Opinion: In today’s pages: Rights, revolutions, and the (Canadian) thought police
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Columbia professor Todd Gitlin remembers the revolutions of 1968, and columnist Jonah Goldberg takes a look at Canada’s lefty thought police. American Jewish Congress general counsel Marc D. Stern asks if gay marriage rights trample religious freedom:
...the government has acted in some way to forbid gays and lesbians from being demeaned. But allowing same-sex couples to force religious individuals or organizations to act out of accord with their faith is not cost-free either. Their dignity is no less affected. Unless claims rooted in equal protection under the law are to sweep away claims rooted in freedom of religion, a more sensitive balancing approach is essential.
The editorial board praises a state bill that doles out proposition funds based on smart growth, and writes at length in support of gay couples getting married across the state today:
Their long odyssey to reach this day serves to remind us why people marry at all, especially in an era of casual relationships. As any married person can attest, marriage is significant precisely because it is difficult. True, it confers certain public protections, but even more, it requires personal sacrifices. If mutual affection and appreciation were enough to sustain relationships across the years, there would be no need for solemn vows of fidelity. Those vows protect many a marriage through many a rough patch; when two people agree to enter into such a union, it by rights should carry the name and honor of marriage, whether it’s between people of opposite sex or between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman.
On the letters page, readers discuss reasons behind gang violence in L.A., particularly Sheriff Lee Baca’s claim that it’s all about race. Carson’s Patrice Leflore says, ‘Wake up, people. We have a racial war going on.’ But L.A.’s Bethany Leal argues, ‘As a social justice activist who works to combat the continual and false depictions of people of color and immigrants en masse as violent criminals, I was horrified by Baca’s remarks.’
*Art by Henrik Drescher