Opinion: In today’s pages: Gay rights, binge drinking and the Vatican
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Archbishop Raymond Burke in a June 2008 photo (AP Photo/Tom Gannam)
The editorial board goes for the Provocation Trifecta today.
First, it praises the California Supreme Court for declaring that doctors cannot refuse care to a person based on sexual orientation. That ruling came in a lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed a San Diego County obstetrics and gynecology group refused to artificially inseminate her because she’s a lesbian. Second, it expresses hope that Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis will be too busy in his new job at the Vatican to meddle in U.S. elections. Burke is best known for declaring during the 2004 campaign that fellow Catholic John Kerry should be denied communion because he supported abortion rights. Finally, it urges lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age to help colleges and universities combat an epidemic of binge drinking. (Take the poll!) Don’t bottle up your outrage -- post your comments here, or at the bottom of each editorial.
On the Op-Ed page, scholar Mark Paul of the New American Foundation details how California voters could drive the state much more deeply into the red in November by approving one or more costly propositions:
Leave aside whether these measures are worthy as policy. Just look at the dollars involved. If voters pass all six, we will cumulatively add about $2.7 billion a year in bond debt service and direct state spending to the budget -- without including an extra dime to pay for them.
Columnist Rosa Brooks accuses neocons of trying to revive the Cold War, although she stops short of blaming them for the Russian invasion of Georgia. (That’s so last week!) Michael Kleinman, a veteran of humanitarian efforts in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, discusses the uptick in direct attacks on aid workers in and around war zones. And columnist Patt Morrison gives at least seven good reasons for the quadrennial political conventions to move from the real world to the virtual one:
I’ve been to four or five party parties, and I’m convinced that there’s almost nothing that happens in the hall that needs to take place in real life and real time anymore. Like the ‘footprint’ fireworks at the Chinese Olympics, political conventions could be crafted entirely in a computer.
Right on! My avatar is ready, whenever the Dems and the GOP are.