Optimism and I aren't close. We've had a brief affair now and then, but soon went our separate ways.

Well, we're back together again.

Here in California, a law was passed in 1945 that prohibited marriage between whites and "Negroes, mulattos, Mongolians and Malays." It was repealed only three years later. Today a black guy is our president-elect, and the percentage of misguided folks who voted to prohibit marriage to same-sex couples has shrunk from 61.4 percent just eight years ago to 52 percent today.

More importantly, the percentage of voters between 18 and 29 who voted on Tuesday against that odious constitutional amendment was a solid 61 percent - the exact percentage of those voters over 65 who voted for it.

Time, obviously, is on our side.

As much as I moan and groan about the stranglehold that the right-wing fear-mongers have had on our country of late (and as much as they're moaning and groaning about Obama's sweeping victory this week), things really are getting better - albeit, in the words of the ancient Three Stooges routine, only "step by step, inch by inch."

There's one series of images that nicely sums up my reasons for optimism. I've scraped it from the website on which Marilyn found it - the wonderfully named and deeply felt Angry African on the Loose - but only because that passionate blogger might remove it from his website; I take no credit for the photos.

I challenge you to look at these intimations of the future, taken at Obama's jubilant Grant Park victory rally, and see if they don't inspire you to have a brief fling with optimism, yourself:

It's time for a little optimism, a little faith in the future, a little "Audacity of Hope." After all, as the Beatles sang so wisely so long ago, "It's getting better all the time."

And, y'know, they were right. . [back to top]

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It's over, and the good guy won.

Although there were a thousand compelling reasons to vote for Barack Obama - three of them being on the Supreme Court - I was never really a big fan of his. Sure, he was intelligent and eloquent, and sure, he talked about building a strong America from "the bottom up" rather than continuing the failed trickle-down policies we've endured since Reagan. But his foreign policy stance seemed rooted in American exceptionalism and appeared to apply Paul Nitze's militaristic containment theories to the problems in the Middle East rather than be based on a more-realistic understanding of how we've alienated the people of that suffering area in pursuit of our own selfish interests.

In short, I was attracted to Obama's domestic policies and disappointed by the lack of imagination in his foreign policies - despite his promise to actually talk with our adversaries, an intelligent decision repeatedly ridiculed by Mr.
"I guess finishing out my career as a senator from Arizona is not all that bad after all." (Obama's position, by the way, was supported by McCain's hero, David Petraeus, and practiced by John McCain.)

No, I wasn't a big Obama fan - until one split second on David Letterman.

I remember the exact moment in which it happened. David had just said something mildly snarky to Obama, and Obama shot him a nanosecond glance designed to make Letterman's testicles ascend all the way to his larynx. It was a look of pure, hard-ass, no-nonsense "Don't mess with me." Silent, understated, and thoroughly unmistakable.

"My, my," thought I, "This guy is going to kick some ass and take some names."

It was the look of a black guy who rose to the top of alabaster-white Harvard Law. A guy who worked the mean streets of South Side Chicago. A guy who beat the well-oiled machine piloted by Hillary Clinton - no softie herself. And, as it turned out, a guy who kept his head about him through all the insults, stupidity, and mendacity that the McCain/Palin tag team could throw at him.

And won.

Barack Obama won me over that night on Letterman. I still believe that his foreign policy positions suck more than they don't, and I still need to see if he's as intelligent a coalition-builder as he'll need to be to defeat entrenched corporatism - or, for that matter, if he even wants to defeat entrenched corporatism. However, if you're going into a fight - and the next few years will have many of them - it's good to have a hard-ass on your side.

I'll bet when he plays hoop, he throws a mean elbow.

In other (bad) news: As you know if you've read previous posts, I've been involved with the No on 8 campaign here in California. That effort to protect same-sex marriage is also over - and in that case, the bad guys won. Quite frankly, I don't feel much like writing about it right now, so just one anecdote:

On my first day of volunteering at the No on 8 headquarters, I was working at a table with a grumpy old guy who at one point said, "Damn, I hate going through this every four years." My sunny reply of "Well, at least this'll be the last time" caused him to fix me with a baleful stare and say, "See you in 2012, buddy."

Well, Proposition 22 passed in 2000 with 61.4% of the vote. Proposition 8 passed yesterday with 52.0% of the vote. I'm no math whiz, but my calculations show that the next attempt to ensure marriage equality will pass in 2012 with 52.7% of the vote.

I can hardly wait. [back to top]

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A week or so ago, while enjoying lunch in my favorite low-rent Japanese eatery (try the XX-hot curry with roasted garlic cloves), I was suddenly rendered dyspeptic when the lunch-spot's radio, tuned to the local "smooth jazz" station, broke into its soporific stream of homogenized Kenny G sound-alikes to play an ad from California's Yes on 8 campaign.

The ad began with a worried woman's voice expressing concern over the dire consequences that would occur if this effort to amend the California constitution to eliminate the newly won right of same-sex couples to marry should fail to pass. An authoritative male voice then came on to detail the resulting moral Armageddon. According to this stern expert, if Prop 8 fails, California teachers will be forced to instruct kindergartners about homosexual marriage, and churches that refuse to marry gays and lesbians could lose their tax-exempt status, "As has already happened," he darkly intoned.

Liars.

First of all, as California's Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Donnell made clear in a public statement, "Prop 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage, and using kids to lie about that is shameful.”

Second, there has been exactly one marriage-related suit against any religious entity - and it wasn't a church. What Mr. Authoritative Moralist was referring to was a complaint brought against a resort managed by a Methodist group that had refused a lesbian couple their right to hold their wedding at a public beach-front property under Methodist management. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection - hardly a radical, gay-agenda group - revoked the tax-exempt status of only a small area of that beach due to the management group's clear violation of existing state anti-discrimination law.

(By the way, after hearing of such low-rent scare tactics being employed by the very people who profess to be speaking truth in his name, the Son of God Himself reportedly reprised the shortest verse in the King James Bible, John 11:35.)

Finally, when I was at the No on 8 headquarters this morning preparing for the full-press election-day effort, word came that last night the Yes on 8 forces had blanketed the black neighborhoods of Alameda County - which has been identified as the battleground county in this race - with the mailer and poster you see to the right. As is obvious, it attempts to leverage the popularity of Barack Obama in the Yes on 8 gang's effort to peddle discriminatory bigotry.

There's one tiny problem with this mailer/poster: As Obama's campaign explained in response to this devious dissembling, "Senator Obama has already announced that the Obama-Biden ticket opposes Proposition 8 and similar discriminatory constitutional amendments that could roll back the civil rights he and Senator Biden strongly believe should be afforded to all Americans."

This election cycle - national, state, and local - has been the most mendacious one in my memory. (I've read that there were 19th-century campaigns that were worse, but - although I may look it in the morning before coffee - I wasn't around at that time.) I'm not talking about simple distortions or insupportable opinions such as branding Obama a socialist (if only!), I mean the flat-out lying about demonstrable facts such as in the Yes on 8 radio ad, or the complete reversal of a candidate's actual stance as in the mailer/poster.

Can anything be done? Could we set up, for example, a three-judge panel (Democrat, Republican, and Independent) to which complaints of blatant misinformation could be taken, and which could either rule against them as untruths or allow them as opinions?

I don't know the answer, but I'm certainly not looking forward to 2012.

11/02/08 - Update: Today's San Francisco Chronicle carried a full-age ad from the Yes on 8 folks that included the following assertion, in a Q&A format: "Will gay marriage really be taught in schools unless Prop 8 is adopted? Yes. The subject of gay marriage is required to be taught in 96% of California public schools. The California Department of Education requires this." It then lists two URLs to prove its point.

Not that I don't fully trust the Yes on 8 campaign, but I decided to check out their Web references.

The first, on a page headlined Comprehensive Sexual Health Education, notes that "... school districts are not required [my emphasis] to provide comprehensive sexual health education," but if they do, "Instruction shall encourage communication between students and their families and shall teach respect for marriage and committed relationships."

Wow ... respect ... how godless.

The second Web reference, a FAQ described as "Questions and answers regarding comprehensive sexual health education, HIV/AIDS and STD instruction," includes the following two comments: "This education shall ... teach respect for marriage and committed relationships. It shall not teach or promote religious doctrine nor reflect or promote bias against any person on the basis of any category protected by the non-discrimination policy..." and "The law prohibits sex education classes from teaching or promoting religious doctrine and from promoting bias against anyone on the basis of any category protected by the state's school nondiscrimination policy ... which includes actual or perceived gender and sexual orientation."

Hmm... "It shall not promote religious doctrine..." "The law prohibits ... promoting bias against anyone on the basis of ... gender and sexual orientation."

Clearly, this is what panics the promoters of Prop 8: the prohibition of discrimination and bias, and the prohibition of the promotion of religious doctrine.

Vote early. Vote often. And either copy-and paste this rebuttal to Yes on 8's claims into email messages to your friends and family or merely send them the URL to this page (http://www.myslewski.com/main-personal_blog.html).

I'm sick and tired of this bull.

11/02/08 - 2:05 p.m. - Update from blog reader Cheri Parr: "I would first vote to ban all marriages between anyone, before I would vote to deny marriage to anyone. End of story." [back to top]

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