A friend just passed along the latest email blast from the Yes on 8 team, wherein the Yes on 8 people are claiming that one of their parade of horribles have come true at last:  Homosexual Marriage Is Being Taught In Schools To Children!  Against The Wishes Of Their Parents!  The Horror!  The quote in full from the email blast:

In the same week that the No on 8 campaign launched an ad that labeled as “lies” claims that same-sex marriage would be taught in schools to young children, a first grade class took a school-sponsored trip to a gay wedding. Eighteen first graders traveled to San Francisco City Hall Friday for the wedding of their teacher and her lesbian partner, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The school sponsored the trip for the students, ages 5 and 6, taking them away from their studies for the same-sex wedding.

Except you know, not really.  This is a lie by omission.  Over the fold, a set of actual quotations from the San Francisco Chronicle article describing the event in question.

A group of San Francisco first-graders took an unusual field trip to City Hall on Friday to toss rose petals on their just-married lesbian teacher – putting the public school children at the center of a fierce election battle over the fate of same-sex marriage.

The 18 Creative Arts Charter School students took a Muni bus and walked a block at noon to toss rose petals and blow bubbles on their just-married teacher Erin Carder and her wife Kerri McCoy, giggling and squealing as they mobbed their teacher with hugs.

Wow, that’s horrible!  First graders!  Who love their teacher!  And want her to be happy!  An indictment of the public schools to be sure.  But this must be something the school forced on the parents, because we all know the evils of the public school system, and no parents could ever agree to allow their children to see such a thing.

A parent came up with the idea for the field trip – a surprise for the teacher on her wedding day

But I bet one radical parent forced the field trip on all of the other children, and their parents never even had a chance to object.

As is the case with all field trips, parents had to give their permission and could choose to opt out of the trip. Two families did. Those children spent the duration of the 90-minute field trip back at school with another first-grade class, the interim director said.

Apparently not.

So, let’s see.  A parent suggests a field trip to see the wedding of a beloved teacher, the school agrees, every parent of every child in the class has an opportunity to object, and yet, the Yes on 8 people have this to say:

“It’s just utterly unreasonable that a public school field trip would be to a same-sex wedding,” said Chip White, press secretary for the Yes on 8 campaign. “This is overt indoctrination of children who are too young to have an understanding of its purpose.”

Yep, That darn public school taught children the exact lesson that their parents wanted them taught, and which all of the parents involved expressly agreed they should be taught.  The horror, the horror of a school that is responsive to the wishes of the parents.

See, what the Yes on 8 people object to is anyone being taught that this teacher’s love and her rights are the same as everyone else’s.   The Yes on 8 people believe that this teacher should be treated different from everyone else because she happens to want to marry someone of the same sex.  And the Yes on 8 campaign is prepared to lie (in this case by omission of the actual facts) in order to imply that the school did something that the parents didn’t want, in order to force the government to treat this teacher differently from everyone else.   Lies and fear, that’s pretty much what the people running the Yes on 8 campaign have got to offer.  And no good idea needs to be sold with lies and fear.

If you’re as tired of the lies as I am, give the No on 8 Campaign some help.

On Monday, I posted about a new effort that I’m working on to vote no on William McGuiness.  I’ve got a website up and going at NoMcGuiness.com.  I must say that Blogger is quite convenient for these type of things.  I wanted to cover some more on the subject, because this election, we have an opportunity to push back at the Right.  In a very real way. Well, at least if you are in the First District.

But some background on William McGuiness.  You can find a profile here.  He was appointed to the Appellate Court in 1997 by Pete Wilson after serving in the Reagan Justice Dept. and a Superior Court Judge for a long time.  Now, I don’t have any problems with his qualifications.  I think he’s very qualified.  That’s not the issue.  William McGuiness made a terrible decision in In Re Marriage Cases, a decision that says that separate but equal is jolly ok with the California Constitution.  A decision that denies equality for a substantial segment of Californians.  That is not ok.

More in the extended…

Now, I would like to interject here that I believe the judiciary should be completely  independent of the voters.  The saga of Rose Bird should not be repeated.  But that’s the problem.  The only saga of Rose Bird is the saga of Rose Bird.  Rose Bird, along with Justices Reynoso and Grodin, was attacked from the Right over her decisions on the Death Penalty.  Rose Bird had a deeply held-conviction, a conviction that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. It’s clearly a defensible position, but the majority interfered with the judiciary.  When these three Justices were booted, our Judiciary was thrown into a tailspin.  George Deukmejian appointed three conservative Justices, including Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas, who steered the California Judiciary away from the powerful traditions of Justice Traynor.

And again the Right pushed back in 1998. Anti-choice forces decided to pick a fight with Justice Ming Chin and Chief Justice Ronald George, both Republicans. They were “disappointed” with them because both of them voted to strike down a law that required parental notification.  They both remember that.  They remember that the Right challenges them, but the Left doesn’t.  And so, where the moderates would vote their conscience, vote for what they know is right, vote for equality,  and vote for civl rights, they have to consider the reaction of the Right.

This is no way to run our Judiciary. John Marshall, our first, and some would say our greatest, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, envisioned a Judiciary that held a real check on the legislature.  In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton argued that Judges need to be independent in order to resist the oppression of the representative body:

According to the plan of the convention, all judges who may be appointed by the United States are to hold their offices DURING GOOD BEHAVIOR; which is conformable to the most approved of the State constitutions and among the rest, to that of this State. Its propriety having been drawn into question by the adversaries of that plan, is no light symptom of the rage for objection, which disorders their imaginations and judgments. The standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy, is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government. In a monarchy it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince; in a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.

Thus, Hamilton argued, the Judiciary should be independent in order to protect the rights of the minority.  The power of judicial review is clearly countermajoratarian, but just as clearly, it is so for good reason. That the Constitution did not crumble at the time of Marbury is evidence enough that people understood that. And Alexis De Tocqueville clearly understood the oppressive power of the majority as well.  In fact, De Tocqueville argued that the majority could be more oppressive than a monarchy because the authenticity of public opinion granted more moral power than a Crown could ever grant. 

Our Judiciary needs to be independent of public opinion, free to make their own decisions.  Unfortunately, this is not the way of the California judiciary.  Here we have elections and judges are accountable to the majority, for better or worse. And, as discussed above, the Right has used this fact to dispose of Rose Bird, and to fire a warning shot across the bow of Justices in 1998.  The Right attacks the Judiciary in whatever ways they find convenient.  They have “Justice Sundays” in Washington, D.C. where they denounce “activist” judges who dare stand up for the rights of a  minority, such as Justice Kennedy in Lawrence v. Texas.  And all of this creates a Right-ward drift.  We put our faith in the Judiciary system, The Right puts a Boot in its Ass.

Thus, we need to push back.  If we continue to let the Right move the discourse, we will soon find ourselves in very uncomfortable waters.  Justice William McGuiness is only marginally more culpable in the decision in In Re Marriage Cases than Justice Parrilli, who concurred with the opinion.  McGuiness, however, actually claims authorship in this drivel(PDF). But in an independent Judiciary, that drivel would be beyond my protestations other than the appeal process. 

However, fortunately for us, Justice William McGuiness is up for election on Nov. 7.  This opportunity presents itself very rarely. By pushing this, we can send a message to all judges that they cannot sell out Equality, and the Constitution of the State of California, to appease the Right.

Well, Round 2 goes to the Homophobes.  The Court of Appeal ruled against the City and County of San Francisco in their case against the State to allow same-sex marriages.

The 2-1 decision, which reversed a San Francisco Superior Court judge’s ruling, was a defeat for gay-rights advocates, who have looked to California courts to follow the lead of a 2003 ruling by Massachusetts’ high court legalizing same-sex marriage in that state. The California Supreme Court is expected to have the final word in the case sometime next year.

In today’s ruling, the Court of Appeal in San Francisco said the boundaries of marriage are up to the Legislature, which passed a law in 1977 defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. State voters reaffirmed that decision in a 2000 initiative that denied recognition to same-sex marriages in other states.

“The Legislature and the voters of this state have determined that ‘marriage’ in California is an institution reserved for opposite-sex couples, and it makes no difference whether we agree with their reasoning,” Presiding Justice William McGuiness said in the majority opinion.(SF Chronicle 10/5/06)

Well, it’s not really a big deal because this would have been stayed pending appeal if SF had won the case.  Ultimately it’s going to be up to the State Supreme Court.  Nonetheless, this is a disappointing result.  The Court basically said that seperate but equal is hunky-dory with them.

That’s not hunky-dory at all.  Mark Leno will be introducing his gay marriage bill in December and Phil Angelides has already said that he would sign it.  So, you still think electing Arnold will make no difference all you wavering Dems?  It will.

Today’s news roundup on the flip. Teasers: Piggy banks at the trough, the profitability of being a Rovian acolyte, employment up, housing down, gas prices up, and minor skirmishes in the culture war.

• Let’s lead with this excellent SacBee graphic explaining the current gubernatorial race for cash.
• Steve Schmidt, leader of the Schwarzenegger Bush-style, Rove-educated campaign team, is raking it in. Who says crime doesn’t pay? (On a side note, the Republican Flash Report thinks both the paycheck and Steve Schmidt are just ducky.)
• In economic news, jobs are up across the state, but most of our growth has been in home construction and related industries. Home sales are slowing, as everyone knew they eventually would, so clearly that’s not a sustainable model. Silicon Valley is doing fairly well, but the lack of investment in affordable housing, transportation and education is a looming problem.
• Just in time for the summer driving season, gas prices are edging up.
• On the culture war front, a whole bunch of fundamentalist teens have descended on San Francisco for some kind of rally against worldliness. I hope they’re staying in hotels — their money spends just fine, I reckon. The targets of complaint called out in the article include MySpace and the sexualization of pop culture. I keep waiting for these folks to realize that Rupert Murdoch, their nominal ally, owns the sex-saturated Fox Channel and now MySpace. Update: Apparently, Fox News is a bit sex-saturated as well. I can’t wait for the protests from the fundamentalists.
• On the serious side, there’s been a small victory for the equal treatment of gay Americans. Though I’m no fan of Proposition 13, it allows a surviving spouse to inherit property without triggering a reassessment. That benefit has been extended to registered domestic partners.