GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Alabama Wants To Amend State Constitution To Allow Ten Commandments On Public Land

LOL here we go again! Today's Godless Wednesday is about a red state again trying to force religious views on everyone else. The Alabama legislature is considering a state constitutional amendment which would allow the erection (sic) of religious displays on government-owned property in the guise of religious freedom.

Here is the text of the language Alabama voters will see:

Every person shall be at liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his or her own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend, or, against his or her consent, to contribute to the erection or support of any place of religious worship, or to pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for the support of any minister of the gospel. Property belonging to the state may be used to display the Ten Commandments, and the right of a public school and public body to display the Ten Commandments on property owned or administrated by a public school or public body in this state is not restrained or abridged  [emphasis added]. The civil and political rights, privileges, and capacities of no person shall be diminished or enlarged on account of his or her religious belief. No public funds may be expended in defense of the constitutionality of this amendment. 

The Ten Commandments shall be displayed in a manner that complies with constitutional requirements, including, but not limited to, being intermingled with historical or educational items, or both, in a larger display within or on property owned or administrated by a public school or public body.

The bill (SB 181) passed the state house 66-19 and the state senate (22-3). The amendment has now become an issue in the Alabama gubernatorial race with candidates trying to position themselves as the most in support of enhancing the place of religion in the public square.

It looks to me as if it is masquerading as a religious freedom amendment since it is odd that the phrase "The Ten Commandments" would need to appear three times in an actual religious freedom amendment. What do you think?


Hat/tip to Friendly Atheist.

CA State Senate Abandons Attempt To Restore Race-Conscious College Admissions

Bad news today out of the Democratic state senate, where a state constitutional amendment that would place a partial repeal of Proposition 209 on the November 2014 ballot has been tabled. Proposition 209 passed in 1996 and banned the use of race, ethnicity or gender in public education, public contracts or public employment. The state senate had passed SCA 5 by a vote of 27 to 9 on January 30, 2014.

Speaker John Perez (and State Controller candidate) announced today that the Assembly would not consider the measure. According to the San Jose Mercury-News Asian-American state senators switched from support to opposition due to pressure from the community.

Last week, saying they had received thousands of calls and emails from constituents, senators Leland Yee, D-San Francisco; Ted Lieu, D-Torrance; and Carol Liu, D-La Cañada/Flintridge asked Assembly Speaker John Perez to stop the bill. 

"As lifelong advocates for the Asian-American and other communities, we would never support a policy that we believed would negatively impact our children," they wrote in a letter to Perez. 

In 1996, California became the first state to outlaw affirmative action in public university admissions and state hiring, a policy that took effect in 1998. The amendment would have allowed voters to lift that ban, either this fall or in 2016. 

Hernandez and others have said that misinformation about what affirmative action would mean -- such as racial quotas for new freshmen -- spread quickly, stoking parents' fears about their children's chances of getting into UC, the state's public research university system. 

Using racial quotas in admissions would be unconstitutional; recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have strictly limited consideration of race in public university admissions. UC officials last week said any suggestion of quotas is irresponsible: "We have never done that, and we never would," said Nina Robinson, UC's associate president and chief policy adviser.

 Hopefully the legislature will realize that it is important to be able to use race as a factor in college admissions.

Bigots Fail To Qualify CA Referendum On Transgender Student Rights Law!

As I predicted in December, the Secretary of State today confirmed that religious extremists and heterosexual supremacists failed to submit enough valid signatures to force a referendum on the School Success and Opportunity Act (AB 1266). In order to suspend the law and force a vote on the measure in November 2014, the opponents of the measure had claimed they had enough signatures to force a vote but they submitted 619, 387 signatures and a 3% spot check showed that they were above 95% of the needed total which triggered a review of every single signature. In the end, though, the Secretary of State determined that only 487,484 were deemed valid and 504,760 were needed. That's a deficit of 17,276 or 3.4% of the total needed to qualify the measure.

They got 96.6% of the way to their total, which is scary enough. But close is not good enough!
 This is great news for transgender and cisgender students in all California schools.

The haters could still try and file a ballot measure to repeal the law or a constitutional amendment to prevent the legislature from enacting such a measure in the future.

Equality California celebrates with a press release:

Attempt to Repeal the School Success and Opportunity Act Fails

(San Francisco) Today, the effort to repeal the School Success and Opportunity Act — California’s new law ensuring that all children have opportunities to do well in school — failed to qualify for the ballot.

The law — also known as Assembly Bill 1266 — went into effect on January 1, ensuring that schools have the guidance they need to make sure all students, including those who are transgender, have the opportunity to do well in school and graduate.
The law is modeled after policies and practices that are already working well in several schools, and gives important guidance to educators so they can work with students and families on a case-by-case basis.

Oakland’s Redwood Heights School is among the California schools with policies in place that provide transgender young people with fair chances. Like other schools with similar policies across the state, the policy has been successful since it was established five years ago.

“We want our students to know that when they walk onto this campus, they are welcomed for who they are,” said Redwood Heights Principal Sara Stone. “Every educator I know went into the education field because they truly care about young people and making sure they have everything they need to do well in school.”

The law helps students like Zoey, a 12-year-old transgender girl from the Los Angeles area who transferred out of her school after administrators there refused to acknowledge her as a girl or allow her to use the girls’ restroom. Her mom, Ofelia Barba, says that the law makes it easier for her daughter to go to school and be herself.

“I love my daughter and want the same things for her that other parents want for their children,” Barba said. “I want what’s best for her, for her to be happy, and for her to be able to do well in school. No one wants to see any kid singled out and excluded from school because of who they are.”

The Support All Students campaign comprises a broad coalition of nearly 100 state and national organizations supporting the new law. The coalition includes Equality California, Transgender Law Center, National Center for Lesbian Rights, ACLU of California, Gay-Straight Alliance Network, L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, Gender Spectrum, LGBT organizations, racial justice organizations, statewide teacher and parent organizations, and others committed to ensuring that all kids have the opportunity to do well in school and graduate.

Said Transgender Law Center Executive Director and Campaign Chair Masen Davis: “This law gives schools the guidelines and flexibility to create an environment where all kids have the opportunity to learn. We need to focus on creating an environment where every student is able to do well and graduate. This law is about doing what’s best for all students — that’s why it’s supported by school boards, teachers, and the PTA.”

To learn more about the School Success and Opportunity Act and the Support All Students campaign, visit www.SupportAllStudents.org.

Great news!

UPDATE: CA Anti-Trans Initiative Meets First Qualification Threshold

In a somewhat surprising result, the heterosexual supremacists who failed to prevent marriage equality in California and who are now targeting transgender youth, have passed the first hurdle in their attempt to place an anti-LGBT referendum on the November 2014 statewide ballot.

Although they submitted a surprisingly low number of signatures (619,244) it turns out that in a random sampling process of all 58 counties that it looks like they may have submitted at least 95% of the required total of 504,760 (i.e. 479,522). The Secretary of State says that their projection is that 482,582 signatures are valid, a rate of77.93%. While this is a pretty good validity rate, in order for the referendum to qualify for the ballot, they need to have a validity rate of 81.52% when the counties spend the next 30 days verifying all 619,244 signatures that were submitted.

Although it is bad news that the haters have made it to the full count stage, it is still more likely than not that the measure will NOT qualify for the ballot and the people of California will be spared a campaign where millions of dollars are spent promulgating lies and disgusting statements about members of the LGBT community.

SATURDAY POLITICS: CA Anti-Trans Referendum On Path To Failure

Many activists around the state are watching the Secretary of State's ballot measure website with great interest as the signatures that were submitted in support of an attempt to repeal AB 1266 by voter referendum. AB 1266 is a landmark law signed by Governor Jerry Brown this summer that establishes a statewide policy that students in public schools can participate in all educational activities i accordance with their preferred gender identity, which may not be aligned with their biological sex. The largest school district in the state, Los Angeles Unified, already had such a policy, but this is the first legislation expanding this idea to an entire state.

The total number of signatures that were submitted by the strict gender separatists who want to repeal the law was 614,311.

In order to qualify the measure for the November 2014 ballot, exactly 504,760 of these signatures must be considered valid. In other words, approximately 82.2% of the submitted signatures must be valid. Typically, it is expected around two-thirds of submitted signatures are valid, which is why people usually submit 200% of the required valid number (at least a million).

If the projected number of valid signatures from the county-based checks of sampled signatures is between 95% (479,522) and 110% (555,236) then this would cause every submitted signature to be examined. If the projected number is greater than 110% then the measure is said to have qualified for the ballot.

If the projected number of valid signatures obtained from the county-based checks of sampled signatures falls below 95% of the required number then the measure is said to have failed.

Karen Ocamb over at Frontiers L.A. notes that:

--- Since 1989, the average signature validity rate for qualified ballot measures has been 75.94%---- Prop. 8 had a validity percentage of 79.82%.---- Proponents of the referendum on AB 1266 say they submitted 620,000 signatures. They need 504,760 to qualify which would be 81.41% validity rate.---- Since 1992, only 9 of the 134 qualifying measures have had a validity rate over 81%.---- At the average 75.94% validity rate the measure would fail to qualify with just 470,828 valid signatures.----  At the Prop 8 validity rate of 79.82% the measure would fail to qualify with just 494,884 valid signatures

County clerks around the state are checking a sample of submitted signatures for the proposed AB 1266 referendum and currently the validity rate is 76.67%, which indicates that the projected number of valid signatures that have been submitted would miss the 95% target for complete examination by 8,530! 

The Secretary of State will make a determination by January 8, 2014.

POLL: NC Majority Opposes Anti-Gay Amendment

Well, well! There's a new poll from Elon University which indicates fairly substantial (and growing!) opposition to North Carolina's Amendment One, a measure which would likely ban state recognition of same-sex marriages and domestic partnerships if were to pass and be added to the state constitution on the May 8 primary election.
As depicted above, a total of 29.6% of respondents strongly oppose, and another 27.3% oppose the measure, giving a total of 56.9% which oppose denying state recognition of same-sex relationships. On the other side only 14.3% strongly support the measure, with another 20.7% supporting, for a total of 35.0% supporting it. These are very encouraging numbers for the forces promoting equality, and frankly somewhat surprising. The margin of error is ± 3.98 percentage points.
The umbrella organization fighting Amendment One is Protect All NC Families. Won't you support them by donating now? I did!

Initiative To Abolish Death Penalty On CA Ballot

Interesting news! For the third time in 40 years, Californians will vote on whether they would like to abolish the state's death penalty, converting all capital sentences to life in prison without parole. Thanks to a new law signed by Governor Brown, all ballot measures must appear on November statewide general elections, not primary elections.

This will be the first time in over 20 years that Californians will be able to vote on the death penalty, which is has not been in effect since 2006 due to a court order.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Opponents of capital punishment said Thursday they were submitting 800,000 signatures on petitions for an initiative to close the nation's largest Death Row, which has 725 condemned prisoners. The measure needs 504,760 valid signatures to make the ballot.

"California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole," declared Jeanne Woodford, who oversaw four executions as warden of San Quentin State Prison. She now heads the anti-capital-punishment group Death Penalty Focus.

It was an unusually optimistic statement in a state whose residents have consistently supported the death penalty. The most recent Field Poll, in September, showed 68 percent support - although respondents in the same survey, when asked their preferred sentence for murder, backed life without parole over death, 48 to 40 percent.

MadProfessah has long been an opponent of capital punishment, not only because of its racially discriminatory application (Black people who kill white people are much more likely to get the death penalty than white people who kill black people) but due to the principle that the legal system can never be 100% accurate and the state should not kill people to show that killing people is wrong. I have been a member of Amnesty International since college, and it works to eliminate the death penalty around the world.

Looking forward to vote YES to eliminate the death penalty and replace it with a much more cost-effective life without parole. I hope all MadProfessah.com readers will join me in voting YES on this ballot measure!

Initiative Filed To Repeal LGBT Parts of SB48

Here we go again! Not happy with failing to obtain enough signatures to force a referendum to overturn the FAIR Education Act at the ballot box next year, the heterosexual supremacists have now filed a ballot measure (an initiative statute) to remove the section of the law which applies to the LGBT community.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Politics blog reports:

Opponents of the state law that mandates the inclusion of the contributions of  lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in social science instruction in public schools have filed two initiatives with the attorney general to eliminate the law and to give parents the ability to opt out of classroom teaching on the topic.

The initiatives come from two groups that are not affiliated with the organization that failed to qualify a referendum on the law, SB48, last month. The leader of that effort said they will also file an initiative with the attorney general on the law in the near future.

[...]

One of the proposals would simply strip out the inclusion of LGBT people in the section of law that mandates teaching about other minority groups. SB48 also included a new mandate for instruction about people with disabilities, and that would stand under the initiative.

The second proposal adds the ability of parents to pull their kids from instruction in “social science and family life” if it conflicts “with the religious training and beliefs of a parent or guardian.”

If one of these initiatives qualifies it means that there will be an anti-gay ballot fight in November 2012 after all.

Cal Sup Ct Rules 7-0 Initiative Proponents Have Standing

The long-awaited decision by the California Supreme Court on the question of whether initiative proponents have the right to defend their measures in court when elected officials like the Governor and Attorney General refuse to defend them was released today.

The Court ruled unanimously that initiative proponents do have standing under state law to defend their ballot initiatives.

As usual, Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly has the best analysis:

The California Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, was very clear about its answer: 

[W]e respond to the question posed by the Ninth Circuit in the affirmative. In a postelection challenge to a voter-approved initiative measure, the official proponents of the initiative are authorized under California law to appear and assert the state's interest in the initiative's validity and to appeal a judgment invalidating the measure when the public officials who ordinarily defend the measure or appeal such a judgment decline to do so. 

The decision came about resulting from a request by the Ninth Circuit in the ongoing challenge to Proposition 8 brought by the American Foundation for Equal Rights. The case, in which the trial court judge struck down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional in August 2010, is on appeal before the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit appeals court sought to have the California Supreme Court assist it with the case by answering these questions about state law through the process of asking a certified question. The California Supreme Court accepted the invitation to answer the certified question and heard oral arguments on the question on Sept. 6.

As the California Supreme Court found the proponents to have a "particularized interest" and "the authority to assert the State's interest," the Ninth Circuit now is likely to find that the proponents do have standing under federal law to bring the appeal -- although the court need not do so. At that point, the appeal of the Perry trial court decision -- the "merits" decision from the trial court that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional -- could go forward.

It's unfortunate that the Court opened up the can of worms to allow all initiative proponents to defend their statutes under state law. Considering how many ballot measures we have in California, this is an incredibly important decision.

That being said, it is very exciting that now we basically must get a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Perry v. Brown case which will give us a federal appellate court level ruling on the question of marriage equality.

SCOTUS To Hear WA's Referendum 71 Case Doe v Reed

The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in the now high-profile case of Doe v. Reed on Friday, just like I had hoped for in late October.

This was the second time this week the nation's highest court has intervened in the controversy over whether heterosexual supremacists will be able to shield themselves from public oversight while advocating for public policy changes which would harm the LGBT community. The first action was in their ruling upholding a stay preventing the broadcast of the Perry v. Schwarzenegger federal trial.

The second action is summarized by the Washington Post:

The court agreed to decide whether it was unconstitutional for the state of Washington to make public the names of 138,500 voters who signed a petition for a referendum on whether to overturn a state "everything-but-marriage" law. The statute expanded rights for those who entered into domestic partnerships, both homosexual and heterosexual.

The group that championed the referendum said rival organizations planned to make the petitioners' names available on the Internet and subject them to "threats, harassment and reprisals." Those groups denied such intentions, and the state said its public-records law required disclosure of the names as part of the transparency that comes with democratic participation.

Protect Marriage Washington was successful in getting the issue to referendum last fall, but not at the ballot box. Washington voters endorsed the law by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent.

But the petition-signers' names have not been disclosed. The Supreme Court blocked the release in October while considering whether the case presented a significant question about political speech. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said Washington's public-records law did not violate constitutional protections.

It should be interesting to see if the Supreme Court will really decide to strike down Washington State's public disclosure law because of an alleged right of people to participate in enacting (and abolishing) laws through the electoral process anonymously.
This claim makes a mockery of the notion that democracy occurs in an open exchange of ideas and I hope the Supreme Court realizes that and rules for the defendant-appellants, the State of Washington, and upholds the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

(It should be noted tat the Supreme Court under Chief Justices Roberts and Rehnquist has taken great delight in overturning the 9th Circuit on multiple occasions.)

UPDATED 11:59 01/17/2010:

The specific questions the Supreme Court has asked both sides to consider are:

1. Whether the First Amendment right to privacy in political speech, association, and belief requires strict scrutiny when a state compels public release of identifying information about petition signers.

2. Whether compelled public disclosure of identifying information about petition signers is narrowly tailored to a compelling interest, and whether Petitioners met all the elements required for a preliminary injunction.

I would say the answer to both questions is "Yes." Let's hope the SCOTUS agrees.

Gay Marriage Tipping Point Reached?

Kevin Drum and Joe.My.God both blogged about the above graph from Andrew Gelman at FiveThirtyEight.com in the last few days. The key paragraphs are:

Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips put together a dataset using national opinion polls from 1994 through 2009 and analyzed several different opinion questions on gay rights. Here I'm going to talk about their estimates of state-by-state trends in support for gay marriage.

In the past fifteen years, gay marriage has increased in popularity in all fifty states. No news there, but what was a surprise to me is where the largest changes have occurred. The popularity of gay marriage has increased fastest in the states where gay rights were already relatively popular in the 1990s.

In 1995, support for gay marriage exceeded 30% in only six states: New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and Vermont. In these states, support for gay marriage has increased by an average of almost 20 percentage points. In contrast, support has increased by less than 10 percentage points in the six states that in 1995 were most anti-gay-marriage--Utah, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Idaho.

These are definitely important and interesting observations, but digging deeper, there is even more.

Most other commenters did not also discuss this even more interesting graph, which shows the current percentage of people who, when polled who support marriage for same-sex couples and/or civil unions.

Looking closely at the dark red dots, notice that marriage for same-sex couples is basically only legal in the states where it is above 50 percent. The three states which have marriage (within margin of error) at 50 percent but do not have marriage equality right now are Rhode Island, California and New York.

Clearly, a state to look at closely at in the future is Iowa which legalized marriage equality though a unanimous court decision in April.

Other interesting data to include here would be to indicate the states which have comprehensive non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation (and gender identity).

Anti-LGBT Marriage Amendment Fails To Clear AZ Legislature

Finally some good news on the gay marriage front. According to 365gay.com and Equality Arizona:

Bills that constitutionally limit would limit marriage to opposite-sex couples were filed earlier this year in both the House and Senate by Republican lawmakers and appeared to have enough support for passage.

But just before the House was to vote Rep. Kyrsten Sinema added a clause to the bill that would grant unmarried couples, both same and opposite-sex, many of the rights of marriage but without the name.

With the amendment in place the House voted 28-27 to give the measure preliminary approval. If it won final approval in both houses with the clause intact it would have gone to voters.

The bill's chief sponsor in the House, Jim Weiers (R), angrily denounced the maneuver saying it made the ban on gay marriage meaningless.

So Mr. Weiers reaction makes it very clear that these statewide initiatives "definiing marriage as one man and one woman" is not just about preventing gay and lesbian couples from accessing marriage, but it is really about preventing substantial governmental recognition of same-sex couples.

Let's hope that just as Arizona fails to have a vote on this issue in 2008, so will California.

Super Tuesday Results: Obama and Clinton Battle On

Joe.My.God has this great graphic (that I snagged and reproduced here) showing the current delgate counts of the two leading Democratic presidential copntenders. Although Barack Obama won more states (13 to 8) than Hillary Clinton, Clinton won the more populous states like California, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Pam over at The Blend has a slightly different tally (825 to 732).

By states, the Senator from Illinois won Alaska, Alabama, Connecticutt, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and Utah while the Senator from New York won Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

In the big enchilada of California, Clinton crushed Obama 52 to 42% (so now we know that Zogby's polls are trash while SUSA and the Field poll are more accurate).

As Joe.My.God points out, according to exit polls (1879 total respondents) 4% of the electorate in California was gay or lesbian and they went for Hillary 60 per cent to 25 per cent.

John McCain won the most states and the most states and the most delegates, ahead of both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, and now seems poised to become the Republican presidential nominee.

On the statewide intiatives, they all went the way that Mad Professah endorsed yesterday, except for Proposition 93, which apparently has lost 53.6 to 47.4%. This means that the two most important satate legislative leaders, State Senate Pro-Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez will be unable to run for re-election in November.

Endorsements for February 5, 2008 Statewide Election

Here is who (and what) I voted for and urge you to do similar in California's statewide presidential primary election today:

Democratic Presidential Primary
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Barack Obama
Statewide Ballot Measures
PROPOSITION 91 (Sequestering of Transportation Fees): No
PROPOSITION 92 (Guaranteed Community College Funding): No
PROPOSITION 93 (Modifying Term Limits Initiative): Yes
PROPOSITION 94 (Indian Gambling Compact): Yes
PROPOSITION 95 (Indian Gambling Compact): Yes
PROPOSITION 96 (Indian Gambling Compact): Yes
PROPOSITION 97 (Indian Gambling Compact): Yes
Local Ballot Measures
PROPOSITION S (City Tax For Municipal services): Yes

Oregon DP Law Enjoined From Going Into Effect January 1

The Oregon Family Fairness Act, a statewide domestic partnership act which was enacted by the Democratic-controlled Oregon Legislature and signed into law by Governor Ted Kulongoski on May 9, 2007 has been prevented from going to effect on Tuesday January 1 by an injunction issued at the behest of heterosexual supremacists at the Alliance Defense Fund in an ongoing dispute about whether enough signatures had been gathered to put a measure on the statewide ballot to repeal the measure. The Oregon Equality Act, a non-discrimination law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity will go into effect on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman issued the injunction late Friday December 28 and set a hearing date of February 1, 2008.

Local TV Coverage of California's Dirty Tricks Initiative

Saturday's Los Angeles Times carried a story which made it seem likely that the proposed ballot measure to change California's allocation of presidential electoral votes from winner-takes-all (as it is for for more than 520 of the 538 votes up for grabs in 48 of 50 states) to a district-based method is going to fail to qualify for the June 2008 ballot. Dubbed the Dirty Tricks Initiative by actor/activist Bradley Whitford, the measure would probably make it impossible for a Democrat to win the White House in 2008 if it were to be enacted.

Frankly, Mad Professah (and his readers) thinks the measure clearly violates the Federal constitution, since Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives to the Legislatures the right to assign Electors. It is doubtful whether the People of the State of California can change how Electors are allocated by exercising some legislative authority that the State Legislature has ceded them through enactment of the Initiative process, but that will be up for the United States Supreme Court to decide. Bush v. Gore, anyone?


Anyway, the story is starting to get local attention: