some lights seem eternal
in this springtime of hope

hey, arnold

February 25, 2004
I find it funny that I�m here, processing for my own benefit what the Governor of California said, and what it means. I feel bad for politicians like the Governor who say something and because people don�t have a good argument against his point or position and proceed to twist what he had to say.

He didn�t compare gay marriage to assault rifles; he compared the willful disregard of the people of California by the Mayor of San Francisco. Right or wrong, the people of California (arguably one of the most liberal places in the United States, if not the most liberal) decided that marriage in their state (which they call a republic) would be between one man and one woman. The people of California, using their unique and dynamic democratic processes have expressed their will on issues from their education system to marriage to guns to even recalling their previous governor and replacing him with the Austrian born Actor/Businessman whose name I cannot spell. Mr. Maria Shriver? I�m not being intentionally cryptic but I can�t Arnold�s last name.

What the Mayor of San Francisco has done, beyond allowing gays and lesbians to marry in his city, is set a precedent that if a mayor (or other elected official) thinks a law is dumb they should break it and encourage the populace to do so as well. This would be something I might applaud in a country whose national regime was dictatorial or totalitarian but in a democracy, especially one so vital and flourishing as the one in California.

He could have used his celebrity and his office to repeal that law instead of resorting to something that passes the bounds of acceptable civil disobedience into outright disregard not only for the law but also for the citizens who put that law into action.

I talked to Amanya about this issue and people comparing it the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. I find that offensive and she agreed with me on that. While I do believe that homosexuals in this country are in a struggle for something they believe in a civil right the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s was more of a Human Rights struggle because African Americans and other minorities were being oppressed at all levels. Education, public services, voting and every other aspect of American life was either closed to them or offered at greatly reduced quality.

The Civil Rights Movement, in my opinion, was the last great battle of our Revolution that began in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where the Continental Congress declared that all men (meaning people) where created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights � life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property). Our revolution wasn�t just a physical break from the British Empire by military force but really an intellectual debate on what it meant to be a free people, what it meant to be a human and what being a free human entitled you to. The Civil Rights Movement was a monumental struggle for the soul of the Republic, not just rights for individuals.

Our forbears founded this republic to insure our human rights and dignity to all of humanity and meant for us to serve as an example to the rest of the world of how people should coexist with one another. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a struggle insure that for all people in this country, not just his demographic � it�s like Nixon said, �No man can call himself free while his brother is not.�

Homosexuals while embroiled in a battle for rights that other people have and they are denied but unlike the African Americans of forty years ago homosexuals wield the most powerful weapon in a democracy � the vote. That�s what makes their struggle less monumental while still important in my humble estimation.

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