I bring out the worst in people

An election recap is coming soon, but first: The high school teammate responsible for talking me into starting a blog does his first bit of correspondent work today, reporting from the scene outside the Westwood Mormon temple -- which happens to be built, I believe, by the grandfather of a fellow teammate and friend of the blog. The correspondent sent two drafts of his report. One was mature and informative. The other is below. Pictures will be uploaded tomorrow.

Throngs of queers, queens, and quacks queued up on the streets of Los Angeles today to collectively piss on the outcome of Tuesday's election. Angelenos who had forgotten about the political predispositions of Orange County and most of Central California gathered outside the three-hundred foot Mormon Temple, made of white Utah cement by men in ordained undergarments, to protest the decision to amend the Golden State's constitution to prevent these crudes and creeps from slipping rings onto each others fingers for a change. The irony of exercising their constitutionally-protected right to free assembly was indeed lost on this crowd, as they were more concerned with displaying their wit and verve with signs like Shame on You, Joseph Smith: Prophet Polygamist Pedophile, and You Have Five Wives I Want One.

The party soon began sauntering up Westwood Boulevard in search of more impressionable citizens to molest and riot police to dance in front of. It wasn't long before the honking horns and gawking onlookers weren't enough attention and the whole gaggle decided to sit in the road and pout, flashing a red pair of ass-less chaps at the shield-and-jack boot bulls. Unfortunately for those of us looking for simple, animal entertainment, once the Freedom-Protector-in-Charge bellowed for everyone to move along, the crowd responded as if someone had muttered the safe word through a ball gag. Once it became clear that the leaders of the protest weren't going to spill any precious bodily fluids in the name of civil disobedience, the whole scene took on the flavor of a Gay Pride parade, but without the clever outfits. And that's when the author and his male coed compatriot got the balls out.

Breaking: Town Crier endorses Prop. 8

Why can't the Town Crier just come out and say it doesn't like gay people? Then we wouldn't have to endure a constant stream of illogical excuses for its positions:

We think it is time to stop the courts from making our laws. That’s why we elect a representative government. The ripple effect of letting the current court ruling legalizing gay marriage stand will be endless lawsuits, especially regarding tax-exempt status for churches and educational institutions.

If I were more mature, I could write several law review comments on all the things that are wrong about these three sentences. Instead, I'll do this my way.

We think it is time to stop the courts from making our laws.

The Supreme Court upheld the decision under due process and equal protection law. Other examples of courts "making our laws" under these doctrines include:

• Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, preventing the forced sterilization of a robber
• Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, desegregating public schools
• Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, allowing married people to use contraception
• Loving v. Virginia, 1967, striking down bans on interracial marriage
• Roe v. Wade, 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992, protecting women's right to reproductive autonomy

Obviously, it is time to put a stop to this nonsense.

That’s why we elect a representative government.

The California State legislature has voted twice to allow same-sex marriage. The governor vetoed the bills both times, saying he would prefer the courts to sort out the constitutional issues. The proposal that the Town Crier is endorsing circumvents representative government by asking the entire electorate to amend the Constitution in a way that would eliminate certain due process and equal protection rights for one group of people.

The ripple effect of letting the current court ruling legalizing gay marriage stand will be endless lawsuits,

It was not the gays who brought the original lawsuit; and, to repeat, they based their argument on due process and equal protection rights. Those are not the kinds of lawsuits we should fear.

especially regarding tax-exempt status for churches and educational
institutions.

This is a particularly obnoxious claim that basically threatens that churches and religious schools will illegally take political stances against the Constitutionally protected rights of gay people, and implies that the right itself is to blame, rather than the people consciously breaking the law.

Keeping you safe

From the mind of Los Altos's greatest character writer, a belated birthday present:

The Town Crier is keeping me down

Before I became a doctor of journalism, I had a hobby of writing at least one letter every week, to reporters, businesses or elected officials. One day, I thought, I'd compile them in a book called Jon Complains.

The Los Altos Town Crier ran about half of my newest installment, which criticizes the paper for rewriting local history in order to project its own image of my hometown. Ironically, the paper (perhaps for space) entirely cut out the portion of the letter where I accuse them of being silent on the story of Gregory Wagner. Here's the text of the original letter:

Dear Editor,

I enjoyed your year-in-review (Dec. 27) but was disappointed to see the paper's news judgment once again clouded by the publisher's politics. You wrote that the city council's rejection of a gay pride day proclamation drew fierce criticism "mostly from outside Los Altos." This is wishful thinking at best, and makes the Town Crier look like it's sticking its head in the sand. Students, business leaders, churchgoers and others from Los Altos all mobilized in opposition to the city council's action. The resulting parade was one of the largest political demonstrations in the history of the town. [The rest of the letter did not make it in]. The article should have read that the criticism came "mostly from outside the pages of this newspaper."

Additionally, it was a glaring omission to once again leave out any mention of Gregory Wagner, one of two Los Altos youth leaders sent to prison this year for child molestation. It appears that the Town Crier would prefer to ignore anything that might reflect poorly on its coverage area, a goal made easier by the departure of those reporters who fought to keep the story in the paper. But the Wagner story has another side that is important for the community to recognize. That side of the story is about the former scouts whose courage in facing and talking about their past helped bring Wagner to justice. By repeatedly downplaying the story, the Town Crier abandoned those who most deserved the community's support.

Sincerely,

Jon Wiener

Town Crier: Parade not fabulous

Two weeks after the Town Crier dedicated three entire pages to its coverage of the Pet Parade, the largest political demonstration in Los Altos history got six paragraphs and a small photo. The one person quoted in the article is Police Chief Bob Lacey, whose 19 officers stood around and did little other than cost thousands of dollars to the city and the groups involved.

Despite regular editorials and guest columns complaining about the gayness of the parade, editor Bruce Barton still had to lobby publisher/Republican activist Paul Nyberg to get any coverage of the event in the paper. Luckily, Nyberg's worst fears about the parade turned out not to be true. According to the story:

"Festivities were peaceful and free of the flamboyant costumes that have marked other gay parades."

Hopefully we can all go back to concentrating on unifying the community via the annual festival of lights parades, which features characters from Alice and Wonderland and all sorts of other children's stories, or perhaps the LAHS Homecoming parade, in which those high schoolers not in tuxes often march half-naked or in drag.

"The moon is in the Seventh House"

That's right, several years after the millenium, the Age of Aquarius is finally dawning in Los Altos. Rainbow flags lined downtown streets today, as 20 members of the LAHS Gay Straight Alliance and hundreds of supporters marched through downtown. The parade, grudgingly approved by the Los Altos City Council, is believed to be (by me) the largest political demonstration in the city's history.

"In the city council's face," said MVLA superintendent Rich Fischer, one of many public officials to march or ride in the parade.

The supportive crowd, much like the partygoers in the first episode of the Boondocks, clapped politely, which made the police presence seem a little ridiculous. The only opposition I noticed along the route was a man oblivious to irony who held a sign that read, "Parading our differences does not unite us." Not clear whether he thought his sign was accomplishing that. Of course, this man was not alone. After all, Christian pet-owning high school athletes already have three parades to unite them.

Speaking of Christians: Big points for Foothills Congregational Church, which had dozens of members marching together in the parade to support the LAHS Gay-Straight Alliance. Poor performance, meanwhile, by the folks holding the sign reading "Homosexuality is Sin." According to the Palo Alto Daily, the man drove all the way down from Placerville to protest the parade.

I guess it's better for them to be trying to ruin parades instead of military funerals, but if they're such good Christians, shouldn't they have been in church?

(UPDATE: The Mercury and the Chronicle have both posted stories about the event on their Web sites. Funny how the Chronicle only covers Santa Clara County when there is a story about gay pride.)

One step at a time

"The Los Altos City Council early today agreed to allow gay teens to walk through the city's downtown."

This actually is a bigger deal than you might think, considering the council once passed a law targeted at keeping Latinos from standing on the sidewalk and little kids from selling lemonade.

UPDATE: Lauren McSherry points out that Los Altos Hills has its own anti-lemonade ordinance, one that has not been repealed or cost the city a $60,000 settlement.

Town Crier: Parade idea is totally gay

Tortured logic in the award-winning editorial pages of this week's Town Crier argues that a planned gay pride parade is unnecessarily divisive for a community that already has an annual Homecoming parade to bring it together (except for the private school kids).

Still smarting from criticism over its decision to proclaim a ban on all offensive proclamations, most notably those regarding the extent to which high school students should be embarrassed about their sexuality, the Los Altos City Council is now under pressure to approve a June parade proposal. According to the Mercury, offers of support have poured in from all over, further embarrassing a city (and an anonymous editorial writer) that already had much to be ashamed of.

I'm not sure how the vote will go, but the Mormon mayor credited with orchestrating the rejection and subsequent prohibition of gay pride proclamations said that Los Altos is so tolerant that it doesn't need a parade.

Said Ron Packard:

The citizens of Los Altos are highly educated and already extremely tolerant and respectful of others, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.

Of course, we still hate gays and Mexicans, and people who celebrate Halloween.

Los Altos politics: "Sanity amid a din of chaos"

A letter writer to the Town Crier praises the courage of the Los Altos City Council for passing an ordinance banning future proclamations on issues the Mayor finds offensive. I'll be honest, when the Gay Straight Alliance was founded my senior year at LAHS, their tactics came off as somewhat crude. The president, channeling Jesse Jackson without the rhymes, posted fliers with all sorts of offensive slurs: "We have been called pillow-biters..."

I can see the council's reasons for not wanting to pass a "Gay Pride Day" proclamation. Los Altos is, after all, Bigotville, USA. But the council easily could have ignored the students' request with no further action or recognized the organization without declaring "Gay Pride Day." Instead, officials went out of their way to send a message to the high school students who already fairly ostracized to keep their heads down. I just don't see how that counts as being brave.

"He's going to get the paper he deserves."

Town Crier reporter Kathleen Acuff is quitting the paper in protest over publisher and Republican activist Paul Nyberg’s groveling apology of an editorial last week. The editorial followed Acuff's (still accurate) story that former City Council member King Lear was accusing the current council of violating the state's open meeting law, privately agreeing to tell a group of high school kids to go screw themselves (because at least that's less bad than being gay).

When someone with as few enemies as Kathleen Acuff leaves because the paper is afraid to cover the news, it’s a pretty good indication that your paper is afraid to cover the news. The Town Crier's other three news reporters have less than six months of combined experience, and are unlikely to fight Nyberg over all the good news the paper chooses to cover. Her departure further ensures that the only controversial reporting in the Town Crier will be in the sports section.

As long as Nyberg is apologizing, by the way, he ought to beg forgiveness from God and public for the paper’s disgraceful 2003 editorial backing the invasion of Iraq, particularly the use of a garbled sports cliché to justify the bombing of a third-world country. (The best offense is a good defense, not vice versa). If you think that’s bad, you’re right, first of all. But you also should have seen the print version, in which the last sentence was cut off.