Rethinking Civil Unions

Some of you may have noticed that statistics from France show that nearly half the civil unions performed there involve straight couples. In other words, civil unions are not just for gays and lesbians. I have no idea what the statistics are for our ruder nation, but I can say this: my grandmother, my mother, my wife and my daughter formed pacts with their partners at city hall. That's four generations in a row.

Perhaps that was because none of us had money. My family has been here since the Revolution without making it out of the working class.

I should mention that certain of my family's "registered partnerships," as some call them, were more civil than others. My grandmother, who had numerous informal male friends, would often redden her cheeks with blush and visit people she'd grown fond of in the afternoons, but she was civil. She always had supper on the table when her second husband arrived home after a hard day of vulcanizing tires. He'd earned a timely meal.

Civil Unions were officially invented for gays in Denmark in 1989, but they have always existed--we used to call them "common law marriages." The definitions of civil unions differ from one jurisdiction to the next, and so does the nomenclature. My favorite term is "civil solidarity pact." Straights are allowed to sign up for these pacts in places like Quebec and Uruguay. Young people do this, I read, where it's easy to end a civil union and complicated to get a divorce.

I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that gays have the Constitutional right to marry each other. That's what many want, and it is both a practical matter and a matter of respect. For the 16% of straight Californians who are not religious, though, I suggest considering civil solidarity pacts--get married by a judge at city hall. It costs little, goes fast, then you eat Chinese and go to a Cohn Brothers' movie.

Extorting Teachers

I read two reports today. The first was about how depraved gangs in Ciudad Juarez have been extorting teachers and schools, demanding that they give up their Christmas bonuses or the gangs will attack the teachers, the schools or the children. Some attacks have taken place.

The second report was closer to home. One section of the Democratic Party has joined the Republicorp in attacking teachers' unions, on the grounds that union busting will lead to better schools. I doubt if I can express how pathetic this plan is.

Back in the twentieth century a huge amount of compelling research in many different countries went into studies of how young people learn effectively. None of it demonstrated that punishing teachers or their unions would raise the success rates. What we are seeing in American public systems--and this includes the Obama administration--is a scapegoating of faculty members, blaming them for problems brought on by system-enforced concepts refuted by science a hundred years ago. Often the teachers know better, but they held captives to a stupid rule book, ignorant parents, overcrowding, and a mania for testing and punishment. Private schools and charter schools, on the other hand, range from excellent to weirdly eccentric with approaches so intellectually ridiculous no expert would give them a second glance.

All I can say to parents today is (1) try to be born wealthy so you can afford one of the few excellent schools or (2) take heart from the fact that most of a child's learning takes place out of school; pay close attention to your child's interests and cultivate learning that the child will love.

--Gary Goss

Muck

Samuel Johnson's A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND is my source for the story of Muck. In 1773 Johnson and James Boswell toured northern Scotland, investigating the habits of the Highland Scots. One thing Johnson discovered was that local leaders of the Scottish clans were often named for the particular islands or areas they ruled. If you were the chief ruler of Mull, for example, you would be known as Mull. That was fine with the exception of the leader of Muck. He did not care for his place name and made an attempt to change it to Monk, but that failed to catch on. Finally a compromise was struck, and he became know as Isle of Muck, which some think a small improvement.

This problem came to mind the past few weeks as I participated in several discussions of the meanings of the terms liberal, hippie, progressive and radical. A variety of people could not agree on what these words signified or what to call themselves.

My own view solidified in 1969. In those days a liberal was a Democrat who supported the Vietnam War. A radical was Marxist or socialist or anarchist or pacifist. A progressive was a wider term that included radicals and others who opposed the war. A hippie was a lightweight dude who dropped acid and listened to Pink Floyd. If you called a serious leftist a hippie, he or she would be deeply hurt.

That history is now forgotten. I run into people who insist that a liberal is to the left of a progressive and that both of them are hippies. Like Isle of Muck I remain unsatisfied--I'd rather be a radical.

Free At Last

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was well intended at its inception, although never a good idea. It's wrong to require people to pretend to be what they are not--something politicians seldom grasp, because they pretend for a living. To make things worse, military bigots immediately altered the law to mean "I will catch you if I can." Thousands of gays and lesbians who did not "tell" were hunted down and discharged.

Repeal of this law is a major gain in civil rights. It moves us into the twentieth century and gives America hope of entering the current century. We have cast off the shame of legal second class citizenship. And we can thank two sources: the fighting spirit of people who refused to accept the status quo and the strategy of Obama, Pelosi and Reid, which was often condemned but worked out exactly as the President had planned.

--Gary Goss

Ice Man

Mark Twain used to tell the true story of a mail carrier in Death Valley, a public servant who couldn't take the heat. As summer approached, he considered his problem at length and eventually designed and built an overcoat made of sponges. To this coat he affixed a bladder of water and a handpump, which he planned to use to keep the sponge coat wet. On the first really hot day, he put on his new coat, loaded the mail into his wagon and set out on his route, only to be found shortly after noon, beside the road, frozen to death with an icicle hanging from his nose.

I thought of this tale yesterday while listening to a panel of talking heads who claimed that President Obama's recent gratuitous attacks on his liberal political base were actually part of a shrewd plan to win over more conservative independent voters in the 2012 election. I doubt that. Obama is unlikely to be found by the side of the road, but no conjecture is too dumb for the Talking Heads of TV.

A MEANINGFUL LIFE

To be meaningful, philosopher Susan Wolf once wrote, a life must be actively engaged in worthy projects. Her summary came to mind recently as I read the Los Angeles Times' obituary of Stu Pidasle (not his real name). The obituary was an eighteen paragraph tribute to the meaningless life of an aggressive political hack.

If you are lucky, you never encountered Stu Pidasle or his missing brain pan, but Senator Diane Feinstein called him the "indefatigable wise man of Californian politics." Al Gore claimed Pidasle "was also a great champion of progressive political causes." Feinstein and Gore were mistaken. Pidasle was actually a fairly stupid donut depository who lived to serve, in a thuggish way, the anti-progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Also he looked like a sock puppet filled with cottage cheese.

Two anecdotes from the 1960s might convey what a pleasure it was to know a Stu Pidasle. At one point a friend of mine planned to attend a state Democratic convention where he would be supporting the Henry Waxman & John Burton caucus (so to speak) rather than the Pidasle & Jesse Unruh caucus. My friend asked me and my brother to stick around during the convention to protect him against physical threats. Sure enough, about half way through, Pidasle and several of his tough guys cornered us in a hallway. These dudes were mean by political standards but not by street standards, so my brother and I told them to get lost, and they ran away down the hall with tears in their eyes, Pidasle in first place.

A year or so after that, I was helping in a Democratic primary contest, supporting a brilliant attorney who went on to a fine career on the California Supreme Court. We lost narrowly to the incumbent, a stumbling alcoholic who seldom voted, supported, of course, by the Stu Pidasle faction of our party. Anyway, one afternoon during the campaign I drove over to hear what the inebriated incumbent had to say at a public meeting. Pidasle was in the crowded hall, the only person who knew me. I paid him no attention and gradually began to doze off. About halfway through, I woke and decided to leave.

I had driven my ancient car about three miles on the freeway when the heat gauge suddenly registered extreme pain. I pulled off the freeway and into a service station where the attendant replaced the hose on my water pump and handed me the old hose, which he noted had been cut open from stem to stern with a pocket knife. "You could have been killed," he said.

I drove back to the meeting place. The space where I had parked before was still open, so I parked there again. Then I checked the car parked behind me. Through the window I spotted the registration and the name Pidasle. I took a sturdy coke bottle out of my trunk and used it to redesign Mr. Stu Pidasle's brake lights.

I'm Gary Goss, and I approve this funeral.