Mountain Views News          Saturday, August 21, 2010

8

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, August 21, 2010 

STUART Tolchin ..........On LIFE

HAIL Hamilton

My Turn

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LA River and the Future

Ban On Gay Marriages 
Declared Unconstitutional

I wanted this article to be about how pleasurable my 
trip to Portland was and how my constant awareness of 
the river flowing in the midst of the city added to my 
pleasure. I just wanted to write a nice article talking about 
how nice it would be to bring the Los Angeles River back 
to life. Alas, I waited too long to write the article. I’ve 
been back at work for a week and a half and already my 
daily experiences of social problems are blotting out my 
experience of the river. Sure it’s a little about the difference 
between being on Vacation rather than being back home and reading the 
papers and listening to the news and again being immersed in the problems 
of living.

 While in Portland I started every day with a walk along the 
Willamette River which flows right through the center of town. In Portland 
our hotel was located right next to the river and there is something very 
alive and fresh about being near this flowing water. We all know that 
most of the great cities of the world were founded right next to rivers. I 
think of London, Paris, Budapest, Prague, Lisbon, all right next to flowing 
water. The rivers of these cities create a feeling of life in motion for the 
city-dwellers. The rivers all have their own histories and probably connect 
people to the past and to the coming future. To put it bluntly Los Angeles 
needs a river! 

 I know there is talk about Los Angeles River projects but nothing 
ever seems to happen. Instead of resurrecting the river money is spent 
on huge building constructions and mass transit alternatives that are 
outmoded before they are even completed. If you ask me Los Angeles 
does not need more mass transit. The city needs safe bike paths and must 
find a way to allow people to live closer to where they work. Personally, 
I think this love-affair with automobiles must end. They are incredibly 
expensive, incredibly wasteful of energy, incredibly dangerous, and have an 
unfortunate side effect of destroying the planet.

 I think being astride the River probably makes a difference in 
the way a city conceives of itself. Conveniently located within the City 
of Portland are immense Pose Garden, Japanese Gardens, and a gigantic 
Forest preserve. These spots are cheaply and easily reached by public 
transportation because in Portland there are street cars and light rail 
which are free of charge. I think the way it works is that buses and street 
cars are sponsored by various businesses which are on the routes of the 
buses. However they manage it the system seems to work beautifully. You 
even see White People on the buses. Of course that’s almost all there is 
in Portland, White People, and it must be very disconcerting to any LA 
expatriate. In a way that’s just the point. In Los Angeles buses are used 
predominantly by poor people, generally people of color, and this too is a 
kind of embarrassment. Although the diversity in Los Angeles is one of 
its great strengths, the class differences between rich and poor, White and 
non-White are really intolerable. Are these social problems connected to 
the lack of a River? Yes, I think it is all connected to a refusal to notice the 
conditions which exist right in front of our face. If we slowed down a bit 
and walked along the River I think we’d all notice more.

 There needs to be a shift in focus such that there is more awareness 
of the difficulties that face people .Yes I think a river would help us all to 
focus on what is really important and what would improve the quality of 
people’s lives. I would like to see the establishment of mentoring programs, 
and internship programs, and wellness programs. Of course we need JOBS 
and all of these programs involve jobs, not just jobs but meaningful work. 
We need to focus on the lives of young people to insure that they are healthy 
and well-fed. We need to provide a structure wherein young people are not 
merely entertained but are actually educated. We need to take charge of our 
technology rather than allow it to take charge of us. I could go on and on 
and probably so could all of you. All I’m suggesting right now is that we at 
least think about our dormant almost non-existent river. Maybe bringing 
the river to life and watching its flow might be a step towards putting all of 
our lives into harmony with natural life forces. It seems like a good idea to 
me and I don’t think it could hurt.

 An editorial in the Charleston Gazette summed up perfectly 
the recent decision by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn 
Walker that 2008 California Proposition 8 was unconstitutional 
and that its ban on gay marriage could no longer stand. 

 “Aug. 07--CHARLESTON, W. Va.--Democracy is self-
contradictory. It’s based on majority rule -- yet the Bill of Rights protects the minority and the 
individual from being trampled by the majority. The white majority cannot vote to deport all 
blacks. The Christian majority cannot ban Jewish worship. And heterosexuals cannot outlaw 
homosexual marriage. Minorities have equal rights, despite majority disapproval.

 “This profound principle was tested in West Virginia during World War II, when “patriots” 
beat Jehovah’s Witnesses who wouldn’t salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. 
Jehovah’s Witness children were expelled from Kanawha County schools. But the U.S. 
Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that West Virginia’s majority couldn’t force its beliefs on those 
who think differently.

 “‘Fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome 
of no elections,’ Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the historic West Virginia State Board 
of Education v. Barnette decision. . . . ‘If there is any fixed star in our constitutional 
constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in 
politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word 
or act their faith therein.’”

 Now this famed Mountain State ruling has been cited again in giving gays equal right to 
marry. Here are details:

 California’s Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that same-sex couples are entitled to wed. 
Swiftly, 18,000 such California couples got marriage licenses, but a conservative evangelical 
backlash erupted. More than $83 million was spent in a bitter campaign that ended with 52 
percent of voters passing Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage.

Equality advocates challenged Proposition 8 in federal court. 

 In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Walker ruled that gays are full American citizens, 
and the 14th Amendment gives all citizens equal rights. “No evidence backs the claim that 
gays shouldn’t marry,” the judge wrote. Proposition 8 was based solely on “the notion that 
opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples,’ he said, and ‘that there is something 
wrong with same-sex couples. . . . Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to 
deny rights to gay men and women.”

 “The 2008 election that narrowly passed Proposition 8 was irrelevant,” he said, citing the 
West Virginia ruling in Barnette that ‘fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.”

 Such a breakthrough ruling as Perry will certainly be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 
Although it is not certain how the high court might rule, it is more than likely that a swing 
vote by Anthony Kennedy--a Reagan appointee--will affirm Judge Walker’s decision.

 Kennedy’s concept of “liberty” has included some protections for sexual orientation. 
He wrote the Court’s opinion in the controversial 1996 case, Romer v. Evans, invalidating 
a provision in the Colorado Constitution denying homosexuals the right to bring local 
discrimination claims. 

 In 2003, he authored the Court’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated 
criminal prohibitions against homosexual sodomy under the due Process Clause of the 14th 
Amendment of the United States Constitution, overturning the Court’s previous ruling in 
1986’s Bowers v. Hardwick. In both cases, he sided with the more Liberal members of the 
Court. In Lawrence he also controversially referred to foreign laws, specifically ones enacted 
by the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights, in 
partly justifying its result.

 Judge Walker’s decision makes clear that gay equality is advancing steadily in America, 
as black equality and women’s equality did in the past. Morality evolves over time. A half-
century ago, it was a felony to be gay, and many were sent to prison. A quarter-century ago, 
gay sex became legal. Now gay marriage is on the horizon. The march toward gay equality 
is unstoppable.

 (Postscript: On Monday the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to stay Judge Walker’s 
decision until Dec. 6 when it would review the case. Let’s hope justice delayed is not justice 
denied.)

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Left Turn/Right Turn

GREG Welborn

Islamic Realities

HOWARD Hays 

As I See It

 
What does it mean when one side 
in a conflict preaches tolerance and the 
other preaches destruction? In the case 
of international relations, it usually 
means that one side isn’t dealing with 
reality. While I thought I wouldn’t be 
commenting again on the mosque at 
Ground Zero, the ongoing controversy 
has prompted a look at the bigger 
picture, and the view isn’t pretty.

 We now know a bit more about the 
Imam proposing the mosque and the 
group financing it, thanks in part to 
the public commentary of the current 
leader of Hamas. It now seems quite 
apparent that building a mosque so 
close to the site of the attack by Islamic 
radicals is just one more attempt to 
whittle away our resolve to defend our 
civilization. The fact that we have to 
defend our civilization is a reality that 
isn’t yet shared by our political leaders. 
Most of them are still framing the issue 
in the context of religious tolerance.

 That’s not to say all political leaders 
have been fooled. Harvard’s Samuel 
Huntington published a piece some 
years back in which he argued that 
we were in the midst of a “Clash 
of Civilizations”. He argued that 
recent history clearly showed that 3 
civilizations are vying for dominance: 
Western, Muslim and Confucian. 
He also predicted that the conflict 
was liable to heat up since 2 of these 
civilizations (Muslim and Confucian) 
didn’t share our devotion to peaceful 
coexistence. Remember, it only takes 
one antagonist to start a conflict.

 Clearly, leadership in the Muslim 
world has set themselves on the path 
of militarily taking on the west, just 
as the leadership in the Confucian 
world (China) is taking on the west 
economically. Neither shares our 
devotion to civil rights, political 
freedoms or democracy. Thus, who 
wins this conflict is damned important. 
Not to be too inflammatory, but the fate 
of the world hangs in the balance.

 The current administration, and 
many of the elites in the media and 
academia, insist on seeing the world 
through universalist eyes. Theirs is the 
belief that we are now at the point of 
history when all nations would move 
toward a more-or-less single political 
standard: that of liberal democracy. In 
such a world, the economic incentives 
toward greater cooperation would 
move all of us further away from armed 
conflict to the point where war would 
no longer be needed. 

 President Obama is just the most 
recent advocate of this universalist 
vision. He continues to state, as he 
did in his famous Cairo speech, that 
relations between the U.S. and the 
Muslim world would be based on 
mutual respect and on the recognition 
that American values and Islam are not 
in competition. 

 It’s a nice thought, 
but once you’ve 
extended the olive 
branch, it really 
is necessary for 
the other side to 
accept it and then 
to reciprocate. 
The president implicitly counted 
on moderate Muslim nations to do 
so. This just hasn’t happened. In 
fact, the radical elements in Islam 
(conservatively estimated at 20%... and 
growing) have only been emboldened 
by what they perceive as weakness. 
Their reality is a conflict – armed or 
otherwise – which must result in the 
imposition of Sharia law and custom in 
the U.S. and the west. Consider just a 
few examples.

 Turkey has been considered by 
many to be the most moderate Muslim 
nation, so we should expect some 
olive branches. Instead, Turkey’s 
president congratulated Iran on the 
results of their most recent corrupt 
election. Turkey sided with Brazil to 
scuttle U.N. sanctions against Iran for 
seeking nuclear weapons. Turkey also 
sponsored the “aid flotilla” to Gaza 
knowing that Israel would have to 
stop it forcefully. And many in Turkey 
are calling for a new Ottoman empire 
to lead the Muslim world against the 
West. 

 In Egypt, most major western 
intelligence services predict that if 
open elections were held, the radical 
Muslim Brotherhood would gain a slim 
majority of seats, if not outright control 
of the government. Saudi Arabia has 
invested approximately $2 billion per 
year for the last 30 years to spread 
its fundamentalist brand of Islam – 
itself responsible for almost all of the 
9-11 terrorists. Even Indonesia and 
Malaysia (Indonesia being the largest 
Muslim nation on the planet) have 
sizeable populations calling for the 
imposition of Sharia Law.

 Every day we seem to awake to 
yet another sign that those who are 
presently leading the Muslim world are 
stepping up the level of confrontation 
with the West. Much like Hitler’s 
strategy of the early 1930s, they are 
testing the limits. Every time they 
demand an accommodation which 
weakens our commitment to the 
unique values of our civilization or to 
our ability to defend ourselves, they 
are testing to see where, if anywhere, 
we will push back. Keep in mind 
that the West’s appeasement policies 
toward Hitler simply brought about a 
more destructive war than would have 
otherwise been the case. 

 It’s not that war then was inevitable. 
Historians point out that western 
resolve against Hitler earlier would 
have prevented him from amassing the

momentum (cont. on page 9)

 Lord knows, I’ve 
religiously avoided a 
certain topic while raising 
hell and spreading the 
gospel truth in these god-
forsaken times. I don’t 
know what relevance it 
would have under “Left Turn / Right Turn”, 
with those of us on the “left” primarily sharing 
a devotion to our Constitution and reverence 
for the principles outlined by our Founding 
Fathers. Most Christians I’ve known love their 
families, their country, and care about other 
people. I would say the same about Jews I’ve 
known. And Muslims. And Buddhists and 
Hindus, not to mention atheists and agnostics. 

 One thing we all are subject to is falling 
victim to stereotypes; whether of race, region 
or religion. My wife and I attend services 
at a Buddhist temple; our Buddhist sensei 
(teacher) for a primarily Japanese-American 
congregation is a Jewish-raised Vietnam vet 
with decidedly Republican political leanings.

 Often when we hear in the news of people 
doing bad things, even heinous acts of utter 
depravity, religion is somehow attached. There 
were events in the weeks prior to 9/11 that 
nowhere approached that scale, but remained 
in my consciousness nonetheless. In Northern 
Ireland, a group of men gathered to throw 
rocks at young girls. They were residents of 
a Protestant neighborhood who objected to 
students from a nearby Catholic girls’ school 
passing through their turf as they walked to 
class. The “men” who threw rocks at little girls 
were Protestant, the same religion I was raised 
in. They would call themselves “Christian”. 
In Saudi Arabia, casualties resulting from a 
fire at a girls’ dormitory were greater because 
members of a Muslim “religious” police, 
who arrived on the scene before firefighters, 
prevented residents from escaping whose 
bodies were deemed not to be sufficiently 
covered.

 Whatever conflicts there are between 
religions, they don’t seem as great as those 
taking place within. Is the Orthodox resident 
of an unauthorized West Bank settlement more 
Jewish than the Reform soldier in the Israeli 
Defense Forces sent to evict him? Is someone 
trying to enter an abortion clinic less Christian 
than the one waving a picture of a fetus in her 
face? And then there are the Muslims -

 A friend who recently moved to Thailand 
forwarded a column by author William 
Dalrymple, in which he describes the Muslim 
sect known as the Sufis. Dalrymple tells of the 
13th century Persian poet Rumi, a Sufi saint 
who wrote not of a certain sect in a certain 
religion, but of his belief that the world’s 
religions were “all manifestations of the 
same divine reality”. Rumi wrote of finding 
the divinity within each of us, in our hearts, 
rather than in mere adherence to the rituals 
of church, mosque or synagogue. Dalrymple 
characterizes these teachings as a “New 
Testament” of Islam, as they deal with love 
rather than judgment.

 Such teachings don’t sit well with other 
Muslims. Last month, the Pakistan Taliban 
pulled off a double-suicide bombing at the 
largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s 
second-largest city. 42 people were killed, 175 
injured. A Sufi cultural center in Lahore was 
bombed last May. Shrines dedicated to Sufi 
leaders outside Peshawar were destroyed by 
rocket fire.

 Darlymple says one of the most “devastating” 
attacks was the destruction of the shrine to the 
17th century poet/saint Rahman Baba (“We 
are all one body. / Whoever tortures another, 
wounds himself.”) in northwest Pakistan, at 
the foot of the Khyber Pass. Certain activities 
took place at this shrine that couldn’t be 
tolerated by other Muslims; there was music, 
there were songs - and women as well as men 
were welcomed to come and join in.

 About ten years ago, a Saudi-financed 
madrasa (religious school) was built on the 
path leading to the shrine. Soon, students 
would regularly come up to the shrine to harass 
worshipers for their “immoral” activities and 
tell the women to stay home. In March 2009, 
the shrine was destroyed by dynamite. The 
Pakistan Taliban took credit, saying it simply 
had to go for “allowing women to pray and 
seek healing there”.

 In Pakistan, the doctrinaire Wahhabis have 
become dominant in the northern part of the 
country, ever since we financed their fight 
against the Soviets in Afghanistan (which, 
at the time, was under threat of becoming a 
modern country - with secular government, 
an educated citizenry and equal rights for 
women). The Sufis continue to dominate in the 
south, where, for thousands of years, they’ve 
put their beliefs into practice by showing how 
Muslims and Hindus can get along just fine 
living together side by side.

 Amongst radical, jihadist Muslims, 
espousing Sufi doctrines of love and tolerance 
is not a matter of theological debate, but of 
risking your neck. Darlymple suggests that in 
the eyes of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, as 
well as the Taliban, any Sufi leader would be “a 
legitimate target for assassination”.

 Aside from religious interest, there are 
practical, real-world applications for such 
beliefs. A 2007 RAND Corporation study 
concluded that Sufis would be ideal “partners 
in the effort to combat Islamist extremism”. The 
sect’s most prominent American leader, Feisal 
Abdul Rauf, became the go-to guy in the wake 
of the 9/11 attacks. Speaking of other Muslims 
in an interview with Katie Couric on NBC in 
October 2001, he said, “We have to be very 
much more vocal in protecting human rights 
and planting the seeds of democratic regimes 
throughout the Arab and Muslim world.” In 
2003, the F.B.I. called him in as a consultant in 
dealing with the Muslim community. In 2007 
President Bush’s State Department sent him 
off to Morocco, Qatar, Egypt and the UAE to 
speak on religious tolerance and diversity.

 And now Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf plans 
on opening a Muslim cultural center in 
Manhattan.

 Last week Greg tried to make some 
connection with allowing churches and 
synagogues in Muslim countries. This has 
nothing to do with them. This has to do with 
us - for God’s sake. 

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