At this month’s state GOP convention in Sacramento, the California Republican Party approved the charter of the Log Cabin Republicans of California by an 861-293 vote, making it an officially recognized party organization. Much of the attention following the vote has focused on the political consequences: How the chartered club can help with the party’s re-branding and outreach to the state’s gay and lesbian community.

“This is about working together to win elections in California,” John Musella, the club’s incoming chairman, said in a recent press release. “Being officially recognized sends a strong signal that the Republicans’ ‘Big Tent’ has room for everyone. Our chartering in California should serve as an example of how every Republican organization can stand proud and work together.”

The political impact is significant, but that’s hardly the most important part of the story. In an era when pundits describe politics as hopelessly divided, a group of outcasts succeeded in changing the hearts and minds of their adversaries. The Log Cabin Republicans didn’t just win a charter — they won a major argument in the culture wars in California.

“Seventy-five percent of the body — 75 percent — overwhelmingly affirmed our place in the party,” said Charles Moran, past president of the Log Cabin Republicans of California. “The Republican Party has moved away from fighting those ideological battles and is now focused on winning elections.”

Gays once “the ultimate enemy”

The party has come a long way since those past “ideological battles.” The state party once was led by such Log Cabin opponents as Rep. Bill Dannemeyer, Rep. Bob Dornan and the Rev. Lou Sheldon. Only two decades ago, any association with the gay club was considered toxic in a GOP primary. It’s been 15 years since moderate Republicans joined conservatives in campaigning for Proposition 22, the state’s 2000 defense of marriage initiative that was passed by 61 percent of voters.

And it’s only been seven years since Proposition 8, which also banned same-sex marriage, was passed by 52 percent of state voters.

“In the 1980s, I was afraid to walk around the state convention alone,” Frank Ricchiazzi, a longtime Log Cabin Republican leader, told the L.A. Times in 2012. “I could see the hatred in the eyes of some of those people.”

Back in the late 1970s, when gay Republicans began to organize, they faced off against GOP Assemblyman John Briggs, who had proposed a 1978 initiative to ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools. Proposition 8 lost, getting 42 percent of the vote.

“I assume most of them are seducing young boys in toilets,” the conservative Orange County lawmaker said in defense of his Briggs Amendment, according to Gustavo Arellano’s book, “Orange County: A Personal History.” San Francisco, according to Briggs, was nothing more than “the moral garbage dump of homosexuality in this country.”

Although the measure failed, thanks in part to opposition from Ronald Reagan, it still didn’t lessen the rhetoric from some California Republicans.

In the 1980s, Congressman Bill Dannemeyer led the charge with his work, “Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America.” He thought “AIDS was God’s way of punishing gays” and described gays and lesbians as “the ultimate enemy.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dannemeyer believed gays would “plunge our people, and indeed the entire West, into a dark night of the soul that could last hundreds of years.”

1998 Senate race

In the 1990s, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, leader of the Traditional Values Coalition, was at the height of his power. He helped elect Republicans by distributing 4 million voter guides to California churches.  Sheldon routinely cited the threat of “homosexuals” in his literature and held conferences to mobilize like-minded conservatives. A 1991 symposium at the Disneyland Hotel drew spirited opposition from gay and lesbian activists, five of whom were arrested for disrupting the event.

Throughout the 1990s, Sheldon was a central player in GOP politics, while any association with the Log Cabin Republicans could be used as a hit piece against Republicans. In the 1998 U.S. Senate race, GOP Senate candidate Matt Fong was criticized in the primary for receiving support from the Log Cabin Republicans. Fong, considered a moderate, received the club’s backing despite his support for the Defense of Marriage Act. Ironically, the Log Cabin Republicans raised $8,000 for Fong who, in turn, donated $50,000 to Sheldon’s anti-gay group.

“Rev. Lou is a friend,” Fong said of the donation, when it was unearthed for the general election against incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. “We were working on the Defense of Marriage Act initiative that he was contemplating. It is an act that was supported in principle by President Clinton. I support the defense of a traditional marriage.”

Fong lost the 1998 election to Boxer, 53 percent to 43 percent. The son of longtime Democratic California Secretary of State Marge Fong Eu, he died in 2011 at age 57.

Two years after Fong’s defeat, in 2000 Republican State Sen. Pete Knight authored Proposition 22, a 14-word initiative to ban gay marriage.

The campaign was managed by GOP political consultant Rob Stutzman. He told columnist Debra Saunders polygamy might be next because “there’s a logical extension to it … if you accept the premise that marriage should be whatever relationships people want to enter into.”

Prop. 22 was endorsed by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who came in second that year for his party’s presidential nomination to future President George W. Bush. In 2008, McCain garnered his party’s presidential nod, but lost to Democrat Barack Obama. Both McCain and Obama opposed same-sex marriage; in 2012, Obama changed his position and backed it.

Barney Frank

Hostility from the right was matched by hostility from the left. Some in the gay and lesbian community viewed the Log Cabin Republicans as “self-loathing” at best or traitors at worst.

“I now understand why they call themselves the Log Cabin Republicans: Their role model is Uncle Tom,” openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., wrote in 2012; he left office in 2013. “Twenty years now I’ve been hearing why the Log Cabins are gonna make the Republicans better and they’ve been getting worse.”

Frank was referring to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the 1852 novel that helped spark the Civil War; the title character, a slave, is excessively subservient to his white masters.

Yet this month, instead of prominent party leaders using their convention speeches to attack the “homosexual lifestyle,” they embraced the state’s gay Republicans.

“They have been solid soldiers in their fight against leftist tyranny in California,” said California’s Republican National Committeeman Shawn Steel. “I would welcome them in our organization. … I am proud to have them in the California Republican Party.”

H/T to OC Weekly & LA Times for archives. 

I voted against Proposition 215, the so-called Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana use here in the nation’s largest pot-growing state for — wink, wink, nod, nod — “medicinal purposes.”

That’s why it is rather ironic that I find myself compelled to come to the defense of the 1996 law, which the California Supreme Court’s seven justices this week unanimously agreed to review.

It’s not that I have changed my mind about Prop. 215 over the past 16 years.

I still believe it was a Trojan Horse sponsored by all-too-clever interests whose ultimate aim is to decriminalize use of not only cannabis, but also cocaine, heroin, crystal meth and every other currently illegal drug. I also remain troubled that the Compassionate Use Act brazenly contravenes longstanding federal drug law.

So why am I defending Prop. 215? Because it was approved by 56 percent of California voters. Because I think it a mockery of the democratic process when judges overturn the results of a public plebiscite.

The temptation for the 44 percent of us who voted against Prop. 215 is to applaud the state’s highest court for addressing itself to the continuing controversy the law precipitated.

To urge the justices to allow local governments throughout the state to ban marijuana dispensaries if they see fit. To strike down the Compassionate Use Act altogether on grounds that it violates federal law.

But the time for the courts to strike down Prop. 215 was back in 1996, before the measure actually made the state ballot. Not after the measure was approved by the voters. Not 16 years after the fact.

If the forthcoming court review of Prop. 215 was an aberration, perhaps it would not so offend my democratic (small d) sensibilities. But California judges and courts have been notorious over the years in nullifying the expressed will of the state’s electorate.

Other Initiatives

In 1994, Proposition 187 was approved by 59 percent of California voters. The Save our State initiative would have prohibited illegal aliens from receiving public education, health care and other taxpayer-funded entitlements.

However, it was declared unconstitutional by federal judge Mariana Pfaelzer, a liberal judicial activist appointed by President Jimmy Carter. When Gray Davis became governor, he decided not to appeal, effectively killing the law.

Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, was approved by 54 percent of voters in 1996, the same year Prop. 215 won passage. It prohibited the state from considering race, sex or ethnicity in public employment, public contracting and public education.

It was initially stuck down as unconstitutional by federal judge Thelton Henderson, yet another liberal judicial activist appointed by Carter. However, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently upheld the law.

Props. 22 and 8

In 2000, Proposition 22 was approved by an overwhelming 61 percent of California voters. The Knight Initiative, as it was known, specified that only marriages between a man and woman would be lawfully recognized in the Golden State. Eight years later, the California Supreme Court struck down Prop. 22 as unconstitutional.

The court’s action led, in turn, to Proposition 8, the California Marriage Protection Act. That 2008 constitutional amendment, which prohibited same-sex marriages, was approved by 52 percent of the electorate.

Prop. 8 was overturned in 2010 by federal judge Vaughn Walker, who retired not long after his ruling and announced that he was in a long term same-sex relationship. His ruling was stayed and the fate of the voter-approved law may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

California’s initiative system, which worked just fine for much of the past 101 years, has in recent decades become a democratic bait-and-switch. The people of the state are supposed to have the power to enact law at the ballot box, but the reality is that judges and courts — all too often politically motivated — decide what voter-approved propositions may and may not become state law.

That’s why initiative system needs a fix. The suggestion here is a judicial tribunal that previews proposed propositions before they reach the ballot. Before millions of dollars are spent for and against the measure. And before — rather than after — the measure is approved by the state electorate.

Such judicial preview will not all together prevent the courthouse assault on direct democracy we’ve witnessed over the past couple decades. But it will raise the bar considerably for judges and courts that presume to thwart the will of the electorate.

— Joseph Perkins

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

Is the demise of redevelopment hurting the poor?

El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero says it is. He’s bemoaning that, when Gov. Jerry Brown  and the Legislature killed redevelopment, the source of funds for affordable family housing subsidies was eliminated in his city.

But El Monte doesn’t need funds from redevelopment for affordable family housing.  The real estate market is already providing it, at least for one of the two zip codes in the city.

El Monte is a city of 118,874 people.  It is a working-class suburb of the city of Los Angeles.  It has older housing stock, 59 percent of which is renter-occupied and 41 percent is owner-occupied.

El Monte Housing Already Affordable

The definition of affordable housing by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is for a household to spend no more than 30 percent of its income on housing. Well, 30 percent of the $41,948 annual median household income in El Monte is $12,584 a year. That’s $1,049 per month.

According to California licensed real estate appraiser Charles B. Warren, for November 2011, the median home value in El Monte was $240,000 in zip code 91731 (source: Dataquick.com).  Warren stated the monthly mortgage payment today on a $240,000 home in El Monte would be $1,034 per month at a prevailing 3.169 percent interest rate on a 30-year loan, assuming zero down-payment.  That would be $15 less than the 30 percent HUD threshold.

In other words, there is no apparent need to continue to divert redevelopment property taxes from the public schools in El Monte to subsidize affordable family housing.

Prop. 22 Retains Redevelopment Funds Locally

Warren said the way redevelopment works in California is that 20 percent of all the property taxes in a commercial redevelopment project are set aside for affordable housing.  The 20 percent for affordable housing is diverted away from public services such as police, fire, parks and public schools.

Brown indicated in his Jan. 5 state budget revision that $5 billion would have to be cut back from public schools for the upcoming 2012-2013 fiscal year. Coincidentally, about $5 billion in property taxes were diverted from the state budget for redevelopment each year.  Twenty percent — or $1 billion — of the $5 billion in property taxes for redevelopment were further allocated to “affordable housing.”  Under Proposition 22, which voters passed in Nov. 2010, local redevelopment agencies were allowed to retain their affordable housing funds.

Only new monies for affordable housing would be cut off because new redevelopment projects would be cancelled. But should those cities be allowed to keep their affordable housing funds if there is no need for them?

Affordable Housing is a Trick

Warren added that the way California redevelopment law apparently redefined affordable housing as “new” was an end run around Proposition 13, the 1978 tax limitation initiative.  Warren said that, traditionally, affordable housing was old, obsolescent and located farther away from shopping centers and public services. That is what made it “affordable.”

“Affordability in housing is like affordability in cars,” he said. “Older cars are more affordable. Less luxurious cars are more affordable. Of course, the more new cars there are, the lower the price for used. Nobody claims that everybody has a right to a new luxury car. That claim is equally preposterous for housing. Building new market-rate housing lowers the cost of used housing. That’s an affordable housing program that demonstrably works.”

But under California redevelopment, affordable housing is new, with luxury amenities, and is often located on pricey commercial land next to public transit centers or light rail lines. Thus, by redefining affordable housing as “new,” it increased the property tax base and circumvented Prop. 13. The problem is that most of the property taxes from that higher tax base went to city halls rather than public schools.

Markets Provide

The unintended consequence of Prop. 22 and Brown shutting down redevelopment is that affordable housing funds from redevelopment projects may no longer be needed to build inexpensive housing.  The collapse of the housing bubble has allowed market forces to provide affordable ownership and rental housing from existing housing stock in many communities.

That’s also true of areas where housing prices have dropped dramatically, such as Stockton, Sacramento, the Inland Empire in Southern California and the older working-class suburbs of Los Angeles. These areas also likely would not need to continue to build the unnecessary affordable housing that does nothing but perpetuate redevelopment bureaucracies and rob public schools.

Markets, not government, provide affordable housing.

Today I got in the mail the Automobile Club of Southern California’s ballot recommendations, limited to four of them. I’ve belonged to AAA for 25 years, and have gotten their insurance for 23.

CEO Thomas V. McKernan writes:

Dear Southern California Neighbor:

After carefully analyzing the statewide propositions, we wanted to share with you our thoughts and information on four of the propositions that are particularly important.

They’re right on two propositions. They oppose Prop. 21, which would impose an $18 per car tax to fund state parks. Even if you don’t use them. (My better idea: Privatize the parks. Turn them over to Disney.)

And they back Prop. 26, which requires “fees” to be passed with a two-thirds vote of the people. That would prevent politicians from redefining taxes, which already require a two-thirds vote of the people, as “fees” that currently require only a majority vote.

But AAA crashes and burns on two important propositions. They write:

No on Proposition 19 – Legalizes marijuana, would increase drugged driving and traffic crashes, could allow employees to come to work high, and bans employers from being able to drug test their employees for marijuana.

That’s all wrong, as I explained yesterday. Unfortunately, McKernan and AAA are part of the state’s political establishment, which opposes Prop. 19. And if they’re worried about crashes, why don’t they favor banning alcohol, which causes far more deadly accidents than the hippie lettuce, as was done during alcohol Prohibition? Down with Demon Rum!

Finally, he writes:

YES on Proposition 22 — Protects road and transit money by prohibiting the state from raiding local gas and tax funds.

Actually, Prop. 22 would guarantee the funding of redevelopment agencies that rob citizens to benefit private special interests. Such robbery violates the Fourth Amendment right to not be deprived of property without due process, and the Commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” How would McKernan like it of the government, using Prop. 22, stole his home and gave it to some rich company like Walmart?

When I was younger, I would boycott AAA for this. But nowadays, I oppose so much that companies do I’d have to boycott almost everything.

They’re still wrong. And when my insurance expires in 11 months, I’ll consider something else.

Oh, and it’s too bad they didn’t back Prop. 23, the jobs-saving proposition that would suspend the jobs-killing AB 32. When Prop. 23 loses, gas prices are going to rise. What happened to protecting California drivers?

Nov. 1, 2010