Keith Olbermann - Special Comment, Muslim Community Center

Majority Rules But Not Over Minority Rights

Proposition 8 (the gay marriage ban) has been overturned today by a Federal Court judge who ruled that the ban was a violation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment which states:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Denying gays to marry is to deny a segment of our population "equal protection of the laws."  What laws?  Well, the laws that give married couples tax benefits, hospital visitation rights, and inheritance of property owned by a deceased spouse, among others.  Gays who are in a committed relationship but who are denied the right to formalize their relationship in a state recognized marriage cannot be treated equally under the laws of the land and therefore any such ban on gay marriage would be unconstitutional.

But what of the argument that the court overturned the will of the majority?  Well, quite simply the majority doesn't always rule, my friends.  If it did, the South might still be segregated.  Majorities in a democratic society could theoretically harm the minority by denying it it's civil rights.  For this reason, the U.S. Congress and the States passed the Bill of Rights, a set of ten amendments to the Constitution that prevents Congress from passing laws that deprive people of their civil rights to practice the religion they want, to say what they want, to join groups they wish to associate with, to defend themselves, to not have their property taken away from them unless under due process, and to be compelled to incriminate themselves in court, among others.  If we truly had a raw majority rule in this country, civil rights could theoretically have been flushed down the toilet during the siting of our first Congress in the late 1700s.

Majority rule is not sacrosanct.  The majority cannot deny the civil rights of our fellow citizens.  The court ruled correctly today in terms of the law and in terms of our values as a secular republic.  If you wish to impose a religious value on the rest of the country then you are talking about living in an theocracy.  There are a few examples of functioning theocracies in the world today - Saudi Arabia and Iran are two that come to mind.  Frankly, I don't want to visit these countries and nor would I want to live in them.  I most certainly wouldn't want the U.S. to become a Christian theocracy.  Religion is too volatile a foundation to derive our civil laws.  Let religion rule your individual spirit if you so desire but do not impose it on those who may not believe in the same mythology.

Kauai County Road Workers Dowsing For Water

The last few days while commuting to work I have seen Kauai County road workers using dowsing rods on the side of Kuhio Highway apparently looking for a water main.

For those who don't know, dowsing is a "method" developed in the 16th century whereby a dowser uses either two L-shape rods or a Y-shaped branch to locate water in the ground.  Modern-day dowsers claim that the rods are attracted to water and therefore can accurately point out the location of water in the ground. However, numerous experiments show that dowsing works no better than chance -- meaning dowsing is bunk.

A sad side-note is that glorified dowsing rods called the ADE 651 were hocked to Iraqi police for $60,000 a pop to locate explosives in cars.  Of course, they didn't work and many people have died from car bombs that went undiscovered at security checkpoints no thanks to the ADE 651.  The US Government has since issued a formal warning to the millitary from buying these "bogus explosive detection" dowsing rods.

Clearly, searching for a water main on the side of a highway is not the same as letting car bombs get by a checkpoint but whoever used our tax dollars to buy dowsing "equipment" for Kauai County's road crew deserves to called out for their stupidity or at least their ignorance.  DOWSING DOESN'T WORK!  Please give the road workers proper tools to get their jobs done properly.  Every hour they waste hunting for a water main is tax dollars wasted.  I just hope that these dowsing rods didn't cost the County $60,000 each.

Shirley Sherrod's Sacrifice

As I sit here writing this blog, I am watching Countdown on MSNBC. The topic: Shirley Sherrod. I have to admit I haven't really been following this issue these last few days. But as I watch her story play out, something very interesting comes to mind: Shirley Sherrod's forced resignation from the USDA may have actually been the best outcome from this manufactured brouhaha.

First, if you aren't up to speed yet, here's a short update.

On July 19th, Washington Post commentator Andrew Breitbart posted a YouTube video of USDA director Sherrod speaking at an NAACP conference seemingly making questionable comments about her own biases against white people. Under fire, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack essentially forced her to resign. In defense of Sherrod, a few days later, the NAACP released the entire video of her speech wherein she commented how she had overcome her own biases and began to trust and help people of different races despite the years of discrimination she experienced growing up black in the South during the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't much later that Tom Vilsack realized that she was unduly punished and offered her a job back at the USDA.

Okay -- and now my commentary...

Imagine if Tom Vilsack and the Obama administration defended her outright rather than asked for her resignation. Andrew Breitbart had essentially owned the tone of the public message ("Shirley Sherrod is denying government services to poor white farmers because she is racist"). If Visack and the Obama administration publicly sided with Sherrod they would appear to be siding with racism or supporting a double-standard. That would have been a major win for Breitbart and those who stand to benefit from this brouhaha (and apparently those who don't care about facts).

But look what actually happened. Sherrod gets fired, and the when the truth comes out that she was actually telling an important story about overcoming racial bias, Fox News had to issue a retraction of their stories regarding Sherrod's termination, and Breitbart is left looking like the idiot quote-miner that he is. Sherrod is now going to sue Breitbart for libel and will likely win as his very public quote-mining lost her her job.

So in a strange way, firing Sherrod may actually have been the best outcome as far as us liberals are concerned. Fox News has it's tail tucked between its legs and Breitbart is now shitting in his pants. And furthermore now we are all talking about racial reconciliation in the evening news. Win, win and win.

California's Prop 8, Facebook and Political Action

Cutting to the chase... California's Proposition 8 was passed on November 4th which enshrined in California's constitution the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Does anyone else find it extremely ironic that this proposition was heavily funded by Mormons, a group who for many years practiced polygamy?

But I digress. In my humble opinion, gays and lesbians should not be treated like second-class citizens. I respect their fight for equal rights. It is not all that different than the challenges African-Americans have had to fight for for decades.

So when Prop 8 passed, I was very disappointed with California. The California I know is extremely supportive of gay rights. So why did Prop 8 pass? Simple: supporters of Gay Rights and Gay Marriage were less motivated to vote than the Religious Right were. That's it. It all boils down to votes. Dare I say that the No on Prop 8 folks were lazier than the Yes on 8? Perhaps.

Clearly, gays and lesbians came out in full force on election day to vote "No" on Prop 8. But despite the large gay population in California, gays couldn't win this fight on their own. They needed supportive straight folks to vote with them. And I might think that the most supportive community would be younger Californians.

But what was young people's response to the loss of Prop 8? Facebook. I have received several invites to Facebook groups in support of gay marriage. It may be all fine and well to "support" gay rights. It is another thing entirely to DO something about it. And it is yet another thing to do something EFFECTIVE to fight for this cause.

I fear that Facebook, MySpace, e-mail petitions and the like will lull young people into a false sense of accomplishment in fighting for gay rights. Why do I say this? Well, it's simple. If you want to fight for gay rights, you have to do one of two things: convince elected officials to pass supportive laws and/or convince the public to take the single most important political action they can do to effect social change: VOTE for the change.

If you want to convince an elected official to change a law, here's what you have to do:

1. Visit your elected official's office and talk to him/her
2. Call them
3. Send an handwritten letter

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble but politicians don't accept e-mail petitions so they are really a waste of time.

Facebook, MySpace groups, etc. preach to the choir so they are largely ineffective at changing minds. And in fact I think that may be destructive in that people use these groups as political action by proxy. They may end up taking action online and feel they are changing the world yet they never vote or never get to know their elected officials.

For this reason I will never join these useless online groups as a means of making political change. If you want to change the world, get involved in the world. Don't waste your time in cyber-space. Your community exists just a few feet from your computer -- right outside your door.