The California Supreme Court has declared war on traditional marriage, if the religious right and other social conservatives are to be believed.

The court last month ruled that prohibiting gay couples from state-recognized marriage violates that state’s constitution. Last week, the court refused to stop its May 15 order that local and state officials sanction gay marriage until California voters decide this November whether to amend the state constitution to specify that marriage be between one man and one woman.

Gay couples will be able to get a California-sanctioned marriage beginning June 16. Given the court’s failure to act, voters’ failing to protect marriage this November not only won’t keep gay couples from exchanging state-recognized vows in California, but heterosexual marriage will cease to exist and otherwise straight children will have no choice but to be gay. (more…)

How to explain the difference?

On Jan. 4, a Lima police SWAT team raid left a mother of six shot dead. Police broke into the home of Tarika Wilson, 26, to carry out a drug raid against her boyfriend, Anthony Terry, who since has pleaded to charges and is off to prison. Per the “wisdom” dispensed in some opinion pieces and over the airwaves, Wilson’s death was her own fault. Put yourself in the wrong situation, the “logic” goes, and you own the results.

Not four months later, on the night of April 29, a drive-by shooting killed a 38-year-old mother of three, Wendy Westergaard, on West Market Street. Police last week said it’s possible Westergaard let a dealer use her vehicle in exchange for drugs. The shooter — still unidentified — might have recognized Westergaard’s Jeep Cherokee, killing Westergaard only because she was in it.

No one has blamed Westergaard for her own death at someone else’s hands. (more…)

Those doing business in Lima — and, more importantly, those not yet there — are about to get a refresher on compromise with City Council.

Anger over a proposed casino, a police shooting and, most recently, the prayer duel between Councilman Tom Tebben and Councilman Tommy Pitts might dilute the memory. Compromise, at least as Tebben and Council President John Nixon define it, goes like this: (more…)

“An ancient sage valued himself upon this, that, though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little one. The science that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate, is the very reverse.”

So Benjamin Franklin in 1773 began his “Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to A Small One (Rules for Reducing, taken from the Web site of the Oakland, Calif., school district’s teaching American history project, www.teachingamericanhistory.us/).” Franklin satirically offered 20 rules to ruin the British Empire. He surely wouldn’t mind a latter day simpleton borrowing the satire to offer 20 new rules to show how Lima is moving closer to its own worst-case scenario. (more…)

Anyone wondering why some don’t think Lima can solve its racial issues by itself should consider this:

“Last week, we discussed one of the major problems we face in attempting to hire minority group members as police officers. We stated that the principal problem is an economic one because we cannot offer salaries comparable to private industry.

“There are other facets to the problem, and we would like to point out some of them. There can be no question that there is a certain degree of distrust of the police prevailing within the black community of virtually every city. Unfortunately, this distrust is not completely without some basis in fact. (more…)