a “sanctuary” for queerfolk because of the unremitting hostility of the LAPD toward LGBT people in the City of Los Angeles during the chiefships of such top cops as William Parker and Ed Davis.
To the extent that queerfolk are, by our nature, cultural dissidents whose critique of the larger society around us often stings, we have been natural targets for the disapproval of much of the law enforcement community. Sadly, Mr. Henry seems to forget that he was not elected to represent Cathedral City’s top-heavy Police Department, but rather to represent Cathedral City’s residents, irrespective of our sexuality or religious beliefs. Moreover, Henry’s flip remark that “[t]here is already a law for civil agreements” merely displays astonishing and dangerous ignorance of history. If Stanley Henry had bothered to familiarize himself with Brown v. Board of Education,(1954) 347 U.S. 483, he would have learned that “separate but equal” is an unsustainable and unconstitutional formulation. Sadly, ignorance and arrogance seem to have met in this councilman.
Writing before the election, I warned that DeRosa would probably attempt, were Mr. Henry to be elected to the council, to “colonize” the Police Department, turning it into her own political enforcement entity. I asked whether it was a good idea for the PD to act as the mayor’s “muscle.”
Henry took exception to my remark, and very publicly impugned my integrity.
Now it is my turn to impugn his, and with a hell of a lot more justification.
To the extent that Mr. Henry has ever voted on any similar resolution in the past, he cannot now be heard to complain, and his doing so raises severe questions about his integrity and fitness for office.
If Mr. Henry cannot provide satisfactory information as to his whereabouts tonight, his absence from the council should be counted as unexcused, and he should be called upon to explain his deliberate, tactical, and inexcusable absence from a vote with respect to which his constituents have a right to know where he stands. Certainly, Henry has made himself no friends among the religious rightists he so assiduously pandered to during the campaign, and he’s also managed to antagonize the queer nation.
Because right now, all we know is that Stan Henry has taken a powder: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Perhaps, if the thought of pissing off a constituency he’s afraid to antagonize gives him too much agita, he should follow the example of the departing Roman Pontiff, lay down his office, and allow another ---made of sterner, more forthright stuff --- to assume the responsibility of representing the residents of this community.
And perhaps he should go; I had not thought possible that even a freshman councilman could be so politically maladroit.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral city, California. The views set forth herein are his own, and are not to be taken as legal advice. To anyone foolish enough to attempt to retaliate against him on the basis of this blog post, he has only four words: federal civil rights litigation.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Cathedral City councilman Stan Henry managed to put his foot in his mouth, chew it down to the bone, and then shoot himself in that very same foot today with his divisive and ill-considered remarks on tonight’s proposed marriage equality resolution of the Cathedral City city Council.
Speaking to the Desert Sun’s Tamara Sone, Henry remarked that:
“As a police officer and then chief of police, I spent most of my adult life making sure everyone had equal rights. Why we are injecting ourselves into something we have no authority over, I don’t know,” he said. “There is already a law for civil agreements. We should be focusing on bringing businesses and jobs into the city.”
To make matters worse, the quondam police chief, a self-identified social conservative, plans to absent himself from tonight’s council meeting, citing “another engagement” and offering a claim --- incredible on its face --- that he’s not skipping out on the council meeting simply to avoid having to cast a vote that will get him in trouble with at least one major constituency.
Plainly, the quondam police chief has a lot to learn about the responsibilities he owes to the voters who elected him.
Yesterday, I observed in this blog that both Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and Mr. Henry were facing a political dilemma known in California as a “drill.” Until is a situation in which any both a politician casts is guaranteed to piss off a particular constituency. In this case, voting in favor of marriage equality would clearly annoy the religious right voters to whom both DeRosa and Henry pandered so blatantly during the 2012 election cycle. On the other hand, voting against marriage equality would antagonize Cathedral City’s vocal, and increasingly political, queerfolk.
Obviously, something has shifted in the political calculus of Cathedral City. To the extent that DeRosa and Henry, along with defeated former councilman Bud England thought that they could get elected, and hold on permanently, to office by courting low information socially conservative voters, national events have disabused them of so foolish a notion. The Desert Sun was right to note that tonight’s vote will force DeRosa to take a definitive stand on an issue which he has tried very hard to triangulate and to tergiversate to avoid having to make any kind of actual commitment one way or another.
Henry’s problem is more simple, yet less deserving of any sympathy. Henry brings with him the baggage of three decades in the police department (and the extent to which Cathedral City has become a Police Department with a municipal corporation attached is an issue for further posts in this blog). Any gay man can tell you from experience that law enforcement has historically tended to regard itself as the guardian, custodian, and conservator of what it believes ought to be “correct” social values, and to police those values accordingly.
Over many years, there has been little love lost between law enforcement and the queer nation. For example, any historian of the City of West Hollywood can attest that West Hollywood became something of a “sanctuary” for queerfolk because of the unremitting hostility of the LAPD toward LGBT people in the City of Los Angeles during the chiefships of such top cops as William Parker and Ed Davis.
To the extent that queerfolk are, by our nature, cultural dissidents whose critique of the larger society around us often stings, we have been natural targets for the disapproval of much of the law enforcement community. Sadly, Mr. Henry seems to forget that he was not elected to represent Cathedral City’s top-heavy Police Department, but rather to represent Cathedral City’s residents, irrespective of our sexuality or religious beliefs. Moreover, Henry’s flip remark that “[t]here is already a law for civil agreements” merely displays astonishing and dangerous ignorance of history. If Stanley Henry had bothered to familiarize himself with Brown v. Board of Education,(1954) 347 U.S. 483, he would have learned that “separate but equal” is an unsustainable and unconstitutional formulation. Sadly, ignorance and arrogance seem to have met in this councilman.
Writing before the election, I warned that DeRosa would probably attempt, were Mr. Henry to be elected to the council, to “colonize” the Police Department, turning it into her own political enforcement entity. I asked whether it was a good idea for the PD to act as the mayor’s “muscle.”
Henry took exception to my remark, and very publicly impugned my integrity.
Now it is my turn to impugn his, and with a hell of a lot more justification.
To the extent that Mr. Henry has ever voted on any similar resolution in the past, he cannot now be heard to complain, and his doing so raises severe questions about his integrity and fitness for office.
If Mr. Henry cannot provide satisfactory information as to his whereabouts tonight, his absence from the council should be counted as unexcused, and he should be called upon to explain his deliberate, tactical, and inexcusable absence from a vote with respect to which his constituents have a right to know where he stands. Certainly, Henry has made himself no friends among the religious rightists he so assiduously pandered to during the campaign, and he’s also managed to antagonize the queer nation.
Because right now, all we know is that Stan Henry has taken a powder: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Perhaps, if the thought of pissing off a constituency he’s afraid to antagonize gives him too much agita, he should follow the example of the departing Roman Pontiff, lay down his office, and allow another ---made of sterner, more forthright stuff --- to assume the responsibility of representing the residents of this community.
And perhaps he should go; I had not thought possible that even a freshman councilman could be so politically maladroit.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral city, California. The views set forth herein are his own, and are not to be taken as legal advice. To anyone foolish enough to attempt to retaliate against him on the basis of this blog post, he has only four words: federal civil rights litigation.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
A PERFECT DRILL
Summary: The Cathedral City city council will be voting tomorrow on a resolution supporting marriage equality. Though the item is on consent, it puts Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and freshman Council member Stan Henry in a potentially difficult spot: which constituency do they want to piss off? Do they want to precipitate an explosion from the religious right? Would they prefer instead to send a message to Cathedral city’s queerfolk that we should get our butts to the back of the municipal bus? With increasing numbers of Republicans now coming out in support of marriage equality, DeRosa in particular is in a tough spot. If she cites her Roman Catholic religion as grounds for opposition, she will put herself in a place where she can be criticized not only on sectarian grounds but also on constitutional ones as well. For Kathleen Joan DeRosa, this resolution represents a “drill,” a political dilemma in which any vote she casts will anger at least one significant constituency she needs to hold on to if she is to remain a viable politician.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Tomorrow evening, the Cathedral City city council will have before it a proposed resolution supporting full civil marriage equality for all persons, including LGBT couples. The presence of the resolution on tomorrow evening’s agenda has already begun to stir some controversy.
The item appears as item number 5 on the so-called consent agenda. Items on consent are usually voted on in a single omnibus motion, without being discussed individually.
Placing an item on consent often functions as a way of providing political cover for an office holder who may be less than enthusiastic about the item in question, but who does not want to spend a lot of time putting his or her objections on the record.
Current political scuttlebutt in Cathedral City is that there are probably three votes to adopt the resolution: Councilmembers Greg Pettis, Chuck Vasquez, and Sam Toles. Incumbent Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and freshman councilmember Stan Henry are believed to represent the potential “no” votes.
In a sense, both DeRosa and Henry find themselves in a politically perilous position. In just the last few days, there has been a distinct swing in Republican opinion in favor of marriage equality. Even former Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has joined sometime GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman and a variety of other prominent Republicans in coming out, so to speak, for the freedom to marry. DeRosa and Henry now find themselves caught in what California political parlance calls a “drill,” in which any vote they take will significantly piss off an important constituency. To remain a viable politician, DeRosa must be able to hold both the religious right and that portion of Cathedral city’s queer community which she has thus far successfully bamboozled into supporting her.
Neither DeRosa nor Henry have the luxury of abstaining or voting “present.” California law withholds from local elected officials the luxury of being able to weasel out of a controversial vote that members of the Legislature enjoy. (The hypocrisy of the Legislature on this, and many other matters, will be the subject of a future post.) DeRosa and Henry have no choice, they must take a position on marriage equality. The best they can hope for is to be able to hide their vote inside the omnibus decision on the consent agenda.
Nonetheless, for Stan Henry, we need entertain no great expectations. He has defined himself as a social conservative, and given his law enforcement background, we may expect him to bring with him to the discussion the traditional law enforcement view of itself as the curators, custodians, and guardians of what “ought” to be “correct” social and cultural values. In short, Henry may be facing a lesser degree of political peril than his political mentor.
DeRosa, on the other hand, probably does not have the wiggle room Stan Henry does. DeRosa is well known for trying to triangulate on potentially problematic political issues; her history of tergiversation is also well known to anyone who has spent more than a few fugitive seconds familiarizing him- or herself with Cathedral City politics. It is reasonably foreseeable, therefore, that DeRosa will place on the record a “no” vote with such weaselly language as “I vote no on item number five.”
Of course, while a “no” vote on the marriage equality resolution may sit well with the religious right constituency to which DeRosa has so shamelessly pandered in recent years, it would also send a very clear message to Cathedral City’s substantial queer population that DeRosa regards us as less than full, authentic citizens of this community, and that she regards our civil rights as lesser things than those of our straight neighbors, and that we should get our butts to the back of the municipal bus.
Already, DeRosa has made her opposition to marriage equality a matter of record, as when she declared that “as a Catholic” she could not support marriage equality, but that she might, just might, be able to support some kind of civil union. As I noted in my blog, “Cathedral City Observed,” at the time, such a position is unsustainable any longer as a matter of practical politics:
“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.”
(For the full post, please use this link: http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-failed-effort-at-triangulation.html)
Nonetheless, like the Bourbons of France’s ancien régime, DeRosa has learned nothing and she has forgotten nothing. If she is foolish enough to oppose marriage equality on the grounds of her sectarian adherence, she will be opening herself up to a severe critique on the basis of her unwillingness to abide by the oath of office she took as mayor, which requires the oath-taker to bear “true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California.” Neither the federal nor the state constitution allows for an establishment of religion. To base a policy decision upon sectarian considerations constitutes a de facto effort to “establish” a religion, and is thus impermissible.
Damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. If DeRosa supports the marriage equality resolution, her religious right constituents will have a fit. Moreover, her increasingly skeptical constituents within the GLBT community may well question her motives and conclude that her support for the resolution was just more pandering of the type, kind, and character we have come to expect from her during the nine long winters of her regime. If she opposes the resolution, she will make an enemy of a great many, possibly a majority, of Cathedral City’s queerfolk and allies. Either way, she loses. Right about now it must suck to be her.
Bring on the drill.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served eight years as a member of the city Council. He was one of the first attorneys in California to litigate a marriage equality case, and he believes, like his patron saint, Paul the Apostle that “it is better to marry than to burn.” (1 Cor. 7:9) The views set forth herein are not intended as legal a device, and should not be taken or construed as such.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Tomorrow evening, the Cathedral City city council will have before it a proposed resolution supporting full civil marriage equality for all persons, including LGBT couples. The presence of the resolution on tomorrow evening’s agenda has already begun to stir some controversy.
The item appears as item number 5 on the so-called consent agenda. Items on consent are usually voted on in a single omnibus motion, without being discussed individually.
Placing an item on consent often functions as a way of providing political cover for an office holder who may be less than enthusiastic about the item in question, but who does not want to spend a lot of time putting his or her objections on the record.
Current political scuttlebutt in Cathedral City is that there are probably three votes to adopt the resolution: Councilmembers Greg Pettis, Chuck Vasquez, and Sam Toles. Incumbent Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and freshman councilmember Stan Henry are believed to represent the potential “no” votes.
In a sense, both DeRosa and Henry find themselves in a politically perilous position. In just the last few days, there has been a distinct swing in Republican opinion in favor of marriage equality. Even former Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has joined sometime GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman and a variety of other prominent Republicans in coming out, so to speak, for the freedom to marry. DeRosa and Henry now find themselves caught in what California political parlance calls a “drill,” in which any vote they take will significantly piss off an important constituency. To remain a viable politician, DeRosa must be able to hold both the religious right and that portion of Cathedral city’s queer community which she has thus far successfully bamboozled into supporting her.
Neither DeRosa nor Henry have the luxury of abstaining or voting “present.” California law withholds from local elected officials the luxury of being able to weasel out of a controversial vote that members of the Legislature enjoy. (The hypocrisy of the Legislature on this, and many other matters, will be the subject of a future post.) DeRosa and Henry have no choice, they must take a position on marriage equality. The best they can hope for is to be able to hide their vote inside the omnibus decision on the consent agenda.
Nonetheless, for Stan Henry, we need entertain no great expectations. He has defined himself as a social conservative, and given his law enforcement background, we may expect him to bring with him to the discussion the traditional law enforcement view of itself as the curators, custodians, and guardians of what “ought” to be “correct” social and cultural values. In short, Henry may be facing a lesser degree of political peril than his political mentor.
DeRosa, on the other hand, probably does not have the wiggle room Stan Henry does. DeRosa is well known for trying to triangulate on potentially problematic political issues; her history of tergiversation is also well known to anyone who has spent more than a few fugitive seconds familiarizing him- or herself with Cathedral City politics. It is reasonably foreseeable, therefore, that DeRosa will place on the record a “no” vote with such weaselly language as “I vote no on item number five.”
Of course, while a “no” vote on the marriage equality resolution may sit well with the religious right constituency to which DeRosa has so shamelessly pandered in recent years, it would also send a very clear message to Cathedral City’s substantial queer population that DeRosa regards us as less than full, authentic citizens of this community, and that she regards our civil rights as lesser things than those of our straight neighbors, and that we should get our butts to the back of the municipal bus.
Already, DeRosa has made her opposition to marriage equality a matter of record, as when she declared that “as a Catholic” she could not support marriage equality, but that she might, just might, be able to support some kind of civil union. As I noted in my blog, “Cathedral City Observed,” at the time, such a position is unsustainable any longer as a matter of practical politics:
“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.”
(For the full post, please use this link: http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-failed-effort-at-triangulation.html)
Nonetheless, like the Bourbons of France’s ancien régime, DeRosa has learned nothing and she has forgotten nothing. If she is foolish enough to oppose marriage equality on the grounds of her sectarian adherence, she will be opening herself up to a severe critique on the basis of her unwillingness to abide by the oath of office she took as mayor, which requires the oath-taker to bear “true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California.” Neither the federal nor the state constitution allows for an establishment of religion. To base a policy decision upon sectarian considerations constitutes a de facto effort to “establish” a religion, and is thus impermissible.
Damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. If DeRosa supports the marriage equality resolution, her religious right constituents will have a fit. Moreover, her increasingly skeptical constituents within the GLBT community may well question her motives and conclude that her support for the resolution was just more pandering of the type, kind, and character we have come to expect from her during the nine long winters of her regime. If she opposes the resolution, she will make an enemy of a great many, possibly a majority, of Cathedral City’s queerfolk and allies. Either way, she loses. Right about now it must suck to be her.
Bring on the drill.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served eight years as a member of the city Council. He was one of the first attorneys in California to litigate a marriage equality case, and he believes, like his patron saint, Paul the Apostle that “it is better to marry than to burn.” (1 Cor. 7:9) The views set forth herein are not intended as legal a device, and should not be taken or construed as such.
Monday, February 11, 2013
A CHURCH IN SYNCOPE: The almost unprecedented abdication of Benedict XVI
Summary: life seems to be imitating a Morris West novel today, as the world tries to digest the reality and the implications of Pope Benedict XVI’s almost unprecedented decision to abdicate. After 600 years, the world does not know what are the mechanics of a papal abdication. We do know, however, that Benedict XVI has decisively broken with the example of his predecessor, Blessed John Paul II, whose oblation of his own suffering, visible to the entire world, gave the world not only a lesson in how to face the reality of dying, but also called that world to examine its own capacity for compassion. What Karol Wojtyła offered to his church and to the world, Josef Ratzinger has chosen to withhold. There are more answers than questions out there as Roman Catholic church finds itself in syncope, waiting for the conclave that will elect a new pontiff. Will the new pontiff had more confidence in God’s providence than the lame-duck pope? We can only make the Sign of the Cross and hope for the best.
If life imitates art, then today the world seems to be going through the stages of a Morris West novel.
Not The Shoes of the Fisherman, but one of its sequels, The Clowns of God, which begins with the abdication of a pope.
Benedict XVI abdicated this morning, demonstrating once again the astonishing power of the Vatican to grab the attention of the world and hold it rapt as long as the Vatican wants it, even if the headline originally read like something satirical out of The Onion. A 100 division armored thrust at the heart of NATO could not have caused more shock and surprise in the capitals of the world.
In an institution which claims to have a precedent for just about everything, the first abdication of a reigning Roman Pontiff in six centuries is about as unprecedented as anything else in the tradition bound world of the Vatican.
Even so, as West phrased it in Shoes of the Fisherman, the life of the church is in syncope. The Vatican today no doubt finds itself as busy and as confused as an anthill prodded with a stick. Cardinals must be gathered and a conclave organized. Only this time, the conclave will be dominated by the presence of the outgoing pontiff (try to say that phrase; cognitive dissonance inevitably sets in). Yet, the life of the church nonetheless remains in syncope. For even if for a little more than two weeks, the Roman church will have that oddest of all phenomena in her midst, a lame-duck pope.
Of course, the Vatican will fall back on the closest analogous precedent, which is that of a papal passing. Already, Cardinals are making phone calls to power brokers within the church, posting to Facebook, tweeting, and otherwise putting out feelers to the colleagues whom they hope can place the tiara on their hopeful heads. Oddsmakers are no doubt lining up their lists, long or short, of papabile, or viable candidates for the top job.
Yet, for all the relief that may be felt in the Vatican that the institution is at least free, for once, from the “other shoe dropping” surprise of a papal death (coming as they so often do at “an hour we do not expect” [Matt. 24:44, 25:13; Luke 12:40]), Benedict’s volitional departure may well leave many of the Roman faithful curiously unsatisfied.
After all, Roman pontiffs don’t just step down, like other bishops in the Roman and other rites do. They don’t just accept emeritus status, like senior faculty members at a university. The accepted mode by which the tenure of the pope ends is death.
That’s right, pontiffs die in office.
Indeed, the slow, agonizingly visible dying process of Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, played itself out before a grieving world. If the mode of Karol Józef Wojtyła’s life was so different from ours as to be incomparable or incommensurate therewith, the process of his death touched upon basic human universals. By dying in front of us by inches, John Paul II left us a vade mecum for facing what Benjamin Franklin defined as one of the only two certainties of life (the other being taxes).
By dying in front of us by inches, John Paul II challenged the compassion not only of the human community of which he was the Petrine head, but also of the larger human community of which the Roman Catholic Church is ineluctably a part. John Paul II’s very public Via Dolorosa toward the final Calvary of his own passing brought home to us all the universality of death and dying. Anyone who has lost a loved one ---as I did on the feast of Saint Andrew the First-Called--- last year understands such a reality at a visceral level. In a real sense, John Paul II’s last gift to the church he led was to teach its members how to face the reality of death, which is --- in the words of the late constitutional scholar and novelist Walter F. Murphy --- a free gift of God; we have no claim upon its mercy.
Still, by leaving to his church an example of fortitude even to the end, John Paul II set an example for living and dying that a shocked world wonders why his immediate successor could not or would not emulate. What Karol Wojtyła offered to his church and to the world, Josef Ratzinger has chosen to withhold. Already, questions have been raised about the extent to which Benedict’s astonishing decision to cast off the papacy reflects a want of confidence in the providence of God, to say nothing of reflecting a lack of confidence in his own ability to imitate the Christ Whose vicar he was elected to be. Now a stunned world, even that majority of it which is not of the Roman observence, is left to speculate on the whys and wherefores of Benedict's astonishing decision; we will never know how Benedict the bishop would have faced the inevitability of death and dying, which are perhaps the only universals of the human condition.
If, to a certain extent, our mortal lives all recapitulate in some way the Stations of the Cross, we may justifiably ask why Benedict the pontiff bailed before reaching the 10th Station, where Jesus is stripped of His garments. As Josef Ratzinger himself noted in his own recent meditation on the 10th Station, by being stripped of His garments, our Lord was deprived of all of the outward and visible symbols of his place in society. We may justifiably ask whether by opting to avoid the public agony of his beatified predecessor, this pontiff has also tried to avoid the indignities that go with death, whether death on the Cross, or death in a hospital bed accompanied by the ravages of advanced Parkinson’s disease.
Comparisons -- as La Rochefoucauld once reminded us -- are odious, and we should be reluctant to compare the mode of Benedict XVI’s departure with John Paul’s “courageous oblation of his suffering.” Nonetheless, there remains something curiously unsatisfying about Benedict’s volitional decision to lay down a ministry which, in the teaching of the Roman church, represents a positive and lifelong gift of the Holy Spirit, from which there is no release except death. Under that teaching, Roman pontiffs aren’t just elected by their cardinalatial colleagues; the election itself is ostensibly guided by the Holy Spirit. Does Benedict’s pre-mortem departure from the Chair of Peter betoken a crisis of faith?
At all events, the abdication --- in its truest sense --- of a Roman Pontiff for the first time in six centuries leaves us with more questions than answers, questions that won’t be answered while the Roman church finds herself in syncope, grappling with the sudden challenge of finding a new pope was predecessor yet lives, hoping that God’s good providence may enable them to elect a pontiff who will be more moved by the example of Blessed John Paul II than by the somewhat sketchy and hurried departure of the incumbent pope.
As the Russians sometimes say in shocking situations, the most we can do is make the Sign of the Cross and hope for the best.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an Episcopalian attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. He metaphorically swam the Thames into the Anglican faith more than a generation ago, arriving at Lambeth Palace dripping wet in the water of new baptism. While this post may not be “strictly relevant” to events in and around Cathedral City (ultramontanists, flame warriors and reflexive umbrage-takers take note), so significant an event as what happened in Rome yesterday will necessarily ramify throughout the world, even to Cathedral City. The views expressed herein are not intended to constitute, and should not be taken as, legal advice.
If life imitates art, then today the world seems to be going through the stages of a Morris West novel.
Not The Shoes of the Fisherman, but one of its sequels, The Clowns of God, which begins with the abdication of a pope.
Benedict XVI abdicated this morning, demonstrating once again the astonishing power of the Vatican to grab the attention of the world and hold it rapt as long as the Vatican wants it, even if the headline originally read like something satirical out of The Onion. A 100 division armored thrust at the heart of NATO could not have caused more shock and surprise in the capitals of the world.
In an institution which claims to have a precedent for just about everything, the first abdication of a reigning Roman Pontiff in six centuries is about as unprecedented as anything else in the tradition bound world of the Vatican.
Even so, as West phrased it in Shoes of the Fisherman, the life of the church is in syncope. The Vatican today no doubt finds itself as busy and as confused as an anthill prodded with a stick. Cardinals must be gathered and a conclave organized. Only this time, the conclave will be dominated by the presence of the outgoing pontiff (try to say that phrase; cognitive dissonance inevitably sets in). Yet, the life of the church nonetheless remains in syncope. For even if for a little more than two weeks, the Roman church will have that oddest of all phenomena in her midst, a lame-duck pope.
Of course, the Vatican will fall back on the closest analogous precedent, which is that of a papal passing. Already, Cardinals are making phone calls to power brokers within the church, posting to Facebook, tweeting, and otherwise putting out feelers to the colleagues whom they hope can place the tiara on their hopeful heads. Oddsmakers are no doubt lining up their lists, long or short, of papabile, or viable candidates for the top job.
Yet, for all the relief that may be felt in the Vatican that the institution is at least free, for once, from the “other shoe dropping” surprise of a papal death (coming as they so often do at “an hour we do not expect” [Matt. 24:44, 25:13; Luke 12:40]), Benedict’s volitional departure may well leave many of the Roman faithful curiously unsatisfied.
After all, Roman pontiffs don’t just step down, like other bishops in the Roman and other rites do. They don’t just accept emeritus status, like senior faculty members at a university. The accepted mode by which the tenure of the pope ends is death.
That’s right, pontiffs die in office.
Indeed, the slow, agonizingly visible dying process of Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, played itself out before a grieving world. If the mode of Karol Józef Wojtyła’s life was so different from ours as to be incomparable or incommensurate therewith, the process of his death touched upon basic human universals. By dying in front of us by inches, John Paul II left us a vade mecum for facing what Benjamin Franklin defined as one of the only two certainties of life (the other being taxes).
By dying in front of us by inches, John Paul II challenged the compassion not only of the human community of which he was the Petrine head, but also of the larger human community of which the Roman Catholic Church is ineluctably a part. John Paul II’s very public Via Dolorosa toward the final Calvary of his own passing brought home to us all the universality of death and dying. Anyone who has lost a loved one ---as I did on the feast of Saint Andrew the First-Called--- last year understands such a reality at a visceral level. In a real sense, John Paul II’s last gift to the church he led was to teach its members how to face the reality of death, which is --- in the words of the late constitutional scholar and novelist Walter F. Murphy --- a free gift of God; we have no claim upon its mercy.
Still, by leaving to his church an example of fortitude even to the end, John Paul II set an example for living and dying that a shocked world wonders why his immediate successor could not or would not emulate. What Karol Wojtyła offered to his church and to the world, Josef Ratzinger has chosen to withhold. Already, questions have been raised about the extent to which Benedict’s astonishing decision to cast off the papacy reflects a want of confidence in the providence of God, to say nothing of reflecting a lack of confidence in his own ability to imitate the Christ Whose vicar he was elected to be. Now a stunned world, even that majority of it which is not of the Roman observence, is left to speculate on the whys and wherefores of Benedict's astonishing decision; we will never know how Benedict the bishop would have faced the inevitability of death and dying, which are perhaps the only universals of the human condition.
If, to a certain extent, our mortal lives all recapitulate in some way the Stations of the Cross, we may justifiably ask why Benedict the pontiff bailed before reaching the 10th Station, where Jesus is stripped of His garments. As Josef Ratzinger himself noted in his own recent meditation on the 10th Station, by being stripped of His garments, our Lord was deprived of all of the outward and visible symbols of his place in society. We may justifiably ask whether by opting to avoid the public agony of his beatified predecessor, this pontiff has also tried to avoid the indignities that go with death, whether death on the Cross, or death in a hospital bed accompanied by the ravages of advanced Parkinson’s disease.
Comparisons -- as La Rochefoucauld once reminded us -- are odious, and we should be reluctant to compare the mode of Benedict XVI’s departure with John Paul’s “courageous oblation of his suffering.” Nonetheless, there remains something curiously unsatisfying about Benedict’s volitional decision to lay down a ministry which, in the teaching of the Roman church, represents a positive and lifelong gift of the Holy Spirit, from which there is no release except death. Under that teaching, Roman pontiffs aren’t just elected by their cardinalatial colleagues; the election itself is ostensibly guided by the Holy Spirit. Does Benedict’s pre-mortem departure from the Chair of Peter betoken a crisis of faith?
At all events, the abdication --- in its truest sense --- of a Roman Pontiff for the first time in six centuries leaves us with more questions than answers, questions that won’t be answered while the Roman church finds herself in syncope, grappling with the sudden challenge of finding a new pope was predecessor yet lives, hoping that God’s good providence may enable them to elect a pontiff who will be more moved by the example of Blessed John Paul II than by the somewhat sketchy and hurried departure of the incumbent pope.
As the Russians sometimes say in shocking situations, the most we can do is make the Sign of the Cross and hope for the best.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an Episcopalian attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. He metaphorically swam the Thames into the Anglican faith more than a generation ago, arriving at Lambeth Palace dripping wet in the water of new baptism. While this post may not be “strictly relevant” to events in and around Cathedral City (ultramontanists, flame warriors and reflexive umbrage-takers take note), so significant an event as what happened in Rome yesterday will necessarily ramify throughout the world, even to Cathedral City. The views expressed herein are not intended to constitute, and should not be taken as, legal advice.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
CHANCELLOR HITLER 80 YEARS ON: DON’T THINK IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE
Summary: As we remember the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s coming to power in Germany, we need to recall how Hitler’s rise to power was largely facilitated by what German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called "complacency" among moderate Germans. German moderates and traditionalists made a faustian bargain with Hitler, a man they believed could restore order. It was a bargain many of them did not live to regret. Here in America, we progressives find ourselves confronted by a militant, regressive tendency composed of those who would like to see America reaffirm in their fullest form the cultural, social, and economic dispensations of the Nineteenth Century. Such ideas ought to frighten us worse than bombs. History teaches us that we can’t give these people a pass on anything. The ominous parallels are too numerous and too frightening for us to fall into the trap of believing that it can’t happen here. It can.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Cathedral City, January 30, 2013– 80 years ago today Adolf Hitler became the last Chancellor of the Weimer Republic. At the time, Hitler was a rather disreputable politician, an Austrian immigrant to Germany. When he went to see Reichspräsident Paul v. Beneckendorff u.v. Hindenburg, who asked him to try to form a government for Germany, Hitler made no secret of his intention to destroy the Weimar Republic and substitute a warlike, totalitarian government in its place.
In the country of Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, what German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called “complacent” moderate opinion refused to believe that a phenomenon like Hitler and Naziism was possible. Yet, on that thrice-cursed day of January 30, 1933, everything moderate opinion in Germany said could not happen happened. Within a relatively short time, purges, political score settling, and the precursors to the Holocaust had become the order of the day in what was once considered one of the most civilized nations in Europe.
Most of those who let that guttersnipe Hitler come to power represented an older German value system -military leaders like Gen. Ludwig Beck and Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, nobility such as Prince Philip v. Hessen and his wife, Princess Mafalda of Italy, and such world-renowned theologians as Dietrich Boenhoffer. Hitler’s victims were largely traditionalists -products of the Hohenzollern Second Reich of 1871 through 1918 -who could no longer accept what was happening to their beloved Germany. In many ways, their world outlook -their weltanschauung, as Germans say- was at its best civilized, cultured, European, Christian in the best sense of that oft-maligned word.
When the Great War swept away the Second Reich, it also ushered in a time of radical social change. Postwar political uncertainties and hyperinflation dogged the Weimar Republic that had replaced the Hohenzollern empire: strikes, putsches, 4 trillion marks buying a single dollar. Such events gave rise to a Weimar zeitgeist of drift and decadence -what queer person of more than a “certain age” can forget Liza Minelli and Michael York’s arresting performances in the movie version of Cabaret?
Yet it would be a mistake to see Weimar solely through the prism of Cabaret, or the equally arresting Berlin Alexanderplatz, (as much as it would be a mistake to view modern, reunified Berlin through the prism of Iggy Pop's mid-1980s declaration that he had moved to Berlin because New York wasn't decadent enough). In many ways, the Weimar Republic succeeded in quietly carrying forward many of the more laudable virtues of the Imperial period. However, as happens so often, nostalgia trumped reality in 1920s Germany; the complicated, unglamourous Republic inevitably suffered by comparison with its Imperial predecessor. Not surprisingly, many Germans found themselves looking nostalgically back toward Imperial times when things had seemed simpler.
Hitler initially appealed to Germany’s traditionalists as the man who could halt the drift and decadence of the post-1918 Weimar Republic, in effect repealing its chaotic zeitgeist and returning the Reich to the kind of dispensation it had known under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Of course, Hitler and his Nazis did nothing of the sort. In fact, the National Socialists had only contempt for the Germany they had acquired. They had little regard, and less use, for Germany’s culture, science, and traditions.
Germany’s traditionalists took just a little too long to realize the faustian nature of their bargain with the Austrian immigrant they called the “Bohemian Corporal” behind his back. Germany’s ruling elites believed they could use the Bohemian Corporal to their own ends. In fact, they were had; their culture and upbringing had left them tragically unprepared for the methods of the Nazis, and in the end, Hitler used them as dupes and stooges to seize control of the German nation.
In the years that followed, Hitler led that German nation on a headlong retreat from everything that had for centuries been good, honorable, and praiseworthy in the Reich, into an evil darkness all the worse because, as Winston Churchill wrote in 1938, it was “covered with a veneer of scientific conveniences.”
In our own time, we have seen the honor of our own nation sullied by a similar retreat into a kind of atavistic darkness, made worse for being facilitated by scientific and technical conveniences vastly more advanced than those of Winston’s day.
If the Weimar time in Germany saw a conflict between those who believed the Republic was worth saving, and those who sought to repeal the Weimar dispensation and return Germany to the ways and thinking of the Empire, we in America have had our own “culture wars,” in which two opposing views have been meeting in deadly contention. On one side are those of us who believe that America is a better place because of the achievements of the Democratic administrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Opposing us is a militant, regressive tendency composed of those who would like to see America reaffirm in their fullest form the cultural, social, and economic dispensations of the Nineteenth Century. The ominous parallelism between their views and those of Hitler and his party ought, as George Orwell once opined, to frighten us worse than bombs.
A few examples make the case:
• Like the Nazis, who proclaimed that there was no such thing as pure science, only superior “German” science and false “Jewish” science, America’s militant far-rightists have waged all-out war on science education in our public schools. When I was a child, evolution was taught as a matter of course in the public schools. No longer. Now phony constructs such as “intelligent design” are being taught as stalking horses for the ultimate imposition of a Genesis-based creation narrative in the schools.
• America’s far-rightists continue to wage war on women, in the same way that Hitler sought to bind German womanhood in chains inscribed “kinder, küche, kirsche.” Anna Quindlen has rightly observed that the debate over reproductive choice has much less to do with women making choices about making babies than it does with women just making choices at all. In the end, the issue isn’t about abortion, it’s about whether women are entitled to first-class citizenship in the commonwealth. When bloviating blowhards like Rush Limbaugh can attempt to slut shame Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke for speaking in favor of access to contraception, we know that an effort is being made to undo generations of progress by and for women.
• America’s far-rightists have also been waging the same kind of war against queerfolk that Hitler’s Nazis did. Indeed, they’ve gone so far as a suggest an identity between the Nazis and us. If there is one great link between America in the latter half of the 20th Century and the first decades of the 21st and the Weimar Republic it has been that in both societies queerfolk were and have been able to live relatively actualized lives as out people. When the Nazis took over, they stopped that straightway, driving Germany’s queerfolk right back into the closet; in our own country, an increasingly strident tendency would deprive us of the civil rights gains we have fought so hard, and lost so many, to achieve for ourselves and for the queer youth who will follow us. When ultramontane Roman Catholic bishops thunder against marriage equality from their pulpits, and Republican Congresswomen like batcrap crazy Michelle Bachmann loudly defend anti-LGBT bullying in schools, the echoes are clear.
Germany’s traditionalists -and Germany at large- failed to see the danger of Hitler and his ideology until it was too late. By the time they turned to active opposition, they had been rendered ineffectual. “This is the country of Goethe, of Beethoven, of Schiller,” they used to say, justifying their inaction. “It can’t happen here.” Of course, it did, and the names of the camps echo down through history like a doleful litany: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Flossenburg, Treblinka, Sachsenhausen, Theresienstadt, Mauthausen, Bergen-Belsen, Majdanek, and on and on, reproaching the complacent self-delusion of the Germans who let Hitler happen.
There are men and women in our country today who would happily repeat the horrors of the Third Reich, men and women who stand perilously close to the levers of power, who preach a doctrine antithetical to everything we hold dear, who want to lead us in headlong retreat from the ideals of our American Revolution. If Americans of goodwill on both sides of the aisle do not act to preserve our way of life -by not giving the far right and its supporters supporters a pass on anything- we shall soon find ourselves as powerless to act as those “good Germans” who found themselves saddled with a dictator.
As Americans of goodwill, we especially dare not fall into the traditional “moderate” trap -the “good German” trap- of believing that because this is the country of Washington, of Lincoln, of FDR and Jack Kennedy, it can’t happen here.
Yes, it can.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a member of the City Council. Among other things, he serves on the steering committee of the Desert Stonewall Democrats, and he believes that just possibly, Dietrich Boenhoffer may have been a saint, and was certainly a martyr and Passion-Bearer. The views expressed herein are his own. They are not intended as, and should not be construed as legal advice. This post is an updated revision and extension of a post originally written in the summer of 2005.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Cathedral City, January 30, 2013– 80 years ago today Adolf Hitler became the last Chancellor of the Weimer Republic. At the time, Hitler was a rather disreputable politician, an Austrian immigrant to Germany. When he went to see Reichspräsident Paul v. Beneckendorff u.v. Hindenburg, who asked him to try to form a government for Germany, Hitler made no secret of his intention to destroy the Weimar Republic and substitute a warlike, totalitarian government in its place.
In the country of Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, what German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called “complacent” moderate opinion refused to believe that a phenomenon like Hitler and Naziism was possible. Yet, on that thrice-cursed day of January 30, 1933, everything moderate opinion in Germany said could not happen happened. Within a relatively short time, purges, political score settling, and the precursors to the Holocaust had become the order of the day in what was once considered one of the most civilized nations in Europe.
Most of those who let that guttersnipe Hitler come to power represented an older German value system -military leaders like Gen. Ludwig Beck and Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, nobility such as Prince Philip v. Hessen and his wife, Princess Mafalda of Italy, and such world-renowned theologians as Dietrich Boenhoffer. Hitler’s victims were largely traditionalists -products of the Hohenzollern Second Reich of 1871 through 1918 -who could no longer accept what was happening to their beloved Germany. In many ways, their world outlook -their weltanschauung, as Germans say- was at its best civilized, cultured, European, Christian in the best sense of that oft-maligned word.
When the Great War swept away the Second Reich, it also ushered in a time of radical social change. Postwar political uncertainties and hyperinflation dogged the Weimar Republic that had replaced the Hohenzollern empire: strikes, putsches, 4 trillion marks buying a single dollar. Such events gave rise to a Weimar zeitgeist of drift and decadence -what queer person of more than a “certain age” can forget Liza Minelli and Michael York’s arresting performances in the movie version of Cabaret?
Yet it would be a mistake to see Weimar solely through the prism of Cabaret, or the equally arresting Berlin Alexanderplatz, (as much as it would be a mistake to view modern, reunified Berlin through the prism of Iggy Pop's mid-1980s declaration that he had moved to Berlin because New York wasn't decadent enough). In many ways, the Weimar Republic succeeded in quietly carrying forward many of the more laudable virtues of the Imperial period. However, as happens so often, nostalgia trumped reality in 1920s Germany; the complicated, unglamourous Republic inevitably suffered by comparison with its Imperial predecessor. Not surprisingly, many Germans found themselves looking nostalgically back toward Imperial times when things had seemed simpler.
Hitler initially appealed to Germany’s traditionalists as the man who could halt the drift and decadence of the post-1918 Weimar Republic, in effect repealing its chaotic zeitgeist and returning the Reich to the kind of dispensation it had known under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Of course, Hitler and his Nazis did nothing of the sort. In fact, the National Socialists had only contempt for the Germany they had acquired. They had little regard, and less use, for Germany’s culture, science, and traditions.
Germany’s traditionalists took just a little too long to realize the faustian nature of their bargain with the Austrian immigrant they called the “Bohemian Corporal” behind his back. Germany’s ruling elites believed they could use the Bohemian Corporal to their own ends. In fact, they were had; their culture and upbringing had left them tragically unprepared for the methods of the Nazis, and in the end, Hitler used them as dupes and stooges to seize control of the German nation.
In the years that followed, Hitler led that German nation on a headlong retreat from everything that had for centuries been good, honorable, and praiseworthy in the Reich, into an evil darkness all the worse because, as Winston Churchill wrote in 1938, it was “covered with a veneer of scientific conveniences.”
In our own time, we have seen the honor of our own nation sullied by a similar retreat into a kind of atavistic darkness, made worse for being facilitated by scientific and technical conveniences vastly more advanced than those of Winston’s day.
If the Weimar time in Germany saw a conflict between those who believed the Republic was worth saving, and those who sought to repeal the Weimar dispensation and return Germany to the ways and thinking of the Empire, we in America have had our own “culture wars,” in which two opposing views have been meeting in deadly contention. On one side are those of us who believe that America is a better place because of the achievements of the Democratic administrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Opposing us is a militant, regressive tendency composed of those who would like to see America reaffirm in their fullest form the cultural, social, and economic dispensations of the Nineteenth Century. The ominous parallelism between their views and those of Hitler and his party ought, as George Orwell once opined, to frighten us worse than bombs.
A few examples make the case:
• Like the Nazis, who proclaimed that there was no such thing as pure science, only superior “German” science and false “Jewish” science, America’s militant far-rightists have waged all-out war on science education in our public schools. When I was a child, evolution was taught as a matter of course in the public schools. No longer. Now phony constructs such as “intelligent design” are being taught as stalking horses for the ultimate imposition of a Genesis-based creation narrative in the schools.
• America’s far-rightists continue to wage war on women, in the same way that Hitler sought to bind German womanhood in chains inscribed “kinder, küche, kirsche.” Anna Quindlen has rightly observed that the debate over reproductive choice has much less to do with women making choices about making babies than it does with women just making choices at all. In the end, the issue isn’t about abortion, it’s about whether women are entitled to first-class citizenship in the commonwealth. When bloviating blowhards like Rush Limbaugh can attempt to slut shame Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke for speaking in favor of access to contraception, we know that an effort is being made to undo generations of progress by and for women.
• America’s far-rightists have also been waging the same kind of war against queerfolk that Hitler’s Nazis did. Indeed, they’ve gone so far as a suggest an identity between the Nazis and us. If there is one great link between America in the latter half of the 20th Century and the first decades of the 21st and the Weimar Republic it has been that in both societies queerfolk were and have been able to live relatively actualized lives as out people. When the Nazis took over, they stopped that straightway, driving Germany’s queerfolk right back into the closet; in our own country, an increasingly strident tendency would deprive us of the civil rights gains we have fought so hard, and lost so many, to achieve for ourselves and for the queer youth who will follow us. When ultramontane Roman Catholic bishops thunder against marriage equality from their pulpits, and Republican Congresswomen like batcrap crazy Michelle Bachmann loudly defend anti-LGBT bullying in schools, the echoes are clear.
Germany’s traditionalists -and Germany at large- failed to see the danger of Hitler and his ideology until it was too late. By the time they turned to active opposition, they had been rendered ineffectual. “This is the country of Goethe, of Beethoven, of Schiller,” they used to say, justifying their inaction. “It can’t happen here.” Of course, it did, and the names of the camps echo down through history like a doleful litany: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Flossenburg, Treblinka, Sachsenhausen, Theresienstadt, Mauthausen, Bergen-Belsen, Majdanek, and on and on, reproaching the complacent self-delusion of the Germans who let Hitler happen.
There are men and women in our country today who would happily repeat the horrors of the Third Reich, men and women who stand perilously close to the levers of power, who preach a doctrine antithetical to everything we hold dear, who want to lead us in headlong retreat from the ideals of our American Revolution. If Americans of goodwill on both sides of the aisle do not act to preserve our way of life -by not giving the far right and its supporters supporters a pass on anything- we shall soon find ourselves as powerless to act as those “good Germans” who found themselves saddled with a dictator.
As Americans of goodwill, we especially dare not fall into the traditional “moderate” trap -the “good German” trap- of believing that because this is the country of Washington, of Lincoln, of FDR and Jack Kennedy, it can’t happen here.
Yes, it can.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a member of the City Council. Among other things, he serves on the steering committee of the Desert Stonewall Democrats, and he believes that just possibly, Dietrich Boenhoffer may have been a saint, and was certainly a martyr and Passion-Bearer. The views expressed herein are his own. They are not intended as, and should not be construed as legal advice. This post is an updated revision and extension of a post originally written in the summer of 2005.
Monday, January 21, 2013
BARACK’S PROUDLY PROGRESSIVE SECOND INAUGURAL
Summary: Barack Obama’s second inaugural address was neither anodyne nor lukewarm, but instead ringingly set forth an unapologetically progressive agenda. It pushed back against some of the more noxious Ayn Rand aspects of conservative thinking, while acknowledging and insisting upon a place in the Commonwealth for the middle class and the marginalized, and taking the side of Lazarus over Dives. Though some on the Rush Limbaugh right will attack or complain that their feelings were “hurt,” we may, if only momentarily and naïvely, hold out hope for a possible thaw in the partisan froideur that has obtained in Washington City for so many years. It may be possible, even if unlikely, to envisage some of the President’s opponents putting country before party. At all events, we may permissibly celebrate and be thankful for yet another peaceful transition of power in an unbroken string of such transfers dating back 224 years.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Some inaugural addresses are anodyne offerings, long on platitudes but short on substance. Some inaugural addresses try so earnestly to chart a middle course as to become virtually meaningless, neither hot nor cold but only lukewarm.
Barack Obama’s second inaugural was anything but anodyne or lukewarm.
Indeed, not even when Bill Clinton was President have I heard so strongly progressive a speech. It was more than I had dared to expect or hope from President Obama. It was uncompromising, proudly progressive, and not afraid to take on some of the most treasured shibboleths of the President’s inveterate opponents.
As much as it was a real joy to hear the president consciously and purposefully acknowledge the authentic presence of queerfolk as real, first-class citizens of our American Commonwealth, I also couldn’t avoid a certain measure of schadenfreude at the President’s clear dig at vice presidential wannabe Paul Ryan and his slavish devotion to Ayn Rand. The President’s speech was intended for the middle class and the marginalized; it was not a speech for the comfortable, nor did it take the side of Dives over Lazarus
Already, Republican cleavages are beginning to open. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has characterized the President’s address as “a very good speech.” Other, more obstructionist, Republicans, both in and out of office, have been quick to complain that the President’s remarks were “unduly confrontational.”
Such a Republican view is not surprising. The American right has consistently sought to position itself as aggrieved victims of the changing nature of American society, and to complain about how badly its feelings have been hurt by being called to account or publicly disagreed with.
And indeed, President Obama’s second inaugural address will give Republican irreconcilables much to bellyache about. The president’s forthright pushback against climate change deniers --- and by implication, against the entire science-opposing evangelical-industrial complex, to say nothing of his outreach toward the LGBT community, including having a gay man read the inaugural poem, will surely not resonate well among religious rightists for whom climate change denial and opposition to what they call the “homosexual agenda” (scare quotes fully intended) represent part of a broader litmus test for who is a “pure and dependable” conservative.
Yet we may dare hold out some hope that a new term may make it possible for a new turn of the political page. If a sense of cooperation and goodwill arises from today’s inauguration, and if it can be sustained for more than 24 hours, it may be possible to envisage a climate of positive change beginning to take hold in Washington City.
Of course, we would be naïve to hold out hope for a thaw in the partisan froideur. The President’s opponents are many, for their name is Legion, and we will see whether that Legion is capable of putting the interests of the Commonwealth ahead of the particular predilections of party.
Still, on today of all days, it is permissible to celebrate, and to be thankful foran America in which, across 224 years of quadrennial presidential elections, power has always been transferred peaceably and without appeal to force or violence.
May it ever be so. God bless America.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. He currently serves as Vice Chair of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee representing the 56th Assembly District. He makes no bones about having supported and voted for President Obama in both 2008 and last fall. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the California Democratic Party. They are not legal advice, and should not be so construed.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Some inaugural addresses are anodyne offerings, long on platitudes but short on substance. Some inaugural addresses try so earnestly to chart a middle course as to become virtually meaningless, neither hot nor cold but only lukewarm.
Barack Obama’s second inaugural was anything but anodyne or lukewarm.
Indeed, not even when Bill Clinton was President have I heard so strongly progressive a speech. It was more than I had dared to expect or hope from President Obama. It was uncompromising, proudly progressive, and not afraid to take on some of the most treasured shibboleths of the President’s inveterate opponents.
As much as it was a real joy to hear the president consciously and purposefully acknowledge the authentic presence of queerfolk as real, first-class citizens of our American Commonwealth, I also couldn’t avoid a certain measure of schadenfreude at the President’s clear dig at vice presidential wannabe Paul Ryan and his slavish devotion to Ayn Rand. The President’s speech was intended for the middle class and the marginalized; it was not a speech for the comfortable, nor did it take the side of Dives over Lazarus
Already, Republican cleavages are beginning to open. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has characterized the President’s address as “a very good speech.” Other, more obstructionist, Republicans, both in and out of office, have been quick to complain that the President’s remarks were “unduly confrontational.”
Such a Republican view is not surprising. The American right has consistently sought to position itself as aggrieved victims of the changing nature of American society, and to complain about how badly its feelings have been hurt by being called to account or publicly disagreed with.
And indeed, President Obama’s second inaugural address will give Republican irreconcilables much to bellyache about. The president’s forthright pushback against climate change deniers --- and by implication, against the entire science-opposing evangelical-industrial complex, to say nothing of his outreach toward the LGBT community, including having a gay man read the inaugural poem, will surely not resonate well among religious rightists for whom climate change denial and opposition to what they call the “homosexual agenda” (scare quotes fully intended) represent part of a broader litmus test for who is a “pure and dependable” conservative.
Yet we may dare hold out some hope that a new term may make it possible for a new turn of the political page. If a sense of cooperation and goodwill arises from today’s inauguration, and if it can be sustained for more than 24 hours, it may be possible to envisage a climate of positive change beginning to take hold in Washington City.
Of course, we would be naïve to hold out hope for a thaw in the partisan froideur. The President’s opponents are many, for their name is Legion, and we will see whether that Legion is capable of putting the interests of the Commonwealth ahead of the particular predilections of party.
Still, on today of all days, it is permissible to celebrate, and to be thankful foran America in which, across 224 years of quadrennial presidential elections, power has always been transferred peaceably and without appeal to force or violence.
May it ever be so. God bless America.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. He currently serves as Vice Chair of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee representing the 56th Assembly District. He makes no bones about having supported and voted for President Obama in both 2008 and last fall. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the California Democratic Party. They are not legal advice, and should not be so construed.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
A DELICATE TIME FOR THE DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE
Summary: as Dr. Raul Ruiz goes to Washington as our Congressman, his early days in office will be a delicate time. He will need to be aware of that unreconciled camarilla of angry GOP supporters who wish him ill and will seek to take him down in 2014. He will need to be considerate in his utterance, avoiding both gaffes and analysis paralysis. The quality of his constituent services will, in many ways, be the test of his effectiveness in Congress; good constituent services build up a reservoir of goodwill; Sonny Bono and his widow both understood that constituent services was the key to reelection. It will also be important for Dr. Ruiz’s many supporters to remember that he is a Democrat in a GOP majority House, and not to project upon him unrealistic or unsustainable expectations. Too often, Democrats set up their officeholders for failure by expecting utopia to build in a day. We must avoid that temptation; we must have Rep. Ruiz’s back and wish him Godspeed.
By: Paul S. Marchand
A beginning is a delicate time.
-Frank Herbert, Dune
Today, for the first time in almost a generation, our Pleasant Desert is represented in Congress by a Democrat. Congressman Raul Ruiz took the oath of office earlier today as the new 113th Congress was sworn in. Dr. Ruiz’s coming to Congress represents a welcome upset; heretofore Republican dominance in our Congressional district has seen virtually unassailable. The conventional wisdom in our Pleasant Desert had been that our Republican congresswoman would have her seat as long as she wanted it.
Local political handicappers had expected that Mary Bono Mack would leave office on her terms, and not as a result of blowing the most important job interview in her life, viz. the one between her and the hundreds of thousands of disenchanted constituents in what is now California’s 36th Congressional District. As Dr. Ruiz takes office, a quotation from Frank Herbert’s epic novel Dune comes to mind: “a beginning is a delicate time.”
I was proud to support Dr. Ruiz, I consider him a friend, and I congratulate him -- along with my friend Congressman Mark Takano -- on his swearing-in. Dr. Ruiz won’t have an easy row to hoe; the House of Representatives is still controlled by the GOP (though the infighting and intrigues within the Republican Conference are starting to look like a bad outtake from I Claudius). Still, as a constituent, I do have a few thoughts about the challenges that in this delicate time await our new Congressman from the 36th District.
First, there remains an unreconciled camarilla of supporters of the previous Republican congresswoman for whom the election of a Latino Democrat represents the sum of all their fears and insecurities. We’ve seen enough nasty letters in the pages of our local right-leaning Gannett newspaper bemoaning Dr. Ruiz’s election to know that many of our local Republicans will be watching Rep. Ruiz very carefully, waiting to pounce on and magnify the slightest gaffe or indiscretion. While there will be a certain amount of excitement and enthusiasm as Rep. Ruiz settles into office, it will be important that neither he nor his staff succumb to the temptation to overplay the hand they have been felt or to lose touch with the constituents and activists who made possible the political earthquake that sent him to Washington.
It will also be important for Dr. Ruiz to steer clear of the Scylla of unguarded or indiscreet utterance while avoiding the Charybdis of controversy-shunning analysis paralysis. In that regard, he should --counterintuitively-- take guidance from the experience of his predecessors, Sonny Bono and his widow Mary Whitaker Bono Baxley McGillicuddy.
In a conversation with Dr. Ruiz’s incoming district director, I stressed the importance of quality customer/constituent services. The incoming district director and I were of one accord in agreeing that constituent services will be critical to Dr. Ruiz’s success as our representative in Congress.
Love her or loathe her, Mary Bono Mack’s constituent services set a gold standard for the way in which elected officials’ staffs should interact with District residents. Indeed, though it is embarrassing to acknowledge, Mary’s constituent services were often more efficiently delivered then those of Democratic members of Congress. Having been subject to the third degree and hit up for a campaign contribution as an implicit quid pro quo for constituent services by staffers for at least one Los Angeles-area Democratic member of Congress, I was gratified -- when I approached then-Congressman Sonny Bono’s staff with a constituent issue, to receive prompt, courteous assistance without regard to my political affiliation or views, which were not unknown to the then-Congressman.
As and to the extent that Rep. Ruiz’s staff continue to live up to a high standard of constituent services, Dr. Ruiz should be able to build up a reservoir of goodwill that will stand him in good stead twenty months hence, when our local GOP uncorks its predictable vials of vitriol against him. When constituents feel they have been well and fairly served, they are more likely to vote for the incumbent who provided such services; good constituent services is the key to reelection.
The second major challenge Rep. Ruiz will face will come from his fellow Democrats, from some of the activists who were proud to identify themselves as his supporters during the campaign, and who may now be expecting immediate and far-reaching change. To these, my fellow fighters in the trenches, I offer an observation born of often bitter experience: you cannot build utopia in a single day. You cannot realistically expect immediate reform, only reform immediately begun.
Moreover, few victories are ever as complete as those who have helped gain them might imagine. We must avoid infighting and carping over the limitations of our victories and acknowledge that as excited as we may be over Dr. Ruiz going to Congress, the GOP is still the majority party in the House of Representatives. We must define victory in a more nuanced and pragmatic way than some activists might like to. As a professional colleague of mine explained to me more than two decades ago, if you’re facing 10 years of prison time and you bargain down to 18 months, that’s a victory.
Activists also need to remember that, from time to time, Rep. Ruiz may find himself taking positions with which they do not necessarily agree, or voting contrary to some cherished position. To such activists, I offer a sobering reality that it is neither reasonable nor sensible to expect one hundred percent agreement one hundred percent of the time, and that to have a conniption because “your” Congressman didn’t support your particular issue only advantages the numerous Republicans waiting in the wings of the 36th District eagerly anticipating the elections of 2014.
We must cut Dr. Ruiz slack in this delicate time, and not impose ideological litmus tests upon him. At all events, we must avoid setting up our new Congressman for failure by projecting unrealistic or unsustainable expectations upon him. We are not the Tea Party; we are adult, patriotic Americans who ought to know better.
A beginning truly is a delicate time. Rep. Ruiz deserves our support, our prayers, and above all our considerate forbearance; he is our Doctor in the House. Above all, we need to have his back and wish him Godspeed.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. He had the pleasure of supporting Dr. Raul Ruiz’s victorious campaign for Congress, and was honored to have Dr. Ruiz’s endorsement in his recent campaign for city Council in Cathedral City. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Democratic Party or any other entity with which Mr. Marchand happens to be associated. Self-appointed enforcers or the easily “offended” who may not like what they see or read in this post need to get over themselves. The contents of this post are not legal advice, and should not be taken as such.
By: Paul S. Marchand
A beginning is a delicate time.
-Frank Herbert, Dune
Today, for the first time in almost a generation, our Pleasant Desert is represented in Congress by a Democrat. Congressman Raul Ruiz took the oath of office earlier today as the new 113th Congress was sworn in. Dr. Ruiz’s coming to Congress represents a welcome upset; heretofore Republican dominance in our Congressional district has seen virtually unassailable. The conventional wisdom in our Pleasant Desert had been that our Republican congresswoman would have her seat as long as she wanted it.
Local political handicappers had expected that Mary Bono Mack would leave office on her terms, and not as a result of blowing the most important job interview in her life, viz. the one between her and the hundreds of thousands of disenchanted constituents in what is now California’s 36th Congressional District. As Dr. Ruiz takes office, a quotation from Frank Herbert’s epic novel Dune comes to mind: “a beginning is a delicate time.”
I was proud to support Dr. Ruiz, I consider him a friend, and I congratulate him -- along with my friend Congressman Mark Takano -- on his swearing-in. Dr. Ruiz won’t have an easy row to hoe; the House of Representatives is still controlled by the GOP (though the infighting and intrigues within the Republican Conference are starting to look like a bad outtake from I Claudius). Still, as a constituent, I do have a few thoughts about the challenges that in this delicate time await our new Congressman from the 36th District.
First, there remains an unreconciled camarilla of supporters of the previous Republican congresswoman for whom the election of a Latino Democrat represents the sum of all their fears and insecurities. We’ve seen enough nasty letters in the pages of our local right-leaning Gannett newspaper bemoaning Dr. Ruiz’s election to know that many of our local Republicans will be watching Rep. Ruiz very carefully, waiting to pounce on and magnify the slightest gaffe or indiscretion. While there will be a certain amount of excitement and enthusiasm as Rep. Ruiz settles into office, it will be important that neither he nor his staff succumb to the temptation to overplay the hand they have been felt or to lose touch with the constituents and activists who made possible the political earthquake that sent him to Washington.
It will also be important for Dr. Ruiz to steer clear of the Scylla of unguarded or indiscreet utterance while avoiding the Charybdis of controversy-shunning analysis paralysis. In that regard, he should --counterintuitively-- take guidance from the experience of his predecessors, Sonny Bono and his widow Mary Whitaker Bono Baxley McGillicuddy.
In a conversation with Dr. Ruiz’s incoming district director, I stressed the importance of quality customer/constituent services. The incoming district director and I were of one accord in agreeing that constituent services will be critical to Dr. Ruiz’s success as our representative in Congress.
Love her or loathe her, Mary Bono Mack’s constituent services set a gold standard for the way in which elected officials’ staffs should interact with District residents. Indeed, though it is embarrassing to acknowledge, Mary’s constituent services were often more efficiently delivered then those of Democratic members of Congress. Having been subject to the third degree and hit up for a campaign contribution as an implicit quid pro quo for constituent services by staffers for at least one Los Angeles-area Democratic member of Congress, I was gratified -- when I approached then-Congressman Sonny Bono’s staff with a constituent issue, to receive prompt, courteous assistance without regard to my political affiliation or views, which were not unknown to the then-Congressman.
As and to the extent that Rep. Ruiz’s staff continue to live up to a high standard of constituent services, Dr. Ruiz should be able to build up a reservoir of goodwill that will stand him in good stead twenty months hence, when our local GOP uncorks its predictable vials of vitriol against him. When constituents feel they have been well and fairly served, they are more likely to vote for the incumbent who provided such services; good constituent services is the key to reelection.
The second major challenge Rep. Ruiz will face will come from his fellow Democrats, from some of the activists who were proud to identify themselves as his supporters during the campaign, and who may now be expecting immediate and far-reaching change. To these, my fellow fighters in the trenches, I offer an observation born of often bitter experience: you cannot build utopia in a single day. You cannot realistically expect immediate reform, only reform immediately begun.
Moreover, few victories are ever as complete as those who have helped gain them might imagine. We must avoid infighting and carping over the limitations of our victories and acknowledge that as excited as we may be over Dr. Ruiz going to Congress, the GOP is still the majority party in the House of Representatives. We must define victory in a more nuanced and pragmatic way than some activists might like to. As a professional colleague of mine explained to me more than two decades ago, if you’re facing 10 years of prison time and you bargain down to 18 months, that’s a victory.
Activists also need to remember that, from time to time, Rep. Ruiz may find himself taking positions with which they do not necessarily agree, or voting contrary to some cherished position. To such activists, I offer a sobering reality that it is neither reasonable nor sensible to expect one hundred percent agreement one hundred percent of the time, and that to have a conniption because “your” Congressman didn’t support your particular issue only advantages the numerous Republicans waiting in the wings of the 36th District eagerly anticipating the elections of 2014.
We must cut Dr. Ruiz slack in this delicate time, and not impose ideological litmus tests upon him. At all events, we must avoid setting up our new Congressman for failure by projecting unrealistic or unsustainable expectations upon him. We are not the Tea Party; we are adult, patriotic Americans who ought to know better.
A beginning truly is a delicate time. Rep. Ruiz deserves our support, our prayers, and above all our considerate forbearance; he is our Doctor in the House. Above all, we need to have his back and wish him Godspeed.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. He had the pleasure of supporting Dr. Raul Ruiz’s victorious campaign for Congress, and was honored to have Dr. Ruiz’s endorsement in his recent campaign for city Council in Cathedral City. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Democratic Party or any other entity with which Mr. Marchand happens to be associated. Self-appointed enforcers or the easily “offended” who may not like what they see or read in this post need to get over themselves. The contents of this post are not legal advice, and should not be taken as such.
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