saint_monkey

Here I am, third day of my five day trip to San Fran. I've looked at two apartments, and we signed papers on the second, because largely, it was too good to pass up. Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be spent looking at Open Houses and the like. I've finished up, so no need to look any longer. So now I've got a strange dilemma. I can not leave early, because I have a job interview on Monday. Upside: I'm now a tourist in san Fran for the weekend. Downside: I'm no good at being a tourist.

One of the things on my list was: Obtain a Post Office box. Because of the new weirdness in the Nation, this is impossible given the short time frame, as addresses must be verified, blood test results tabulated, and etc.

I wasn't positive that I couldn't get a box, but I had a free couple of hours yesterday, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Of course, I couldn't get a box, but I did learn one thing:

The worldview of a crazy person:



It is a scientific FACT that crazy people love the post office. They can monopolize a poor clerk's time, and inconvenience twenty or thirty other people, which serve as an impromptu audience.

It is also a FACT that crazies love San Francisco.

It is finally a FACT that Haight Street is the street that crazies love the best in San Francisco.

Simple substitution tells us that the Post Office on Clayton, just off of Haight, is therefore the center of crazy in the United States.

The other place the crazies love is the bus. Riding the bus home last night, the bus's automated voice would call out the cross streets. Every time it did, a white bearded skinny old man would say "God damned TALKING BUS!"

(A small aside ... I'm in an internet cafe, two old men are talking. I thought that one just said "He's smokin his own space candy." But he actually said, "He can smoke in his own space, can't he?" (Referring to california's draconian anti-smoking policies.) They are now talking about getting viagra off of the internet (no joke.))

on the way in to work today, the radio talk shows were all on about San Francisco's mayor issuing licenses to same sex couples. I began to think about why the Mayor would do this, in a clearly futile gesture (the state has a "Defense of Marriage Law" which limits marriages to a man and a woman.¹) The mayor has said publicly that the law is unconstitutional. ² But that is not the domain of a Mayor, he is overstepping his authority and infringing upon the Supreme Court of California's duty. So he must know that all licenses stand a good chance of being invalidated. So why issue them at all?

I think that to answer this, we need to look at the President's State of the Union address. He took what I thought was a pretty radical and incendiary stance, calling for a codification of the concept of marriage as "A union between a man and a woman."

Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people's voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage. (Applause.)

The outcome of this debate is important -- and so is the way we conduct it. The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God's sight. (Applause.) ³

I thought that this was a move made solely to appease the more radical right-wing factions of the republican party, especially when i learned that the Little Devil on Bush's shoulder (Karl Rove) Personally called the leaders of that same religious right to ensure that they tune in.⁴

At the time, I thought he was shooting himself in the foot, but research into the issue shows that he was simply playing the numbers. Earlier in December, A New York Times/CBS News Poll stated that Americans oppose homosexual marriage 61 percent to 34 percent, and support a federal marriage amendment 55 percent to 40 percent. ⁵ Of course GLAAD and other organizations came forward to challenge the results, saying that they polled a non-representative segment of society, and citing other difficulties with the poll,⁶ but research into more long term poll results bears out the results of the poll. If you look into poll results over the course of the last 10 years, and you break down the questions into a basic "Do you oppose or favor homosexual unions," (the following results average the separate questions of "are you for a constitutional amendment defending marriage?" "are you opposed to gay marriage?" and "are you opposed to legal unions approximating marriage for gay people?" as the same question,) the result is:

Opposed to homosexual union: 55
In favor of: 37
Undecided: 8 ⁷

For a more in-depth look at the numbers, i urge you to visit the polling report webpage for this issue, it cites all the national polls, from Fox news to NPR. i realize i'm taking a little liberty with the numbers, but here you can average them out and see how they break down on each issue: (http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm)

So essentially, the president was free to take this radical stance, and still feel like a majority of Americans would support him. He would most likely loose support from people that he never hoped to gain support from to begin with, and would still retain the support of the middle of America. He could draw a clear line between himself and the Democrats and still say on firmly on the side of a majority of his supporters. The gay community is one that is seen as volatile and outspoken, but in actuality, even counting the true numbers of the gay community on a national scale is troublesome for a number of reasons. There are still many who are afraid to even anonymously report on sexual identity,.⁸ so the polls may be deceiving on this issue. A call to arms may rouse more supporters from the woods than the president supposes. You just need to beat the brush a bit, bring the issue closer to home.

So that's where I see the Mayor's act fitting in, it is a direct response. He's giving gay marriage to the symbolic heart of gay america, so that the President can condemn it, and the State can take it away. As of noon today 1,740 same-sex couples have been married,⁹ according to the 1990 census, there were 8,902 same-sex couples in San Francisco.¹⁰ So if those numbers hold true, (a matter of some dispute, some say that the census numbers are understated eightfold, as the census could only report on those that checked that they were "domestic partners" with someone of the same sex.^id.,) this means that at least a fifth of the gay community has been married in San Francisco in just three days. This is the center of gay activism for the entire nation. The mayor has just moved this issue to the front of the gay community with one swift move, and moves to remove the symbolic olive branch may start a grass roots movement against the President, just as the Democratic candidate is revealed. The president can not ignore this move, since he's publicly declared on the side of an amendment to the constitution, and drawn the attention of the more radical elements of his party. They will demand action if California ignores the issue.