A Rambling Beef About Gays, ‘Unnatural’ Heifers

Now that state officials get a 4% raise come December, what do we get for our money?

One payoff moment: An Assembly debate on a bill to ban discrimination against gay students in public schools elicited from cattleman Pete Frusetta (R-Tres Pinos) this speech, excerpted:

“Well, I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cattle. . . . In my lifetime, I’ve probably seen three and maybe at the top four . . . that had the hormonal imbalance of being . . . unnatural. . . . It must be some hormonal imbalance in these heifers that make them shy away from bulls and take up with other heifers and act just like a bull would. . . . The cowboys in their long days will get a joke out of it because it’s so odd. I really believe that we’re going down a very dangerous path here. Over the years, we have all become more tolerant. I remember when to live . . . cohabitate with a woman, man and woman . . . was something that wasn’t mentioned . . . and where has this path led us? It’s led to the disintegration of many of our other moral values. . . . I say that we should, in fact, be tolerant . . . and I would also remind you of the beauty of a relationship with a best friend . . . but . . . I caution you all very gravely that when those relationships go beyond friendship and intimacy and become sexual . . . then we are crossing the bonds of what I think our society today will accept and will tolerate. . . .”

As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, if he had a point, he wasn’t sharing it with the rest of us.

The Thrifty State

California is home to eight of the top 10 savings and loans in the nation. Here they are, ranked by total assets as of March 31.

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ASSETS DEPOSITS THRIFT (in millions) (in millions) 1.Home Savings of America, Irwindale $48.1 $34.7 2.Great Western Bank, Chatsworth $40.1 $28.0 3.California Federal Bank, S.F. $30.4 $16.4 4.American Savings Bank, Stockton $22.8 $12.7 5.World Savings & Loan, Oakland $19.7 $8.5 6.World Savings Bank, Oakland $18.5 $14.6 7.The Dime Savings Bank of New York $18.4 $12.6 8.Citibank, Federal Savings Bank, S.F. $16.8 $12.8 9.Standard Federal Bank, Troy, Mich. $15.7 $11.5 10.Glendale Federal Bank, Glendale $15.4 $9.1

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Source: Office of Thrift Supervision, U.S. Treasury Department

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

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The 13th juror?

A death row inmate convicted 16 years ago of murdering his pregnant wife for her life insurance wants a new trial. Michael Hamilton thinks one juror was influenced by the outlaw career of her uncle, who supposedly robbed banks and killed two dozen people in the last century before he was lynched.

A September hearing will consider whether Geneva Gholston was capable of being unbiased. Gholston, now 79, told the Fresno Bee she did talk to her dead uncle during the trial, “but we don’t converse or anything like that. People talk to God, Joseph and the Virgin Mary, so what’s the difference if I talk with Uncle Frank?”

Anything else is “nonsense.”

The defense contends that Gholston was told by Uncle Frank Martin “to serve on this jury and avenge Michael Hamilton’s crimes.” An affidavit, which Gholston said she was tricked into signing, says she felt her uncle had “reassured me that giving the death penalty was the right decision.”

Justice is already blind. Is it relative, too?

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Bustamante, unfiltered: Richard Nixon’s smoking gun was a spool of audio tape. Is Cruz Bustamante’s smoking gun a cigarette?

GOP staffers were posing for pictures on the Capitol lawn when they noticed the Democratic Assembly speaker lighting up on a balcony--coincidentally, at the same time Gov. Pete Wilson was signing Bustamante’s bill allowing the state to join in tobacco company lawsuits! (Bustamante’s puffery last made news when he told of dining with the governor, and both men lighting up after dessert.)

The staffers gleefully took pictures and called the shocked and astonished press. What’s next, grainy video of Frank Gifford lobbying for the peripheral canal?

In the no-smoking Capitol one day last year, Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) was leaning out his office window for a fast drag when Smog Check II demonstrators spotted him and began chanting, “Get to work, get to work!”

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One offs: Palm Springs’ space-age Tramway Oasis gas station, on deck to become a landscaped entrance to a golf resort, has instead been designated a historic site by the City Council. . . . The state’s hundredth “S.S. Relief,” a floating restroom for boaters and anglers, has been launched on Pyramid Lake. . . . Paramedics crossing the crime-scene cordon around a woman’s body at China Beach found that she wasn’t just lying on the sand--she was sand, an anatomically convincing sand sculpture. . . . Two Fresno teenagers were arrested for burglary after locals spotted them trundling down the street pushing a wheelbarrow full of TVs, purses, jewelry and money. . . . A Spring Valley man pleading guilty to lewd conduct with horses--among them a mare belonging to the San Diego Zoo’s Joan Embery--has been ordered to keep away from livestock.

EXIT LINE

“The science graduate will ask, ‘Why does that work?’ the engineering graduate, ‘How does it work?’ the economic graduate, ‘What does it cost?’ and the liberal arts graduate, ‘Do you want French fries with that hamburger?’ ”

--Questions that Stanford grads will face in their careers, from commencement speaker and Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer. He also did the macarena and shared hotelier Conrad Hilton’s life-altering advice: Remember to put the shower curtain inside the bathtub.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.