4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 10, 2006
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DPINION
DONN M. FRESARD
Editor in Chief
EMILY BEAM
CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK
Editorial Page Editors
JEFFREY BLOOMER
Managing Editor
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890
' n { r413 E. HURON
ANN ARBOR, MI 48104
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other
signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their author.
FiWM THE DAILY
Blocked again
Adverse court rulings hinder gay marriage
NOTABLE QUOTABLE
He clearly
has used his
position, but
who hasn't?"
- A former Congressional page who says
he had consensual sex at age 21 with former
Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), speaking on condition of
anonymity, as reported yesterday by latimes.com.
KATIE GARLINGHOUSE 1>U1 E ARt5
C L}
K
The DeVos con game
TOBY MITCHELL
Gay marriage advocates in Cali-
fornia were disappointed yet'
again Thursday with the rever-
sal of a San Francisco judge's ruling
against the state's ban on same-sex
marriage. The ruling by the state 1st
District Court of Appeals reflected the
mentality of many gay-marriage oppo-
nents, stating that it was up to the state
Legislature, not the judiciary, to deter-
mine the definition of marriage. Left
to public opinion, however, it seems
that legalizing same-sex marriage is
a long.way off. Given current trends
and the success of state ballot initia-
tives, it's clear that much of America
isn't "ready" for same-sex marriage.
But waiting the necessary decades for
public opinion to come around, as the
court alluded to, isn't acceptable so
long as a group of citizens are denied
not only the right to marry, but equal
protection under the law as well.
In last week's decision, the court
argued: "The time may come when Cali-
fornia chooses to expand the definition of
marriage to encompass same-sex unions.
That change must come from democratic
processes, however, not by judicial fiat."
In giving unjustified credence to the
unsubstantiated claim that many judges
engage in "judicial activism," the court
handed the power to determine who is
granted equal protection under state law
to the people of California. But one has
to question how "democratic" the demo-
cratic processes the court promotes truly
are. Ballot proposals, which spawned the
gay marriage bans in the first place, are
frequently misleading. The gay marriage
ban in Michigan was also fraught with
misleading statements and ads. Inishort,
sometimes the democratic processes gay-
marriage opponents urge their counter-
parts to pursue are less than perfectly
fair.
Even if such ballot initiatives were a
true gauge of majority public opinion,
that should not mean that in this case
the majority should rule. Prohibiting
a group of citizens from receiving the
legal, social and personal benefits of
marriage appears on its face to violate
their right to equal protection under
the 14th Amendment. Until the U.S.
Supreme Court rules that to be the
case, however, challenges to gay-mar-
riage bans may continue to be shot
down in state and federal courts.
Because California has a domes-
tic partner law that provides most
of the same rights to gay couples as
to married heterosexual couples, the
marriage ban was ruled non-discrimi-
natory. But this is not the case in other
states where similar bans have passed
- including Michigan, where repeat-
ed attempts to amend the state's civil
rights law to prohibit discrimination
on the basis of sexual orientation have
died in committee. Even in California,
gay couples are still denied at least one
right: the ability to marry as hetero-
sexual couples do.
The California ruling is a self-admit-
ted postponement of the inevitable, and
the California Supreme Court would
be more true to the Constitution if it
overturns the ban. As it stands right
now, gays in California and across the
country are denied equal rights and
equal protection. While millions of
Americans wait for the general public
and its representatives to come around
without a legal avenue to prevent dis-
crimination, it is up to activists to keep
the momentum going in the fight for
equal rights.
Y ou're
walk-
ing
down the
streetwhen
a man
catches
your atten-
tion. He
says you
can dou-
ble your
money if'you beat him at a sim-
ple game. He puts a pea under a
shell and starts shuffling. Just as
he really gets moving he points
and shouts: "Look! Queers get-
ting married!" Sound familiar?
I just described the Michigan
Republican electoral strategy.
Republican gubernatorial can-
didate Dick DeVos has tried to
hard to appear moderate, and
sometimes it's difficult to tell him
and Democratic Gov. Jennifer
Granholm apart. They both want
to diversify the economy, they
both want jobs for Michigan, and
so on. But he's been pretty slip-
pery when it comes to the cultural
issues that rile up the Republican
base. A closer look shows why.
The DeVos family gave
$100,000 to the ballot initia-
tive to ban gay marriage, gave
$125,000 to a group that opposes
abortion even in cases of rape or
incest and publicly backed "intel-
ligent design." DeVos may not
personally believe in these posi-
tions, but his interest in them is a
classic campaign gimmick: Dis-
tract the electorate with cutesy
cultural issues and never address
the real ones.
A headline in the satirical
newspaper The Onion summed
up the way it works: "Nation's
poor win election for nation's
rich." The GOP needs to appeal
to working-class cultural con-
servatives to win elections, but
when it comes to meeting their
demands or improving their
lives, they're ignored. As long
as you can aim working people's
VIEWPOINT
C{
resentment at scapegoats, they
may never notice that you're far
more responsible for their misery
than are freeloading minorities
or marryin' queers.
Of course, this is an over-
simplification; the GOP also
relies on the vanity and greed
of pompous, pseudo-intellectual
upper-crust conservatives. They
provide rhetorical and monetary
support for regressive initiatives
like anti-union "right to work"
laws and the elimination of the
estate tax - and they're the ones
who stand to benefit most from a
DeVos win.
Do we really want the same
social circle that ran the Big
Three into the ground in charge
of our state? Michigan's econ-
omy is tanking thanks to the
incestuous, overly conservative
management of the Companies
Formerly Known as the Big
Three. Former Chrysler chief
Lee Iacocca endorsed DeVos, as
if the support of the executive
who presided over Chrysler's
near-bankruptcy is a good thing.
Iacocca's involvement illustrates
the nasty entitlement mental-
ity of Michigan's conservatives;
when he couldn't fix Chrysler, he
had Reagan bail them out on the
taxpayers' dime.
Do we really want a gover-
nor who made his millions with
a disingenuous sales scheme
that appeals to the frustration
of working people? Michigan
Republicans believes he's well-
qualified for the job. They sold
the gay marriage ban by appeal-
ing to homophobia and are try-
ing to sell a ban on affirmative
action with bit of con-artist fast
talk that it somehow actually
supports civil rights. They're
exploiting Michigan's exciting
history of race relations, as a
letter published in the Escanaba
Daily Press from Brian Panne-
becker, a co-chair of the Macomb
County MCRI organization,
illustrates. After discussing "the
University of Michigan's use of
racial preferences and quotas in
its admissions policy that pre-
vented (MCRI Chair Jennifer
Gratz) from being admitted to U.
of M. because she is white," Pan-
nebecker states:
"The result is that we still have
a state policy that discriminates
against more qualified appli-
cants in favor of less qualified
Blacks."
Don't worry about losing your
job at an auto company while its
leadership's failure is rewarded
with multi-million-dollar sever-
ance packages - a black could
take your kid's place at college!
If you care whether your kid
attends college or not, that is: A
survey conducted by the Detroit
News showed only 27 percent of
Michiganders believe a college
education is essential for success,
and nearly half don't care if their
kids go to college. This is good
for Michigan Republicans; they
need Michigan's undereducated
goobers to stay ignorant enough
to vote for them. In this, they're
not so different from the national
Republican Party.
The state desperately needs
to diversify its economy, and it
needs to get together and fix the
post-apocalyptic hellscape we
call Detroit without the stupid
racial blame-shifting. Initiatives
like the gay marriage ban and
MCRI only serve to reinforce
the message that our redneck
prejudices are more important
to us than the diverse young
professionals who might other-
wise want to live here and help
grow our economy. If we're seri-
ous about getting back into the
game, we need to stop falling
for this con job and stand up for
candidates who won't take us for
fools. I think Michigan deserves
it; I just hope Michigan feels the
same way.
Mitchell can be reached
at toami@umich.edu.
4
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR t"Send aall letts to the ditor to
LETTES TOTHE EITOR tothedily@michigandaly.com-.
4
Some at Daily were aware of
facts months before story ran
TO THE DAILY:
I find it odd that the Daily needed to rely on
Andrew Yahkind and Michael Brooks to inform
its writer about Brooks's involvement with Mich-
igamua when the Daily's editor in chief has had
that information for months.
Jason Pesick
Alum
The letter writer is aformer
editor in chief of The Michigan Daily.
Detainees' Just a euphemism
for enemy combatants
TO THE DAILY:
I read Gary Graca's viewpoint (An open let-
ter to Senator Stabenow, 10/05/2006), and I feel
the need to address some words he used. Graca
repeatedly refers to the people at Guantinamo
as "detainees," "prisoners," "soldiers" - and
in one sentence even went as far to call them
"innocent civilians."
This is simply amazing. Graca seems to
explicitly go out of his way to call the people
in Gitmo anything but what they rightfully are.
The administration uses the warm-sounding,
politically correct term "enemy combatants" for
those that I and many other Americans like to
call terrorists.
Jeremy Holtsclaw
Rackham
Viewpoint misguided about
Stabenow's motives for vote
TO THE DAILY:
In his viewpoint An Open Letter to Sena-
tor Stabenow, (10/05/2006) Gary Graca gross-
ly mischaracterized Sen. Debbie Stabenow's
(D-Mich.) vote for the Military Commissions
Act of 2006. I certainly will not argue that the
Military Commissions Act is a perfect piece
of legislation - hardly any law coming from
this Republican Congress is. However, this new
law deserves to be acknowledged for its many
merits.
What Graca neglected to mention in his
piece is that this act codifies procedures that
President Bush's military commissions must
now follow. These measures govern pretrial
and trial proceedings, rules of evidence and
sentencing requirements. Given that Bush's
military commissions are already constitution-
ally suspect, enumerated procedures can only
be seen as a welcome improvement.
But let's look at the even larger picture. We
shouldn't point the finger at Stabenow. Instead,
we should again note that the Republicans,
by playing partisan politics, forced this coun-
try between a rock and a constitutional crisis.
Stabenow's numerous votes in favor of amend-
ing this bill displayed her honest commitment
to upholding the Constitution and basic human
rights. Republicans, on the other hand, have
failed to show strong leadership in the areas of
civil liberties and human rights.
We can change this, though, when we go to
the polls on Nov. 7. Let's re-elect Stabenow,
a Democrat who has dedicated her life to the
residents of Michigan. In doing so, not only
do we show our support for progressive poli-
cies, but we also send a message to Republicans
that national office is not the place for playing
games with basic American freedoms - it's for
making improvements.
Samuel Harper
LSA junior
The letter writer is the chair of
Students for Stabenow.
University less committed to
diversity than it might appear
TO THE DAILY:
While recent writers in The Michigan Daily
certainly don't agree in their opinions on the
Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, they certainly
do all base their arguments on some confused
notion that the University as it is now (or as it
was eight years ago) supports the affirmative
action movement. I'm curious as to how this mis-
conception came about, given that the University
seems fairly uninterested in ethnic and gender
equality.
This is most evident in the University's spe-
cial programs. While the University states its
support of affirmative action, it actively accepts
an unfortunately bland group of applicants for,
say, its Honors Program. From a fairly unaffect-
ed standpoint, I have to say, it's pretty clear that
the University cares more about the funding that
racial and gender politics provide and less about
actively solving institutional racism and sexism
in the world today.
The University can talk about the fairness of
its admissions standards all it wants, but until it
applies the same philosophy to the Residential
College, the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, the
Honors Program, etc., I'm not going to buy a
word of it. And no matter where you stand on the
issue, you can at least see where the University
really stands: wherever the money is.
Becca Sonday
Engineering sophomore
Traditions, like people,
ontinue to learn and grow
BY MICHAEL BROOKS
Two years ago, I was approached by the orga-
nization formerly known as Michigamua to serve
as its advisor with the title Honorary Angell. I
thought they said "Honorary Angel" and was some-
what chagrined to learn that the Angell in question
was the third president of the University and not a
divine emissary.
I would not ordinarily submit an opinion piece to
The Michigan Daily - I have only done so once in
the past 25 years - but there is pain in our com-
munity that needs to be addressed. First there is the
understandable pain of members of our community
who have seen their own traditions - and in some
measure their identities - disrespected by some of
the past practices of this organization. There is also
the pain of some students who have found them-
selves disrespected for affiliating with an organiza-
tion whose members have worked so long and hard to
move beyond that piece of its history.
When I was first asked to become an advisor and
honorary member I declined, largely because of
what I had heard about the controversy surround-
ing the organization. I would have shunned contact
with any group connected in any way with racist
practices, and all the more so if they demeaned
Native Americans. I grew up in Spokane, Wash-
ington, and spent a lot of time on the reservation
there. Indeed, it was the example of the Spokane
Indians - their pride in who they were and their
rich traditions - that helped to inspire my lifelong
commitment to my own people and their tradi-
tions. I was troubled by what I had heard about the
organization's use of faux-Indian rituals and both
understood and shared the discomfort others felt
about it.
Before the members of the group renewed their
invitation to me a year later, I had taken time to learn
ERIN RUSSELL JOY
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more about them. I expressed my concerns to them and
was assured that those practices had been repudiated
and abandoned a generation ago. I was surprised to
learn that some of the members were students I knew
well enough to be certain that they also would not be
associated with some of the organization's practices
in years past. They also told me that the organization
was committed to concluding a process of having a
transparent membership, selecting a new name and
more clearly articulating and embracing its historic
mission of humble service to the University, and that
they very much wanted my guidance in that process.
The 24 members of this organization do not con-
sider themselves the best campus leaders or the
only ones worthy of membership. When last year's
seniors devoted several weeks to selecting the class
of '07, I was powerfully struck by the scores of
names they considered for membership - students
who had demonstrated exemplary leadership in a
broad array of organizations - and was equally
impressed by their consideration of ethnic, racial,
gender and religious diversity along with demon-
strated leadership skills. It is difficult for me to
reconcile some of the charges of racism still lev-
eled at a student organization that is arguably one
of the most diverse on campus.
While I did not fully appreciate the time com-
mitment involved when I accepted the group's invi-
tation, I am honored to have been able to play a role
in this ongoing process. President James B. Angell
probably could not have imagined the transforma-
tion of the group he helped found 104 years ago,
but I have no doubt that he would recognize their
continued passionate commitment to service to the
University, and I believe that he would be honored
as well.
Brooks is the executive director of
University of Michigan Hillel.
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