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. 

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — As a kid, I remember watching a rerun of the 1952 “I Love Lucy Show” episode in which Lucy finds her marriage license while cleaning out a closet. She discovers, to her horror, a typo that refers to husband Ricky’s last name as Bacardi, rather than Ricardo, which causes her to question the legality of her marriage.

The ensuing hijinks are the makings of sitcom legend. I’ve thought about that episode in the years in which the contentious battle over gay marriage has unfolded, as it touches on a key part of the public-policy question embodied in the Supreme Court’s two big decisions last week. How important is the approval of the state — epitomized by the marriage license — in sanctioning a marriage?

In 2013, rather than the 1950s, a technical error on a marriage certificate wouldn’t cause anyone consternation. But let’s say, for some reason or another, the government invalidated my marriage. Would it matter?

Not really. Marriage is primarily a pact between two people and, in the view of many, a sacrament of the church. The state merely recognizes this contract. If, say, a totalitarian government (think the Khmer Rouge or others like them that have meddled in such things) dissolved my marriage, my wife and I would still be married. The state could make our lives miserable, but it couldn’t end our marriage.

Yet that point seems lost these days. The public battles involve two sides who see the government as the means to legitimize their viewpoints. One side says gay marriage is wrong, and the other says that it is the same as any other marriage. The two sides will never see eye-to-eye.

Government ‘benefits’

The governmental “benefits” at the heart of many of the gay-marriage battles are mostly rhetorical window dressing. The state shouldn’t be handing out many privileges or payments, and to whatever degree issues involving hospital visitation and inheritances are an issue, their terms and conditions can easily be worked out without a cultural war over the meaning of “marriage.”

Unfortunately, the court’s meddling has ensured that such a battle will keep going.

I’m not unsympathetic to the high court’s 5-4 decision to overturn part of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, specifically designed to deny federal government benefits to same-sex couples. If the government gives out stuff, it’s reasonable to insist that it give it out on the most fair-minded basis.

The court majority’s rhetoric reflects its desire to take a noble stand in this cultural debate. The court’s dissenters were right that the majority opinion was overheated. But at least the decision made some legal sense.

“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.

By contrast, the court’s decision (actually, a nondecision) on California’s Proposition 8 seemed lifted out of “Alice in Wonderland.” In 2008, voters approved this constitutional ban on gay marriage. Jerry Brown, then as attorney general and now as governor, opposed it, so he refused to defend it against court challenges.

Standing

The Supremes refused to rule on the merits of the statute because its defenders didn’t have “standing.” Only the state government apparently had such standing — but that government refused to do its duty.

As National Review’s Hadley Arkes put it, “If the state has a Democratic governor … he may declare now that he will not enforce the constitutional amendment, for he thinks it runs counter to the federal Constitution.”

The meaning is even broader and more disturbing than that. Top officials of all parties now have de facto veto power over all voter initiatives. They simply need not defend in court any initiative they don’t like, and there is no one else the high court will allow to defend it. That’s an anti-democratic precedent.

There’s no doubt the courts, legislatures and public opinion are moving in favor of gay marriage. Time magazine was right to declare this “one of the fastest civil rights shifts in the nation’s history.” The culture has shifted. That part doesn’t bother me. I have no problem with gay people getting married. But it disturbs me when the battles are fought in the political system rather than in the cultural arena. Both sides are responsible for the over-politicization of this personal and cultural matter.

Separation

The best solution always has been the separation of marriage and state. If my priest decides to marry gay people, then my fellow parishioners would have every right to be upset about that, based on their cultural traditions and understanding of Scripture. If your pastor wants to marry gay people, then it’s none of my business. The terms of marriage should be decided by religious and other private organizations, and the state shouldn’t intervene short of having a compelling reason (i.e., marriage by force or with children).

Liberals were more open to this “separation” idea back when conservative profamily types were ascendant. Now, some conservatives understand its merits as a more liberal view is ascendant. Conservatives should have listened when they had some bargaining power, but everyone wants to impose their values on others by using government.

Government neutrality — or the closest we can get to it — is the best way to ensure fairness and social peace on this and most other social issues.

Marriage is too important an institution to be dependent on the whims of the state. Do we really care if the state validates our marriage licenses?

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.

By John Seiler

“Hail Caesar!” Gov. Jerry Brown likes classical references. So that’s one we should salute him with every time we see him.

As I wrote yesterday about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Proposition 8, which briefly banned same-sex marriage in California:

“the U.S. Supreme Court made every vote on Prop. 8 in 2008, and every vote that might have been cast in 2014 [to repeal it], utterly pointless. …

“The court decided that the case didn’t have standing because Gov. Jerry Brown, the supposed top officer in the state (actually, it’s the people of California), didn’t appeal the case, only some people who backed Prop. 8. That means any initiative now passed in the state is operative only if the sitting governor agrees with it….

“Strangely, the decision has turned governors into virtual dictators.”

Today, other writers have agreed with me.

Dan Walters, the dean of Sacramento journalists, says in this YouTube although he favors allowing same-sex marriage, the decision “leads to the possibility in the future that a governor… could basically kill a ballot measure, voted for by the people of California, simply by refusing to defend it against court challenges. Don’t wish for something  that you’re not prepared to accept.”

And this is from Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association:

“From what I’ve scanned, I think there are going to be groups on the left and right – environmental groups, labor groups — who are going to be very concerned about their ability to defend initiatives in the courts. It’s very concerning that the validity of their sponsored initiative would depend on an adequate defense by an elected official when the whole reason for the initiative process is to bypass the political structure. … The initiative process is the people’s process, and this really shifts the defense of that process to those that are, on the natural, hostile to it.”

According to the Bee, Coupal “is considering a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to define initiative proponents as agents of the state for the limited purpose of defending ballot measures in court.”

But there’s a Catch-22: If such an initiative passed, then someone would challenge it in court. Then Brown could refuse to defend the new initiative in court, meaning it would, like Prop. 8, have no “standing,” and so die.

Hail Caesar Brown!

By John Seiler

Several CalWatchDog.com readers I never heard from before called me today about the Supreme Court decisions on marriage. They all were wondering if their votes on Proposition 8 in 2008 were pointless, along with voting in general.

Passed in 2008, Proposition 8 banned same-sex marriage in California. People on both sides worked hard and spent money on the campaign. It was hard fought, and narrowly decided, 52-48. It would have been repealed in 2014 by another initiative.

But today, the U.S. Supreme Court made every vote on Prop. 8 in 2008, and every vote that might have been cast in 2014, utterly pointless. Worse than pointless. I spent time and gas money to go to the polling station in 2008. I took an hour off work. Wasted.

The court decided that the case didn’t have standing because Gov. Jerry Brown, the supposed top officer in the state (actually, it’s the people of California), didn’t appeal the case, only some people who backed Prop. 8. That means any initiative now passed in the state is operative only if the sitting governor agrees with it.

As constitutional scholar Hadley Arkes writes:

“if the state has a Democratic governor … he may declare now that he will not enforce the constitutional amendment, for he thinks it runs counter to the federal Constitution. And by the holding today in the case on Proposition 8 in California (Hollingsworth v. Perry), the backers of the constitutional amendment will have no standing in court to contest the judgment. Constitutional amendments are meant to secure provisions that will not be undone by the shift in season from one election to another. But with the combination of these two cases today, any liberal governor can virtually undo a constitutional amendment on marriage in his state.”

And a Republican governor, for that matter, could undo constitutional amendments in other states, such as those passed in Democratic states advancing gun control.

Strangely, the decision has turned governors into virtual dictators.

Reagan elections

But there’s more. As Ryan W. McMaken points out on LewRockwell.com, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the deciding vote and wrote the majority decision in the case overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act, was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, a conservative.

A lot of conservatives voted for Reagan for president six times, in the 1968, 1976, 1980 and 1984 primaries; and in the 1980 and 1984 general elections. But would they have supported him in any of those elections if they had been told his election would, decades later, lead to legal recognition for same-sex marriage? As late as 1984, it wasn’t even on the radar screen of issues anywhere.

As Time magazine noted today, “Seventeen years after a Democratic president signed a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman [in 1996], the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down Wednesday, capping one of the fastest civil rights shifts in the nation’s history.”

So, go back again … to 1968, 1976, 1980, 1984. This just wasn’t part of the political landscape at all. But Reagan advertised himself as a “traditional conservative,” and won the critical and strong support of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority.

But it was all meaningless. Voting meant nothing. Bill Murray had it right in the 1979 movie “Meatballs”: It just doesn’t matter!

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 AND CHARLES B. WARREN

California’s Proposition 13 is working to halt a larger and faster erosion of the property tax base in Sacramento County and elsewhere around the state.  But that is not what is being reported in the mainstream newspaper media, which only tell a “poor me” story of how property taxes are declining in the Sacramento area.

It is not the superficial absolute percentage of decline in property taxes but the relative decline in relation to the overall decline in market values that is critical.

Property values go up and down in cycles and it is up to government to have rainy day fund reserves to handle the downturns.  Fortunately, with Prop. 13, these declines can be managed. While without Prop. 13, the pain would be much deeper and would likely dig deeper than budget reserves.

For example, the Sacramento Bee is reporting that the Sacramento County property tax base fell by $4 billion for the fiscal year from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, resulting in a 1 percent, or $40 million, drop in property tax revenues.

But Zillow.com indicates that the market value of single-family homes declined by about 16.7 percent from 2010 to 2011 (as of July 7, 2011); and by about 57 percent since 2007 at the peak of the Real State Bubble.  At the market peak, the median home price in Sacramento County was about $350,000, while today it has dropped to $150,000.

Since 2010, the median price of a single family home has dropped by about 16.7 percent.  But due to Prop. 13, the latest decline in the property tax base has been held to 1 percent.

One of the unheralded benefits of Prop. 13 is that it serves as a circuit breaker to large fluctuations in market values, either upward or downward.

Prop. 8 Provides for Tax Adjustments

Proposition 8, passed in 1978, amends Prop. 13 to provide for reductions in assessed property values due to a decline in market value.  Prop. 8 re-assessments are temporary and will ratchet back upward when the market recovers.

Prop. 8 property tax re-assessments do not necessarily have to be applied for by the owner and are automatically adjusted by the tax assessor in each county.  Such re-assessments typically affect so-called “underwater” properties whose mortgages are more than the assessed value for property tax purposes. Zillow.com reports that the percentage of underwater mortgages in Sacramento County is 51 percent.

An “underwater” property is not the same as when the assessor at his discretion may reduce the property value assessment temporarily until the market recovers. If monetary inflation takes off, as predicted by many, there may be a flight of capital out of money markets and back into real estate, at which time assessed values would be readjusted upward by the Assessor, but only for those properties that had their assessment previously lowered under Prop. 8.

Prop 13 is good for government as well as for homeowners.  But don’t expect to read or hear that in the newspaper or broadcast media.