Gay marriages and mandates
When the new California Legislature convenes next month, there will be a number of Democrats who would like to see the issue of gay marriage go away for this session. Looking at the nationwide vote that resulted in the re-election of President Bush and the strengthening of Republican majorities in Congress, they believe that the gay marriage issue has damaged the party nationally. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for instance, has made no secret of her belief that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome hurt the party by deciding to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, raising the visibility of the issue.
But in the Legislature, there is another election reality to factor in. Of the 80 members of the Assembly, which ones do you suppose received the most votes this month? Leading the pack was San Francisco Democrat Mark Leno, one of two gay men in the Legislature and the author of the gay-marriage bill that last year cleared the Assembly Judiciary Committee. Leno received 148,235 votes, or about 10,000 more than the second highest vote-getter -- Democrat Paul Koretz, who represents Southern California's most prominent gay community, West Hollywood. Koretz received 137,830 votes. No one else topped 130,000.
Voters in gay communities turn out at the polls. Some of Leno's colleagues may wish he wouldn't bring up the issue again next year, but his constituents clearly have a different point of view.
Which way will the issue go? The first clue will come when Speaker Fabian Nunez announces the new makeup of the Judiciary Committee, on which there are five Democratic vacancies.
Over the last 23 presidential elections, Ventura County voters have backed the winner 22 times, or over 95 percent of the time. It is one of only a handful of counties in the nation that has been such a predictable bellwether.
The Ventura County Star's Sacramento Bureau Chief Timm Herdt on state issues and politics from Sacramento to Ventura County. He can be contacted at 
The conventional wisdom about this election is that it was won by the Republicans in part on "moral issues." That is, of course, code for gay marriage and abortion.
The presidential election featured the closest result ever for one in which an incumbent president was running for re-election, and Democrats got more votes for Congress nationally than Republicans did, yet the Republicans are attempting to stake a claim to a mandate on these issues that they simply do not have. Considering the final results, their claims that Democrats are out of the mainstream is untrue - Republicans have a slightly larger slice of the mainstream than their opponents do at the moment.
Some Republicans on the letters page of the Star and elsewhere have offered an analysis of how the Democrats can regain some of the power they've lost over the past two elections. Not surprisingly, their solution is for us to be more like the Republicans!
Marriage equality for homosexuals is a matter of basic rights under the law. And denying those rights to consenting gay adults who wish to marry is not an act of protecting marriage; rather, it's an act of turning marriage into a country club where only the privileged class can be accepted into its ranks. It's also as blatant an example of majority tyranny over a minority class as any I can observe in our society.
Mayor Newsom may have made things strategically difficult for the Democrats, but what he did was morally correct, if legally shaky. Americans claim to admire politicians who stand up for their beliefs, even if unpopular. It would appear that kind of admiration has its boundaries.
The Democratic Party got where it is today by abandoning their core principles in favor of a centrist Republican-lite P.R. campaign that is no substitute for an unapologetic expression of what we believe in. Among those is the belief that the state should not be in the morality business.
We should be thankful for people like Mayor Newsom - it's officeholders like him who will lead the Democratic Party back out of the wilderness.
Tim,
I think the party whips should do their job. If the Democrats don't have the votes to send it to Arnold, they should know that before they bring it to the floor.
If it passes the assembly and senate they should send it to Arnold. If he signs it he can kiss the 2008 dream away. Imagine Arnold in the early South Carolina Primaries? If he vetoes it they cn call him a flip-flopper because of his past statements that he "didn't care one way or another". Either way, the damage done to Democrats nationally can be reversed to stop a threat (arnold) before he grows.
Brian Dennert
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