Much has been made about the irony of California’s Proposition 8 passing in a year when Barack Obama has been elected President, in particular the support of black voters for the bill banning gay marriage. Indeed, while I recall seeing an Obama ad opposing the bill (and more memorably, a Samuel Jackson narrated piece pointing out the history of racially discriminatory laws in California including a miscegenation ban that was cited heavily during the State Supreme court arguments on this issue), the NAACP and National Urban League web sites make no mention of the it (I checked those two because they’ve been sending me donation mail since I used my credit card reward points on an American Legacy subscription).
But I imagine outside of San Francisco and Hollywood, the majority of most groups in this state voted for it (I live in Orange County, which is often accompanied by the words “republican stronghold”) The Ask A Mexican columnist of the OC Weekly lamented the attitude of traditional Latinos on this issue and urged them to vote against the bill. I don’t know about the official stance of Asian American groups, but this does remind me of an Asian American conference I attended in Boston years ago, in which, after a young woman brought up the issue of gay rights, the guy next to me remarked, “Did you see that lesbian?” Even MoveOn doesn’t have anything to say – and they’re based in California.
What surprises me is that that the proposition passed after such lame TV ads – there was the one showing San Francisco Mayor Gary Newsom apparently saying gay marriage is “here to say whether you like it or not” in an apparently gay manner (although he’s had enough marriages, girlfriends and notorious affairs to earn himself a heterosexual medal of honor), and then the one claiming that without the bill, gay marriage will be taught to schoolchildren, and then, after opponents responded with a “no it won’t” ad, an ad saying “yes it will”.
Now, I went through the public school system in California (fifth through half of ninth grade), and if I’d been taught about gay marriage, that would probably have doubled what I learned in school. I learned to read proficiently from my parents and the public library. And also from the library I learned about atoms (from a book by Isaac Asimov), the life of Muhammad Ali, how murderous plants will take over the Earth if everyone went blind (Day of the Triffids), and legal procedure in murder cases (Perry Mason mysteries). And my parents taught me to type, which turned out to be surprisingly useful (nothing pains me like watching a $90,000/year programmer hunt-and-peck on the keyboard).
I learned how to write with metaphors in sixth grade after another student wrote an imaginative story and received glowing comments from the teacher, so I just copied his style (I guess I learned to plagiarize at that same time). In the same class, I learned how to diagram sentences by drawing random lines around them, since the teachers received an activity packet that included that activity, but didn’t know to diagram sentences themselves. I did enjoy reading boxes of cards with interesting stories – I think they were called SRI cards or something like that.
In junior high, I learned algebra, which turned out to be useful. I discovered computers in the form of a TRS-80 in the school library, but I confess my first question was “what’s it good for”, and I only used it to repeatedly type in the same BASIC program from a magazine every day until the librarian showed me the cassette deck. (I learned to program after transferring to a school in Iowa that had an Apple II in their library). I might have learned some science in school if they hadn’t replaced the veteran science teacher with a new grad who didn’t know any science (my classmates, smelling blood in the water, urged me to “ask her questions she can’t answer!”) I learned how to suck up to the boss, after I approached an English teacher after class to point out a mistake in grading – the next day, she publicly praised me for the “correct” way I handled the situation without embarassing her and urged everyone to follow my example. She also blamed the Latino kid for misgrading my paper (actually telling me “he’s not going to make it in this class”), so I also learned about racism (actually, that was my second lesson – they had placed me in the remedial English and math classes, even though I’d entered the district spelling bee in my previous school). I learned to avoid antagonizing people unnecessarily, after telling a girl to shut up and then watching her snarl every time she saw me (I’m still afraid I’ll see her again). I learned about the benevolent use of power after a school bully pushed me out into the rain and then a bigger kid pushed him (I owe that guy a drink).
And I learned that people and institutions often have overly high valuations of themselves – every school I’ve attended has claimed to be one of the best in the state (I’ve got two words for you – “magnet school”). California teachers receive tenure after just two years – next time a proposition to fix that resurfaces (it didn’t pass last time when Gov. Shwarzenegger pushed it), that’s one I’ll vote for.
