Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton publicly announced his support for gay marriage and wrote a check to Equality California to help fight Proposition 8, the ballot measure that would ban gay marriage in California. The Chief of Po-lice now supports gay marriage... Just remember Darryl Gates and think about that.
This follows similarly astonishing announcements of support for gay marriage by the Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders of San Diego, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and of course the original decision by the Republican-majority California Supreme Court. Moreover, two consecutive Field Polls have now found California voters rejecting Proposition 8 by a sizable margin, 51% - 42%. Even four years ago, this would have been unthinkable.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
An Officer and a Gentleman (or at least a smart Politician)
Posted by Dr. Strangelove at 10:50 PM
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4 comments:
It's like either you or LTG said on the blog a few months back...once people decide that Gay Marriage is the part of the new status quo, they'll get comfortable with it suprisingly quickly.
That was me.
I'm not surprised about Chief Bratton doing this. There's a political side to this in that African-American civic leaders here and elsewhere are often cool to the idea. Bernard Parks, former chief and African-American, would not have done so. As Mark Shields said of Obama's decision to hold his acceptance speech in an 80,000 seat football field: "The first rule of politics is to do what your opponent can't."
OTOH, if Bratton had opposed gay marriage, we would be wondering what right the chief of police had to inject himself in such things. So maybe that points up how political the decision is.
Not only is it a matter of the public getting used to the idea, it is fatigue over (excuse me for saying this Dr. S) non issues. The Republican Party made gay marriage an issue to squelch the discussion other terribly important issues like say Social Security and Medicare reform.
What gets me is that we have this huge national debate over gay marriage, but we don't have a huge national debate over these other things that quite frankly, are way more important to way more people. I don't mean to diminish the importance of gay marriage for Dr. S and the gay community, but really, it only affects a small segment of society where as the really big issues that effect everyone are left under the table. Gay marriage is a good whipping post because it requires little technical knowledge to discuss. Everyone can have an opinion without knowledge. It's low hanging fruit and it allows people to be lazy about the other stuff that requires a little more heavy lifting to become informed.
I hope that this latest trend in accepting things like gay marriage is a sign the public is telling the Republicans to sit down and shut up, a focus on the really big stuff.
Why did Bratton weigh in? I don't understand.
A gay couple whom Bratton and his wife have known for years just got married. As is so often the case, it is a personal thing that gets people to change their minds on this issue.
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