That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘california’

Joel Anderson, Republican assembly member, wants virtual globe services to blur potential targets:

“It struck me that a person in a tent halfway around the world could target an attack like that with a laptop computer…There’s got to be some common sense.”

Anderson is introducing a bill to enforce virtual map services (like Google Earth) to blur potential targets, such as schools, churches, government buildings, medical facilities and nuclear power stations.

Here’s what security blogger Bruce Schneier had to say about it:

The following three things are true about terrorism:
One, the number of potential terrorist targets is infinite. Two, the odds of the terrorists going after any one target is zero. And three, the cost to the terrorist of switching targets is zero.

The Californian Supreme Court has voted not to overturn the result of the referendum not to disallow the proposition about not banning unequal rights for non-heterosexuals… er, wait, I’ll try that again: Gay marriage isn’t happening in California yet, and the California Supreme Court says so.

Now, despite whether you agree or disagree with the proposition itself, the Court did exactly what it tells them to do in their job description. It is not their job to overturn the results of referenda. As Judge Joyce Kennard explained, changing the outcome of a referendum is not only difficult, but could set an unwanted precedent:

“The court should not willy-nilly disregard the will of the people to change the state constitution as they have in the past”

The public has spoken and, frankly, it’s their own bloody fault for holding a referendum in the first place. Just because lots of people think something is right, doesn’t mean it is right (cf. creationism) – and for those of us outside of California, it’s worth noting that LA and San Francisco are pretty much the only bits of that state that contain liberal/centrist voters: the rest of it is conservative Christianity as far as the eye can see.

This entire argument aside (and here’s where I finally get to my points)

1. To the activists: I might just like to mention that California already has a law in place that provides something called Domestic Partnerships. These contain many of the provisions of old-fashioned het marriage, but with the only problem that outside of that jurisdiction, those partnerships are only valid in places where similar laws already exist. It’d be a minor hurdle for states across the US to simply recognise Domestic Partnerships instead.

2. To the people who say that this will “destroy marriage”: it’s only a word. Get used to it.