If you’re not outraged, we’re not doing our job.
HOME •
BASE8 •
BABYLON •
VIDEOS •
RSS •
TWITTER •
GOOGLE READER
Pretty dramatic headline, eh? But there’s no other way I can read it (and, by the way, we do have poor people in California — lots and lots and lots of them, thankyouverymuch, Governor Reagan):
Read more »»»
Tweet This Post! 
Not that we much care what the GOP does, as long as they don’t do it in our yard and leave a stinky mess, but it’s nice to know we won’t be hearing so much from the rabidly anti-gay and wildly uninformed Mike Villines (R-Clovis) anymore before he terms out in 2010.
Under pressure from fellow Republicans for not being as anti-tax as they’d like, Villines “resigned” as Republican Assembly leader, and was replaced by Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo), who bears a striking resemblance to the elusive Republicanus Moderatus, a rare creature seldom seen since 1964 and often presumed extinct.
Tweet This Post!
Via email:
Please join us on Tuesday, February 17 in Sacramento for Equality California’s Marriage Equality Lobby Day.It is critical that elected officials hear from you about why nothing less than complete equality will ever be acceptable.
We will meet with elected officials to urge them to support SR 7 (Leno) and HR 5 (Ammiano), EQCA-sponsored resolutions making it official state policy that Prop 8 is an invalid revision to the California Constitution since significant changes to the Constitution must first be passed by the legislature before being placed on the ballot. These resolutions also set forth that any change to the Constitution that would eliminate a fundamental right from any minority group must use the more deliberative revision process.
We will also ask elected officials to speak out in support of marriage equality and seek their guidance on how to change the hearts and minds of their constituents who voted for Prop 8.
Register today at www.eqca.org/2009lobbyday.
EQCA’s Marriage Equality Lobby Day is part of a series of coordinated marriage equality actions over President’s Day weekend to raise awareness, visibility and support.
Here’s what’s happening so far:
• Thursday, February 12: Freedom to Marry Day (Nationwide) Take action locally (details forthcoming).
• Monday, February 16: Love and Marriage Rally (Sacramento) Gather together at the Capitol to demonstrate that the LGBT community and our allies will settle for nothing less than equality. Sponsored by Equality Action NOW.
• Tuesday, February 17: Marriage Lobby Day (Sacramento) Meet with elected officials and urge them to actively support the effort to win marriage back.
Marriage Lobby Day is free and open to all who support equality. You will receive training, materials, and join a group of activists with an experienced team leader before heading off to meetings at the Capitol.
Your voice is critical to making sure we secure the necessary votes to pass the resolutions and that we send a strong message that California stands for equality.
Let’s make this the biggest lobby day our state has ever seen!
In solidarity,
Geoff Kors
Executive Director
Equality California
Tweet This Post!
Written by the president of the Santa Clara County Bar Association:
City’s stifling of Los Altos High gay group
seems unconstitutionalThe Santa Clara County Bar Association is dismayed at the Los Altos City Council’s exclusionary actions against gay students at Los Altos High School. One of the great hallmarks of America’s government and justice system is the right to public redress for wrongs, perceived or actual, to our government.
The city recently denied the Los Altos High School Gay/Straight Alliance’s request for a declaration of a Gay Pride Day in the city. The council went one step further and added language to an existing rule that prohibited hate speech based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. The new language they added to this section did not exclude a different kind of hate speech but instead specifically precluded discussion about issues involving sexual orientation, and in particular, bringing to the council issues involving Gay Pride Day.
While the city’s policy not to recognize Gay Pride day may or may not be debated, the indisputable fact is that these young people have an inalienable right to petition their city council and hold their leaders accountable for their actions. …
Regardless of an individual’s personal or religious beliefs, the community and the law simply cannot take sides and must endeavor to treat everyone the same. As elected officials, surely you know that you are elected to serve the entire community, not just those with whom you agree.
The Los Altos City Council is not only misguided but also may have violated federal law. In Romer vs. Evans, The U.S. Supreme Court held that a Colorado law that denied gay people any protections was an unconstitutional violation of their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection. …
Much like Colorado, the Los Altos City Council has no legitimate purpose to its actions, other than it does not want to hear the concerns of a certain group of people. In this case, it is all the more egregious because the wound was not simply in violation of their own stated mission or even directed at a “class of persons” but at their own children.
Christopher Arriola
City’s stifling of Los Altos High
gay group seems unconstitutional
San Jose Mercury News
March 8, 2006I’d heard this was coming down the pike, and I applaud the SCCo Bar. I could almost kiss the SCCo Bar; they’ve got the weight and the authority (and no vested interest, other than doing the right thing) to make the Constitutional question stick.
You want to know what’s really ironic? Ron Packard, Mayor of Los Altos — and, I sincerely believe, the driving force behind the city council’s anti-gay stance — is a lawyer himself (Packard, Packard & Johnson, 4 Main Street): He should know better!
I can only conclude that either Mr. Packard is not a very good lawyer, or that prejudice is such a great force that it trumps both common sense and legal acuity. (Unless Mr. Packard was living under a rock, he could not have failed to notice the impact of Colorado’s Amendment 2; it was a major story in the U.S., and Romer v. Evans a huge victory for equal rights. Or perhaps Mr. Packard, like the nation’s Commander-in-Chief, just doesn’t read newspapers.)
As San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano said about the anti-gay faction of the Los Altos City Council: “Shame on them. I think they should be recalled and not because of their sexual orientation.”
A recall movement would almost assuredly fail (Los Altos is a backwater of bigotry, and the businessmen who control the city are as thick as— well, let’s just say they’re tight), but the idea is tempting — especially since there are legitimate grounds that have nothing whatsoever to do with the LACC’s anti-gay amendment. In January of this year, the city came thisclose to prosecution by the county district attorney for water-code violations (a sewer worker tipped off the D.A. to at least four incidents of raw sewage spilling into our once-pristine Adobe Creek) and, worse, for covering up the spills by failing to report them.
You know what stopped the D.A. from going forward with the case? The statute of limitations had run out — by just over two months.
Lucky, lucky Los Altos.
The sewer scandal isn’t over, however; guess who may file suit against the city for wrongful termination? You guessed it: whistle-blower Keith Amdur, the sewer worker who reported the water-code violations to the D.A. To this bystander, it appears as though Los Altos started “keeping book” on Amdur after he started keeping book on the city, digging back five years to come up with the most specious grounds for dismissal: a discrepancy on Amdur’s resume.
Packard, of course, says Amdur was sacked because of “normal work issues.” Or, more specifically, Packard said: “In my mind, it had to do with qualifications and work performance.”
In his “mind.” Interesting choice of words, Mr. Packard.
I won’t even begin to address the numerous complaints by city residents over sewer backups into their homes…
Suffice to say, there’s a lot of crap in Los Altos. They try to keep it underground, and when it bubbles over, the city council scrambles to stuff it back down again, so as not to tarnish the bright, shiny, Disneyesque exterior of “The Village.” But the seams are bursting, and the crap just keeps overflowing.
And I’m not talking about the sewage spills.
For background info, see:
Los Altos, CA: Red Island in the Middle of a Blue Sea (2/25/06)
Latest from Los Altos (2/26/06)
Related:
Cleveland, Georgia: Gun-Toting Teens OK, Queer Kids Not (3/1/06)
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Filed Under: California, Civil Rights, Corruption, Education/Schools, Free Speech, LDS/Mormons, Radical Religious Right, Tom Ammiano, Youth
Bad Behavior has blocked 1188 access attempts in the last 7 days.
