A compendium of random thoughts regarding politics, society, feminism, sex, law, and anything else on my mind. POST YOUR COMMENTS BY CLICKING ON THE TIME INDICATOR BELOW THE POST YOU WISH TO COMMENT ON. RSS FEED AVAILABLE AT http://feeds.feedburner.com/Dilanblogspotcom

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OVERTURNING GRAY DAVIS' ELECTION:
Over the past 20 years, the California Republican Party, once strong and proud and able to elect Earl Warren, Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, and Pete Wilson to the Governor's office, has become a shell of itself. The reason for this is simple. California is a pretty liberal state. We are tolerant of gays, not particularly religious, not entirely committed to the War on Drugs, and supportive of government spending on services. There are some exceptions to this-- Californians don't like taxes, and many Californians don't like illegal immigrants-- but on a whole, the state is certainly a Blue state.

In most Blue states, the Republicans thrive by moving towards a more libertarian bent. For instance, liberal Maine has two GOP Senators-- Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins-- but both of them are social liberals and fiscal moderates. But here in California, the only voters to regularly vote in Republican primaries are neanderthal conservatives. Thus, Ms. Snowe or Ms. Collins would never be able to win a Republican primary here. As a result, Republicans lost every statewide office in the most recent elections, and just about the only elected Republicans here are Congressmen, state Senators, and Assemblymen who represent safe seats filled with gerrymandered hard-right conservative voters.

I don't want to imply that every elected Republican in California is a far-right wacko-- David Drier, for instance, hails from a conservative Pomona district but is a very smart and fundamentally decent congressman. But Rep. Drier is the exception-- most elected Republicans in this state are far, far to the right of Californians as a whole.

Gray Davis has capitalized on this. Twice, he has beaten candidates who are too far to the right to be elected Governor of California. In 1998, he beat Dan Lungren, and in 2002, Bill Simon (who in addition to being an extreme right-winger, was also an incompetent camaigner). Not too many people really like Davis here; rather, he was elected both times as the lesser of two evils.

But there are two important points here. First, a lesser of two evils winner is not illegitimate-- voters may have longed for a better choice, but Davis won his elections fair and square. And if Davis was so horrible a governor, they could have thrown him out in 2002. Second, the Republicans' losses are their own fault-- they are unable to nominate candidates palatable to the majority of Californians. Only if they continue to lose elections will the GOP learn its lesson and shift to where the votes are. (This is something that happened at the national level to Democrats with Bill Clinton.)

But, of course, the ideologues in the California Republican Party do not want to shift. So, instead, they have produced the silver bullet-- California's 1911 recall law, which has never been used against a sitting governor. Basically, if the Republicans can get enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot (and that is easy to do if the money is spent), they can have a yes-no vote on Davis along with a second vote on a list of candidates. It is very possible for unpopular Davis to be removed in a yes-no vote (where he doesn't have the advantage of running against an extremist Republican candidate), and it is possible for someone to win the recall election off the list of candidates with far less than 50 percent of the vote.

This is a perversion of democracy. It amounts to the Republicans saying that because they were unable to get their act together and nominate a moderate candidate to beat Gray Davis, they get to waste the taxpayers' money (special elections cost big bucks) creating an election under more favorable rules that might allow a right-winger with only narrow support among the electorate to sneak in and become the next Governor of California.

Further, it would set a horrible precedent-- I would assume that the Democrats would not wait long to launch another recall effort to knock out the illegitimate Republican victor of the special election.

You don't have to think that Gray Davis is the best possible Governor to recognize that he should be permitted to serve his 4 year term and that Republicans should find a candidate who could contest for the seat in 2006 and be palatable to the majority of Californians. Perhaps Rep. Drier could run.
posted by Dilan at 2:04 PM

 
THE SCARSDALE, N.Y. PROM:

I am not a huge advocate of abstinence programs. I think that while teenage pregnancy is a huge problem, and teenage venereal disease is a serious one, teenage sex is inevitable and not, if conducted responsibly, particularly problematic at all. At the same time, I don't think schools should sponsor events that make drunken, unprotected sexual experimentation more likely among teenagers, either. This isn't really a moral objection so much as it is a public health objection-- teenagers should be encouraged, indeed browbeaten if necessary, into having sex only in circumstances where no pregnancy or disease transmission will result. (And that includes married teenagers-- because teenage mothers are vulnerable, teenage marriages don't last very long and are often abusive, and childbearing tends to stop the educational process even for married teenagers, society really shouldn't encourage married teenagers to have kids either.)

Which brings me to the Scarsdale, NY Junior / Senior prom. The high school there discovered something that everyone who has turned 18 in the last 30 years knows-- that teenagers hire limos to take them to the prom so that they can drink before hand, and hire limos to take them back to post-prom parties so that they can drink some more. The school, in a decision unpopular with some students, decided to bus the students to and from the proms. This is a salutary decision. There are lots of good reasons to ban limos from the prom. The school's reason-- to stop teenage drinking-- is perfectly sound. Additionally, proms have become a platform for students with affluent parents to outdo each other in flaunting their affluence. Students with rich parents already feel superior enough to other students without schools sponsoring an activity that permits such a brazen exhibition of unearned wealth. Limos are a big part of that.

But I think the best reason of all to stop this is one not mentioned by the folks in Scarsdale at all. Proms are a coming of age ritual that formalize sexual activity. The last thing that teenagers need is to formalize sexual activity. What do I mean by that? Proms are a huge event, in which teenagers are treated like adults, dress up like adults, travel like wealthy adults, and often rent hotel rooms afterward like adults. They also drink like they imagine adults to drink. Many of these teenagers are going to the prom with people whom they have been dating awhile; a lot of them probably think the relationship will last forever. (Teenagers often tend to have unrealistic romantic expectations.) Put these elements all together and this is a recipe for unprotected sex. Too drunk to use protection (and in any event, not dressed or with a transportation option that allows for the easy purchase of a prophylactic), and on a night that has to be made "special". I would assume quite a large number of teenagers lose their virginity on prom night, and a significant number of those sexual encounters are unprotected and drunken.

Of course, teenagers who want to have sex will always find ways to do it; that is true. But there's nothing wrong with a school putting its foot down and constructing school-sponsored activities in a manner that decreases the likelihood that teens will leave the event drunk (or about to get drunk) and heading off to hotel rooms to consecrate the evening's festivities.

Every culture has its coming of age festivities-- Bar Mitzvas, quinceneros, and the like-- so the prom is probably here to stay. But schools who really want to do something about harmful teenage sex should probably get off the abstinence kick and reform the ground rules of an event that in its current form, makes such activities almost a foregone conclusion.
posted by Dilan at 1:44 PM