- The Liberal Future?
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- Ever wonder what would happen if liberal Democrats gained
control of both chambers of a state's legislature and the state's governorship
at the same time? It happened in California, and the results show just
how much damage can be done...
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- In mid-August, as kids counted down the remaining days
of summer, Janine Tomlin discovered in her mailbox a letter from the San
Diego County Office of Education. Mrs. Tomlin, a homeschooler and mother
of four, opened the letter and read it three times, just to be sure she
understood what it said. She did: The county education office was writing
to say that it is now illegal for Golden State parents to homeschool their
children independently of public schools.
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- "Enclosed you will find a list of district and county
office homeschool programs," the letter stated. "... Please contact
one of them immediately if you are interested in continuing homeschooling,
so that you will be operating within the law."
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- The letter was "so California," Mrs. Tomlin
told WORLD. "A classic case of intimidation. The most disheartening
thing about it is that I am not the least bit surprised." She's not
surprised because, as a Californian, she has already learned what most
Americans have not: what happens when liberals take over a state.
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- Pressuring homeschoolers to shackle themselves to public
schools is just one symptom of the malady that has afflicted the nation's
most populous state. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine
Easton is a Democrat who opposes homeschools but supports dumbed-down academic
standards and homosexual-sensitivity training in public ones. Her party
also controls the governor's chair and both chambers of the California
legislature. That has resulted in four years of largely unchecked legislative
liberalism that threatens traditional morality, religious freedom, free-market
economics, and the unborn.
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- Example: California leads the nation in enshrining homosexual
behavior in law. Over the past four years the number of "gay-rights"
bills considered annually in all states more than doubled, from about 130
to nearly 300, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The
bills range from legalizing gay adoption and granting marital rights to
same-sex partners, to preventing contractors who object to homosexual behavior
from bidding on state projects. But states with a balance of liberal and
conservative power have been able to limit the advance of gay-rights laws,
while passing some reasonable bills that benefit people with HIV/AIDS.
New York Democratic lawmakers, for example, served up 41 pro-gay bills
in 2001, more than any other state. But because Republicans held a majority
in the state Senate, and Republican George Pataki occupied the governor's
chair, only one of those laws-one related to HIV-passed.
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- Meanwhile, eight of 19 pro-gay laws passed in California
in 2001, bringing to 22 the total number of such laws passed in the state
over the last four years-more than any other state in the nation. Similar
"progressive" lawmaking extends to abortion, taxes, and the environment.
For example, a bill that would make abortion training mandatory for Golden
State medical students considering an OB-GYN specialty is now advancing
through Democrat-controlled committees. But a 2002 bill that would have
required a mother considering abortion to see an ultrasound picture of
her child died a rapid death.
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- Should anyone be surprised that California, the sun-soaked
playground of Hollywood and San Francisco libertines, is suffering the
effects of scorched-earth liberalism? Art Croney thinks so. Although Hollywood
and San Francisco define California in the minds of other Americans, "the
rest of the state is made up of mainstream Americans," said Mr. Croney,
head of the Committee on Moral Concerns, and a conservative lobbyist in
Sacramento for more than 25 years. "The average California family
is still pretty middle-of-the-road."
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- At least Californians often vote that way on referenda.
Although registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 45 percent
to 35 percent, another 20 percent of Golden State voters are registered
as "other" or "decline to state," according to the
California secretary of state. Those last two categories may be the ones
swinging substantial voter majorities in favor of recent, conservative-minded
statewide ballot measures such as those that banned race and gender preferences
(55 percent), eliminated most public-school bilingual education (61 percent),
and affirmed marriage as a union between a man and a woman (61 percent).
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- The problem, said Mr. Croney, is that Californians have
elected representatives who are much more liberal than they are: "There's
a disconnect between the philosophies of mainstream Californians and the
majority philosophy in Sacramento." Four openly lesbian lawmakers-Assemblywomen
Christine Kehoe, Carole Migden, and Jackie Goldberg, and Senator Sheila
Kuehl-have become particularly influential.
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- It is now state law that:
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- All K-12 schoolchildren must be taught to "appreciate"
various sexual orientations.
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- Public-school teachers and counselors must identify children
with the potential to be "intolerant" of homosexuality-and refer
them for retraining.
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- School sports teams that object to homosexual or transsexual
behavior may be barred from participating in California Interscholastic
Federation sports.
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- All taxpayers must fund marriage-equivalent benefits
for homosexual partners of state employees.
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- Nonprofit groups such as the Boy Scouts that refuse to
hire homosexuals may be fined up to $150,000 per incident.
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- A person's "gender" is whatever he or she says
it is, regardless of biology.
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- Carole Migden, who chaired the powerful Assembly appropriations
committee from 1997 to 2001, played a key role in ushering in these laws-and
in punishing lawmakers who didn't support them. Both Republican and Democratic
legislators WORLD spoke with say they observed a pattern during her reign:
Bills authored by members who did not support gay-rights legislation often
expired in Ms. Migden's committee, while bills written by gay-friendly
members sailed through.
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- Fellow Democrats understood the stakes. In 2001, for
example, Republican Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy was planning legislation
that would create a license plate honoring the Boy Scouts. He told WORLD
that a Democrat from a neighboring district volunteered to co-author the
bill. Mr. Mountjoy would have loved to have a Democrat onboard, since the
Boy Scouts were already under heavy liberal fire in the state.
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- But while Mr. Mountjoy was developing his bill, the Assembly
convened to vote on ACR 90, a resolution commemorating the Boy Scouts'
85th birthday. Carole Migden stood during the debate and declared she was
"outraged" by the idea of honoring such a discriminatory group:
"Vote for the Boy Scouts if you choose ... [but] we reject any group
that purposefully and arrogantly discriminates and says it's justified.
How dare you!"
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- Mr. Mountjoy's license-plate co-author, it turned out,
did not dare. He voted no on ACR 90 and the resolution failed. "It
was incredible," Mr. Mountjoy said. "I asked him, 'How can you
vote no on the Boy Scouts' birthday, when you are a co-author on my Boy
Scouts bill?'"
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- "You don't understand my party," he said the
Democrat replied nervously. "I have bills coming up and they have
to go through Carole Migden."
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- Democrats in California who vote against such sacred
cows as "gay rights" and abortion pay a heavy price. Assemblywoman
Sally Havice, a conservative Democrat and former college English teacher
from Cerritos, near Los Angeles, has bucked the party line since her election
in 1996. As a result, when Ms. Havice authors a bill, fellow Dems routinely
strangle it in committee, she told WORLD. Although she is pro-union, party
leaders kicked her off the labor committee. When she ran for Congress,
they backed the opposing candidate.
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- Then party leaders assigned Ms. Havice a new seat in
the nosebleed section of the Assembly chamber. One day a reporter from
a television news crew said to her, "Sally, you're so far back there
now we can't even get you on camera!" Ms. Havice replied wryly, "That's
the idea, my dear."
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- How does she know these were punitive measures? Party
leaders "told me it was going to be tough for me," she said.
Sen. Sheila Kuehl was even more direct, according to Ms. Havice. After
Ms. Havice voted against a 1998 Kuehl-authored, pro-gay bill, Ms. Havice
said Ms. Kuehl visited her office and told her, "I'm going to get
you."
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- Ms. Kuehl denies the encounter occurred, but told WORLD,
"I did call her a coward after the vote, privately, but not in her
office. If anybody 'got' her, it was herself and not on this issue."
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- Regarded as the lynchpin of gay activism in the California
Statehouse, Ms. Kuehl first hit the public eye when she played Zelda Gilroy
on the 1950s hit sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. After graduating
from Harvard Law School, she went on to teach law at USC, Loyola, and UCLA,
then to become the first open homosexual to serve in the California legislature.
Fellow legislators describe Ms. Kuehl as intelligent, engaging, and utterly
ruthless. She is known among conservative Democrats for punishing nonconformists
by funding the campaigns of candidates who run against them.
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- Ms. Havice said Ms. Kuehl also downplays the implications
of gay-rights bills for such areas as school curriculum and religious freedom
in order to win support. Ms. Kuehl said that isn't true either. But it
is apparent that California's legislature is steamrolling over the will
of voters in the state. In 2000, nearly two-thirds of California voters
approved Prop. 22, a constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as
a union between a man and a woman. But that didn't stop Carole Migden from
ramming through a sweeping same-sex domestic-partners bill in 2001.
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- That bill, AB 25, granted to homosexuals the right to
adopt a partner's children, claim spouse-like medical and unemployment
benefits, and sue a partner in a manner similar to divorce. Republican
Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a similar bill in 1999, but this time Gray Davis
was governor, and AB 25 became law. At least five more domestic-partners
bills are in the pipeline this session, further chipping away at Prop.
22.
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- California Democrats also are chipping away at religious
freedom in the state. One current bill would prohibit Christian contractors
who object to homosexuality from bidding on state projects. Another would
require all foster parents-many of whom are Christians-to undergo homosexual
"sensitivity training." Meanwhile, a bill that would have allowed
public-school students "a moment of quiet thought" died in committee,
as did a bill to create a "Choose Life" license plate.
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- Even some religious legislators in California are going
with the tide. During the late 1990s, a coalition of Republicans and conservative
Democrats, led by former Assemblyman Steve Baldwin, held the line against
advancing pro-gay legislation. Democrat Tony Cardenas, who attends the
nationally prominent Church on the Way in Van Nuys, voted with that group
until 1999. Then he began voting in support of same-sex domestic partners,
a pro-homosexuality public-school curriculum, and punishment for employers
who object to homosexuality.
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- By 2000, Mr. Baldwin, a Christian conservative, was so
disgusted by what he saw as Mr. Cardenas's abdication of Christian responsibility
that he wrote a four-page letter blasting Mr. Cardenas's votes. "I
was counting on you as a fellow brother in Christ, and as a fellow host
of our legislative prayer group, to stand strong for the values that you
arrived in Sacramento with," Mr. Baldwin wrote: "God gave you
the opportunity to serve, but you have instead chosen to use your authority
to undermine the religious freedoms our Founding Fathers stood for."
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- Mr. Cardenas did not answer the letter, and also refused
WORLD's interview request.
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- Carl Washington is another California religious conservative
who seems to have placed party loyalty over biblical principle. Representing
minority-heavy areas of East Los Angeles, Mr. Washington was elected to
the Assembly in 1996. An ordained Baptist minister, he used to call homosexuality
"a straightforward moral issue" and regularly raised religious
objections to pro-gay bills. Then something changed. Beginning in 1999,
Mr. Washington began supporting-or refusing to vote against-every pro-homosexuality
bill that crossed the Assembly floor. That same year Democratic leaders
handed him his first committee chairmanship.
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- Mr. Washington did not respond to WORLD's interview requests.
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- Republican Sen. Ray Haynes believes Democrats who give
in to pressure here aren't solely to blame for the liberal onslaught in
the Golden State: "Right now the conservative movement in California,
particularly among Christians, is in disarray." He noted a dearth
of grassroots organizing, a disunity of message, and a lack of direction.
The success of the liberal agenda, he said, "is as much the responsibility
of the conservative leadership in the state as anything else."
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- And the legislature keeps sending bad bills to Gov. Davis's
desk. AB 2651 specifically recruits homosexuals, bisexuals, and the transgendered
as foster parents, and requires foster couples to take a "sensitivity
training" course teaching them to affirm children's sexual choices;
kids who feel foster parents are critical of those choices will be told
to report them by calling a statewide hotline.
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- SB 1301, sponsored by Sen. Kuehl, would allow people
who are not licensed physicians to conduct "non-surgical abortions"
by administering chemicals such as RU-486. That would make California the
first state to make a major distinction between surgical and drug-related
abortions. The bill would also forbid the state of California to ban abortion
should the Supreme Court ever overturn its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
The California Senate approved SB 1301 and the Assembly is expected to
follow suit.
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- With Democrats projected to hold on to both Statehouse
chambers, mainstream Californians' only hope for turning back the liberal
tide is GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon. Mr. Simon, a Catholic businessman,
supports such conservative ideals as school choice and limited government,
and has vocally opposed the notion of gay rights, abortion on demand, and
the Democratic tax-and-spend ethos so prevalent in the state.
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- But a jury on July 31 found Mr. Simon's family investment
company, William E. Simon & Sons, guilty of fraud, and exacted a $78
million judgment. Mr. Davis is already using the verdict to eviscerate
Mr. Simon in attack ads. And the Davis campaign has plenty of money to
spread the word: $31 million cash on hand (FlashTraffic, Aug. 10).
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- Conservative activists say of Mr. Simon's candidacy that
it has never been so important for one man to be elected in California.
That's because if he loses, California faces four more years of liberal
hegemony-perhaps enough to influence the liberal future of the nation.
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- http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/08-31-02/cover_1.asp
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- Comment
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- From Sheryl Jackson
- moonfyre1@earthlink.net
- 8-31-2
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- It would seem to me that you are probably a womyn, however,
you do not seem to have the necessary attributes that would seperate us
from from men. I refer to compassion, honesty, empathy and understanding.
These are personal characteristics that have allowed "the hand that
rocks the cradle to rule the nation."
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- Your article on Rense.com is a scathing diatribe against
the "Liberals" and little else. What is your point? You have
babbled incessantly that the "liberals" have caused a problem
with home schooling while cursing the mainstream schools for teaching that
there are homosexuals in the world and that they are people and okay if
that is what they are.
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- Contrary to what Anita said in Florida in the seventies,
they are our children. Homosexuality is part of the fabric of all societies.
Only in America is the average person afraid of their sexuality, their
thought processes and homosexuals.
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- However, we are expected to watch the BoobTube every
weekend where a bunch of overpaid non-homosexuals play with one another's
derrieres. That is just fun and means nothing.
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- Why are you so concerned with people's sexuality. Most
of us do not spend that much time in pursuing the Randy Side because we
are too tired from dealing with mean bosses, mean neighbors, mean drivers
and mean commentary. We just want to go home, eat supper, take a shower
and go to bed to get up and have the privelege of going to work four and
a half months's a year to pay taxes so that we can bomb other countries,
kill our own troops with depleted uranium and beat on our chests about
our Superiority and Might.
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- If you are smart enough to home school your children,
or rich enough then you should get with the company plan and do so. We
are so regulated as a nation, it is no wonder that the "school boards"
want to control what is taught. But you see that is not a Liberal bias.
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- We liberals believe that everyone has human rights, we
are not like the mosquito that spreads every disease on the planet but
AIDS. We have not found a way to deny humaneness to all humans. That
is a "CONSERVATIVE" THING. We believe that all people on the
planet have rights, obligations to responsibility and the need for HUMANE
treatment in all walks of life, no matter how fat or thin, tall or short,
lame or well, rich or devestatingly poor.
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- Everyone puts their pants on the same way, breathes air,
drinks and needs fresh clean water. We do not need more political hooplah
in the world under the guise of bigotry, hatred or warmongering.
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- I would not worry about the homosexuals if I was you,
I would worry about the amount of sex offenders who are loosed daily all
over America from short sentences, the mass murderers, the unchecked serial
killers, the child molesters and child murderers who are running around
all of the states as we speak.
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- Homophobia usually acts as the cover for those who are
trying not to act on their base impulses. It causes much fingerpointing
to get the heat off of the fingerpointer.
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- Your diatribe against homosexuals is just that a heated,
inflammatory statement of bigotry that lost its point after the first three
paragraphs.
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- We are not responsible for the gene base of anyone but
our selves. Homosexuality like green or brown eyes, dimples, and criminality
are genetic. That means it is just the luck of the draw like everything
else we inherit from our gentic history.
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- Sheryl Jackson
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