Boston Globe Poll

The Boston Globe is sponsoring a poll on the following question:

Do you think a question on banning gay marriage should be on the state ballot?

No, the state courts have spoken on the subject.

Yes, the proponents have gathered enough signatures and are following the process.

The poll is entirely unscientific and unlikely to produce data of any importance.  Nevertheless, petition sponsors have sent out an email blast asking people to "Please visit the Boston Globe website and vote YES in this poll today."

Want to vote?  Here's a link to the poll.

Aaron Toleos, Director

Comments

[John Hosty]

Looks like the proof is in the pudding. Vote and you can see where the vote is at. Currently it is 51.4% in FAVOR of gay marriage!!!

[Ghengis Cohen]

If you think this is an unbiased poll, then you have nothing to worry, right? :D Let it go to the people.

[John Hosty]

We have had this conversation before. It is not going to make it out of the court room. End of story, no more appeasing the masses at the expense of equality. Then we will all get on with our lives, and perhaps some of us will walk away better people for the experience.

[Tom Lang]

Ghengis,

KnowThyNeighbor really has no choice if it "goes to the people." However, what I have control over is giving "the people" who would be losing their rights and protections a voice.

Kris Mineau may think that his 140,000 "are shouting." he should be prepared for a shout back.

Tom Lang, Director

[Ghengis Cohen]

"We have had this conversation before. It is not going to make it out of the court room."

And this is always where the conversation ends, after I ask for a link to the explanation of why the courts will block it ... are you counting on the Court's bias on your behalf to save the day, or is there an actual legal argument why 70+K valid signatures should not fly?

Agreed Tom, and again I commend you for that project. Let the people speak is at least as important as let the people vote.

[Callie Wise]

Tom, I commend you for what you are doing. I wish this is something that could be done in every state, even for the ones voting on these issues. If these folks feel so strongly about it, certainly they don't mind sharing their names in public.

[Tom Lang]

Thank you Ghengis. But just a little clarification on my part. I do not believe that "the people" should vote on what I consider an equal rights issue.

But what will be determined by a power greater than me (our Democracy) is whether or not the people will get to vote and whether or not this is deemed an equal rights issue. That being said, the freedom and Constitutionally protected right of free speech cannot and will not be denied to anyone, especially my fellow gays and lesbians.

Thank you for understanding this.

[Tom Lang]

Hi Callie,

Thank you. What we do here in Massachusetts will reflect in every other state. That is why Aaron and I started KnowThyNeighbor. The first and most important barrier to overcome for all of us is that we need not look at our feet when we say who we are. The time of whispering and shame is over. The open dialogue that KnowTHyNeighbor will be creating when we post the names hopefully will begin this process.

[Chris]

Well, its good to hear that homosexuals are still considered people to you Ghengis. Perhaps this will have some implications... As people they have the right to vote. Possibly they should have other rights the heterosexuals have.

[mark]

What a wonderful evening with opposite-sex couple neighbors, friends and family. Now, I must confess. Eggplant did not have much to do with our family diet up to this point. But since yesterday, it will be a staple in the diet.

We hope that many who observed the special day with family and friends will share today.

[mark]

Genghis Cohen - with all the postings yesterday, maybe you did not see this posting. Will you answer us? Considering your posting to Cherie and Tim especially, we are very interested in your clarifications. The questions are as follows:

These questions were posed to you yesterday, December 7.

Genghis Cohen -

I guess it was predictable to see you back this date after a rather long hiatus. Happy Eggplant Day. See you all at Beacon Hill this lunch period.

I have many questions to ask you, sir. I am new, and understand from your writings, and it took the better part of a week to read everything that you wrote, that you are a man with difficult family issues and a tenuous marriage. I sincerely hope that you can salvage your marriage. My prayers are with you. Is this correct ?

I also understand that you define yourself as a liberal whom, despite the reality of the wording of the petition, would provide some legal relief to SS couples ? Is that correct, and can you elaborate what benefits without the use of the word and concept of "marriage" do you envision?

Can you also elaborate for us upon your philosophical, legal and any other disciplinary reason, theological as well, for denying same sex couples the dignity of the civil marriage contract?

Is it correct to assume that you disagree with the dominionist theocrats that gay couplings should not be recognized in any way whatsoever that "mimics" marriage, including everything from RDP's to civil unions?

You see, I am confused. I have gone to your blog, as you suggested to do in your writings, and one minute, you seem to promote the Religious Right, and then in another, to oppose their solutions specifically in MA, before you support the FMA along with them?

There are many of us in other Christian and Humanist and anthropological and legal communities who would like to engage you in dialogue, but would like a clear, succinct and pithy response - to quote O'Reilly - about where you stand on this issue that has consumed many hours of your life on this blog?

Thank you in advance for your reply. You are indeed the most unique opponent here. Moreover, you are the person whom the dominionist theocratic opponents on this blog have continually sought to defend them. I agree, sir. You are indeed a rather intriguing enigma.

We await your reply. We know your uniqueness. We know that you disagree with other opponents here. We never can truly understand where you agree and disagree? Can you, with your very skillful literary ability, provide us with clear and unambiguous answers?

Thank you, sir, for taking time to respond.

[mark]

Cherie -

I happen to know that many supportive voices and activists now come to KTN. We have many supporters in the legal community, the medical community, the mental health professional community, and not to be forgotten, supportive family and friends.

We also have support and renewed activism from the many heretofore silent Christian leaders who are now totally engaged against the Theocratic Right and their allies in the neocon community.

Cherie, those forces allied against us are not a homogeneous group. Many of these organizations and individuals operate on the principle: " The friend of my enemy is my friend."

This alliance is always problematic. The trick is always to attack the enemy without discussing or openly highlighting their differences. Politics indeed do "make for strange bedfellows." There is no doubt that a reach over has not been without its pleasurable benefits.

The theocratic dominionist allies with the secularist opponents lead the list of strange bedfellows. The Catholic Church - plagued by pedophile scandals - is in league with denominational opponents intent on replacing their national and hemispheric prominence.

Cherie, the strategy is to let our attorneys handle the legal issue. It is easy to understand. We say that the petition is a "Hail Mary pass" around Goodridge. They say that it is merely an attempt to amend the constitution. This has nothing to do with truth and ethics on their part. It is hardball politics and hardball legal wrangling. It is a win-win, they believe. The secular neocons get Romney and their views codified, while the theocrats get their payoff - politically, legally, and of course, financially. FOLLOW THE MONEY.........

Tom Lang has said it often. Kris Eggplant Mineau has refused to identify the amounts paid to the right wing fraud squads. Our side has little in the economic clout that these Right Wingers have. We are outspent many times over in our defense of this attack on our families.

The question is not " Why not let the people vote if you are assured of legal or legislative success? " That canard is clever, as well as malevolent. It is inherent in our legal arguments. A democratic society does not oppress minorities by the will of the majority. Politicians who claim our support, but who betray us will pay the consequences in both financial and vocal support. They will also lose our dollars.

As a WASP, I am nevertheless aware that today is December 8, a special day of observance in the Catholic Church with the Immaculate Conception. From the "Feast of the Circumcision on January 1st" to this day, the obsession with human sexuality is compelling. It is my hope that the theological voices silenced by Pope Ratzinger - now and before as head of the Inquisition - will again be emboldened to save their Church from extremism. It is also hoped that the mainline Protestant Christian voices will confront the Dominionist Theocrats operating throughout the Reformational Churches.

I know that you are secular, Cherie. But know this. All successful campaigns have been waged with an alliance of lawyers and gay-affirming theologians. In fact, Canadian marriage for all couples began with the theologians, and then the legal. It is pitting the experts against the experts. It is not yielding any ground on any level. The Humanist Societies are also poised to take on the secular opponents.

Massachusetts is GROUND ZERO, USA - and the entire national apparatus is now focused like a laser on the Bay State. We know that they play hardball and they play to win despite their ethical and moral "lapses" - but we are not going back to the showers or the ovens. We promise Monsieur Pierre Seel,( "nous le promet - jamais" ), and all those who wore the Pink Triangle and were then re-oppressed by their "deliverers."

We love you and your family.

[Cathy]

Tom,
Will we get to see these alleged 140,00 signatures on the website soon? I find it hard to believe that so many of our fellow citizens believe a person's civil rights should be up for popular vote. That should never be the case. Civil rights are often (if not usually) decidely unpopular. Groups in power frequently do not want to share that power or allows other to participate on an equal basis. This threatens the status quo. It's unfortunate that 140,000 people in our state believe that. I'd like to believe that not to be the case, but.. historically, that has too often been the case. It's taken years in the South for the majority of citizens to get behind equal treatment of blacks, and many are still not there!
In any case, I'm curious to know when the list will be published.

[mark]

Wow. I took some flex time yesterday afternoon and today, so here I am - awake as usual with the family still asleep.

Cathy, the Secretary of the Commonwealth Galvin is having his Elections Division staff count and identify each box that came in yesterday from counties. When I asked him when the Records Division would publish the same for citizens, including legislators, lobbyists, interested parties - he indicated that they had to get lists ready for all the petitions - about a week to ten days - and then they will be public record. He said that the media would be "all over this."

The Galvin official website is a maze. It would be difficult for many non-computer savvy folks to find the list. Thank God for Tom and Aaron who will make it easy for us to scrub the lists.

To those theocrats and neocons who thought they could use fraud, deception and stealth and secrecy to more easily bypass the Supreme Judiciary and the General Court, they will be OUTED.

The petition signature in MA is NOT a secret ballot. It is the Citizen of the Commonwealth acting as a supernumary legislative body to mandate that the elected legislature ratify a referendum with a lesser number of legislators required to pass such a resolution.

Their decision to let stand the marriages contracted until the prohibition is enacted is a global strategy.
The Neocons and Theocrats are afraid of this political act. Despite everything, grandparents and parents love their offspring and progeny. These evil manipulators believe a federal law will serve to nullify the rest. The neocons have operatives in Canada making the FASCIST TORIES offer the SAME proposal. No wonder, our own AMERICAN FASCISTS are meddling in their election process.

Cathy, Tom and Aaron will publish them as soon as they become public record. Their names and addresses will be published in order to prove that persons with similar names are not mistakenly identified as signers.

We have friends who signed liquor petitions and said to us that if they were duped, they will seek relief and blame the petition organizers who hired these buck a signature tricksters as well as the right wing organization itself.

Do I believe that they received 65,000 VALID petition signatures? It is hard to really determine. Did they receive 170,000 VALID petition signatures? I would safely believe that the answer is a resounding NO.

In sales, you sell the "sizzle and not the steak." Perception is a stronger reality than the real numbers. This is hardball neocon theocratic dominionist politics - the kind they ALWAYS play.

As you know, there are some neocons in special legislative elections, and it looks very good to retire several of the right wing candidates. The other candidates support the RETENTION OF THE LAW.

LEST WE FORGET, IT IS LEGAL IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS FOR SAME SEX COUPLES TO MARRY AND CONSIDER THEIR FAMILIES SO CONSTITUTED UNDER STATE LAW.

[mark]

Cathy, the math is simple. Ten days to a "fortnight" brings us into the Christmas and Hanukkah season. Everyone will be focused on friends and family and "mistletoe and holly." It is also a time when roughly half of the heterosexuals who once married and are divorced at least once, and probably "shacked up with their fiancee and more kids" get to share their kids. The neocons among them will probably pass neighbors with SS couples - happy and longtime partnered and married now - with happy and well-adjusted children in them.

By the first week in January 2006, GLAD and the most prestigious list of amici curae briefs will be filed in a lawsuit challenging the Attorney General Reilly and his decision to certify the petition. My belief is that our arguments are stronger, and that the petition will be vacated.

If any of you wish to read the briefs first filed in November by GLAD, you can access their website. (As if the neocons are not aware of the arguments..). Professors at Harvard Law School whom I know very well, as well as colleagues who teach in other institutions within and without the Commonwealth, support our arguments overwhelmingly.

Reilly was appeasing the conservative blue-collar Democratic base, and the Kerry redux forces, in his bid to unseat Romney as governor. It was serendipity that it made him the darling of the theocratic right as well. I believe that in a Democratic primary or in a general election, that Thomas Reilly will be defeated by a significant block of voters who will simply not vote for him and no other. I believe it could spell the margin of victory for his opponent(s).

I believe that it will go to the Supreme Judicial Court and that we will win the lawsuit. Then, we will await the next dirty trick from the theocrats.

[mark]

Cathy, the math is simple. Ten days to a "fortnight" brings us into the Christmas and Hanukkah season. Everyone will be focused on friends and family and "mistletoe and holly." It is also a time when roughly half of the heterosexuals who once married and are divorced at least once, and probably "shacked up with their fiancee and more kids" get to share their kids. The neocons among them will probably pass neighbors with SS couples - happy and longtime partnered and married now - with happy and well-adjusted children in them.

By the first week in January 2006, GLAD and the most prestigious list of amici curae briefs will be filed in a lawsuit challenging the Attorney General Reilly and his decision to certify the petition. My belief is that our arguments are stronger, and that the petition will be vacated.

If any of you wish to read the briefs first filed in November by GLAD, you can access their website. (As if the neocons are not aware of the arguments..). Professors at Harvard Law School whom I know very well, as well as colleagues who teach in other institutions within and without the Commonwealth, support our arguments overwhelmingly.

Reilly was appeasing the conservative blue-collar Democratic base, and the Kerry redux forces, in his bid to unseat Romney as governor. It was serendipity that it made him the darling of the theocratic right as well. I believe that in a Democratic primary or in a general election, that Thomas Reilly will be defeated by a significant block of voters who will simply not vote for him and no other. I believe it could spell the margin of victory for his opponent(s).

I believe that it will go to the Supreme Judicial Court and that we will win the lawsuit. Then, we will await the next dirty trick from the theocrats.

[Paul Jamieson]

More hypocrisy

Why so much interest in a poll?

I thought the SSM people hated voting on a "civil rights" issue.

so typical

The other funny thing is a 55% to 43% result against the petition, from the most liberal paper in the most liberal state is very telling and should give you pregnant pause for thought.

[Paul Jamieson]

"Professors at Harvard Law School whom I know very well, as well as colleagues who teach in other institutions within and without the Commonwealth, support our arguments overwhelmingly"

Oh Mark - let me think of how many derogatory names i can come up with to describe the liberal intelligencia you mention above.

Something akin to "dominionist, theocratic, neocons"

But I won't stoop to your level of paranoia.

[mark]

Paul -

You took the words right out of my mouth.

When it comes to you, I " won't stoop to your level."

You have become a caricature...

[Paul Jamieson]

Why Mark - because I'm laughing at your HAAAAVAHHHARD connection. LOL

Mark - go back to your bomb shelter and we will let you know when to come out.

[mark]

Brothers and sisters - Know Thy Global Enemy - as an FYI - and of course, as an opportunity for the local individuals to post and prove our article.

THE 15 PER CENT SOLUTION

Published in The Nation, reprinted from the Voice, April 6, 1993

How the Christian Right Is Building From Below To Take Over From Above

By Greg Goldin

VISTA, CALIFORNIA - It was what has become a typical Thursday night school board meeting in this town of 76,000, in the rolling hillsides below Camp Pendleton, two hours south of Los Angeles. Preachers squaring off against scientists, disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ hurling passages of Ben Franklin at parents responding with Thomas Jefferson. One man, a tall, sturdy evangelist, touched his Bible and began, "Praise the Lord for this liberty to speak." He enunciated slowly, menacingly, like Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter. "Hitler was an evolutionist."

One hundred and fifty people spread among the lush seats at the Buena Vista High School Performing Arts Center hooted, booed, or cheered -- drawn out this windswept, stormy February night by the prospect that the newly constituted Christian fundamentalist majority on the Vista United School District Board of Trustees would take some action concerning prayer that might lead straight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

One month earlier, a crowd of 500 filled another auditorium, and 200 more camped in the doorways and peered through the windows, to hear the same board debate teaching creationism in science classes. The topic ignited a meeting that typically attracts a dozen onlookers from the quiet bedroom community, nestled in the usually calm confines of North San Diego County. This time, after two hours of rancorous rhetoric -- more quotes from scripture, further readings from the Constitutional Convention -- the school board trustees decided to say a prayer before every meeting.

An invocation to God at school board meeting in Vista, California, might not seem momentous -- though it might spark a latter-day Scopes Monkey trial. Like the Colorado battle over gay rights, the election of three fundamentalists to this small-town board is part of a strategy to convert America to Christendom.

Instead of high profile homophobia or abortion clinic blockades, however, the religious right has embarked on a new crusade -- triumphant in Vista and in hundreds of other districts throughout the nation last November -- that transforms church going zeal into nitty gritty, grassroots, trickle up electoral power. The same day Bill Clinton won the White House, the Christian right captured seats on school boards, hospital boards, county party committees, from Alaska to Minnesota, Washington to Texas. While national attention focused on George Bush's resounding defeat, few noticed that the fanatics who'd brought him to his knees at the Republican Convention in Houston were jubilant.

As many observers in the press rushed to note, Clinton did not receive a sweeping mandate on November 4. What they failed to see was the nascent counter revolution that garnered millions of votes from America's disaffected middle class. The same Reaganites who cast their lot with Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot because they were worried -- resentful, even -- about losing their toe hold on prosperity were wooed by Christian activists and zealots.

These electoral victories were not the product of the willy nilly book burner or the odd pulpiteer exhorting the like minded to flock to the polls to defeat an occasional incumbent. Behind successes in local races in Iowa, Virginia, Oregon, Colorado, California, and New York -- among others -- is a national network supplying money and know how, pulling candidates from the pews and putting them into public office. (Similar efforts are underway for New York City's school board elections May 4.)

This insurgency is the natural culmination of a process that began in 1980. Ronald Reagan entered Washington braced by a coalition of monied Rockefeller Republicans, disgruntled working-class Democrats, and hardcore Christians. The new president promptly offered the later, in particular, direct access to Washington, giving them legitimacy; and a national platform. The Christian right, in turn, provided him with a club - in the form of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Terry Dolan's National Conservative Political Action Committee - to wield against Democrats unwilling to capitulate to the "bipartisan" mood.

But the Reagan alliance began to crumble with the end of the Cold War. Anticommunism, the glue that held together otherwise contentious partnerships, died a belated death. By the time Bush was elected in 1988, the Christian right was hopelessly at odds with the White House. They despised Bush, the ultimate Republican elitist and pragmatist, waffling on abortion and tax increases. So they set out to retool the Republican Party. At the Houston convention, the Christian right exerted its considerable leverage, creating the spectacle of George Bush pandering to Pat Robertson and the Armageddon choir. It was hell for Bush, but a godsend for his foes.

By the time the GOP convention, with Bush fading, America's Christian right had already cooked up their strategy. If they couldn't shape policy from the top, they'd take over the bottom. "We tried to change Washington," says Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed, contemplating the end of their Washington clout in 1988. "We should have been focusing on the states. The real battles of concern to Christians are in neighborhoods, school boards, city councils, and state legislatures."

"We have allowed ourselves to be ghettoized by a narrow band of issues like abortion, homosexual rights, and prayer in school," Reed wrote in the Christian American Journal in January. "Abortion is a terribly important issue, yet exit polls in 1992 showed that only 12 percent of all voters mentioned it in their voting decision. Any strategy by the Christian right must include a way to meet the needs of the other 88 per cent of the voters." The Christian Coalition, Reed concluded, must address "public policy. Schools do not work; we must fix them. Some communities are suffering from drought; we must provide water. People cannot read; we must teach them. Our streets are unsafe; we must secure them. Families need financial relief, we must reduce taxation to provide it."

Drawing on such populism, the Christian right has reinvented itself, although it is still led by the familiar faces who gravitated to the pinnacle of power in the Reagan administration: There is Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, with 13 million to annually dole out to hand-picked candidates and causes, all of it wired into his Christian Broadcasting Network audience of 16 million. There is Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, beaming marching orders along its closed circuit National Empowerment Television to 65 far flung satellite dish affiliates in more than 30 states. There is Robert Simonds's Citizens for Excellence in Education, which claims that its 1210 chapters have helped elect nearly 3500 school board members. Along with a dozen other organizations, the Christian right has set out to complete what '60s radicals dubbed "the march through the institutions."

The formula they've concocted has been called the "15 per cent solution" by the Christian Coalition. Even in a well attended presidential election, only 15 per cent of eligible voters determine the outcome. Her's the simple math: about 60 per cent of the qualified electorate is registered, and only half of them vote. Half again of that 30 per cent determines the outcome, hence the all powerful 15 percent.

"We don't have to worry about convincing a majority of Americans to agree with us," Guy Rodgers, the Christan Coalition's national field director declared at the 1991 Raod to visttory conference. Most of them are staying home and watching Falcon Crest."

In 1992, according to People for the American Way, the liberal constitutional watchdog, extremist Christian candidates racked up a 40 per cent win record in state and local races. And, to the horror of Republicans across the nation, they're dominating a number of state wide Republican Party committees. "What the Christian right spends a lot of time doing," says Marc Wolin, a moderate Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress from San Francisco last year, "is going after obscure party posts. They try to control the party apparatus in each county. We have a lot to fear from these people. They want to set up a theocracy in America."

"They have acquired a very detailed and accurate understanding of how political parties are organized," says Craig Berkman, former chairman of the Republican Party in Oregon:

Parties are very susceptible to being taken over by ideologues because lower party offices have no appeal to the vast majority of our citizenry. Many precincts are represented by no one. If you decide all of a sudden because it's your Christian duty to become a precinct representative, you only need a few votes to get elected. Increasingly, they have the key say so on who will be a delegate at the national convention, and who will write the party platform and nominate the presidential candidate. In a state like Oregon, with 600,000 registered Republicans, it is possible for 2000 or 3000 people to control the state party apparatus. If they are outvoted by one or two votes, parliamentary manipulations begin, and after two or three hours of discussion about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, the more reasonable people with other things to do leave, and in the wee hours of the morning, things are decided. That's how they achieve their objectives.

It is in towns like Vista, California, with its mixture of lower class Latinos and middle class whites, that the Christian insurgency Berkman describes has gathered strength. It is there that the local concerns dovetail with Pat Robertson's national strategy, and the counter revolution to the Clinton administration is taking shape. To the drumbeat of Rush Limbaugh, Christian militants are shaping the fears of white flight suburbanites into an electoral juggernaut. Indeed, Vista shows how far from the limelight of Washington the Christian right is willing to toil, precinct by precinct, polling booth by polling booth, to win power.

At the February 18 school board meeting, the vote in favor of prayer was never in doubt. Deidre Holliday, Joyce Lee, and John Tyndall -- the triumvirate that controls the board -- are all self-avowed Christian fundamentalists. Holliday, a 42 year old mother of four, was the first to join the board, in 1990, when 60 "Pro-family candidates in San Diego won races for a variety of local offices, including city council, hospital, and fire and irrigation districts."

Holliday had thought about running for office after being a sidewalk counselor with Operation Rescue. She began prayer for a sign from God to help her decide if she should run for school board. "I told the Lord that if he wanted me to run, he should change the night of the school board meeting from Wednesday," Holliday said. Later, when the meetings were moved to Thursday, "I took it as an answer from God."

Holliday ran her campaign in local churches, delivering sermons about the power of the voting booth. Meanwhile, she refused to debate other school board candidates claiming that the media would tag her as a Pentecostal kook. The lay low, don't-let-your-opponents-or­the-press-at-you campaign was later championed by the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed. "It's like guerrilla warfare," Reed told The Los Angeles Times:

"If you reveal your location, all it does is allow your opponent to improve his artillery bearings. It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night .... It comes down to whether you want to be the British army in the Revolutionary War or the Viet Cong. History tells us which tactic was more effective."

The strategy worked: In the November 1990 election, Holliday won by 81 votes. The credit, she later told The Wall Street Journal, belongs to Robert Simonds' Citizens for Excellence in Education, adding, "It would be wonderful to see scripture read in schools so that children learn the truth."

Her hopes were raised last year when John Tyndall and Joyce Lee joined Holliday on the Vista school board. Unlike Holliday's covert tactics, Tyndall and Lee went directly, openly to the voters. Perhaps their fundamentalist underpinnings were not an issue given the popularity of their claims, among other things, that undocumented immigrants were draining the school district of its resources. Lee urged restrictions on immigration, and said that the number of "illegals" in the school system should be counted so Congress could take money from the foreign aid package to Mexico and deliver it to fiscally strained Vista.

Lee set the tone when she attended a gathering at a Vista manicurist's shop, joining the chorus of voices saying it was time to "take this country back" from undocumented immigrants. Lee, fanning resentment over Vista's bilingual education program, suggested that parents pull their children from the district to show that "you will not dictate that my children will learn Spanish."

Tyndall, meanwhile, ran a slightly more highbrow campaign, projecting himself as a "financial manager, teacher/ principal, and parent" who would "insure focused, quality education." A political unknown, Tyndall had drawn attention to himself at a Vista back to school night when he asked "Why do you teach honors classes and physical education to 14-year-old girls who should be learning to take care of babies?" The 45-year-old San Diego native is an accountant at the Institute for Creation Research, an organization in nearby Santee that promotes the Book of Genesis as scientific fact. (Earth, for instance, is exactly 6000 years old, and dinosaurs and mankind lived side by side.)

During the campaign, Tyndall admitted he would not oppose "creationism in the classroom. I don't think theology should be debated in a science classroom," he told a public forum two weeks before the election. "But the advantage of having another theory -- abrupt appearance -- is to enhance students' critical thinking skills." Like Lee, Tyndall was endorsed by the Christian Coalition and the California Pro Life Council.

The xenophobic campaign was enough to get Lee and Tyndall elected by a narrow margin (a third fundamentalist candidate, Robert Heckler, came in last). With her new allies on the board, Deidre Holliday would now be in a position to demand that parents positively affirm that they want their children in sex education, rather than leaving it to them to opt out.

The first issue to explode before the new trustees was creationism -- something they had not put on the agenda. In December, John Ljubenkov, a marine biologist, challenged the board to publicly take a stance on teaching creationism in the schools. That led to the raucous January 21 meeting -- but the issue was moot because the fundamentalist majority could not overcome a 1987 Supreme Court ban on such a curriculum. Holliday then asked her superintendent, Rene Townsend, to consult the district lawyers on prayer before school board meetings, resulting in February's fracas.

"We have all these people that say it would be neat to have just a little prayer to ask for God's guidance through the next meeting," Joyce Lee said, in an inter­view after the meeting. "He leads us and guides. He gives us wisdom." Educating children, Lee feels, comes down to two

opposite views. Humanism is embodied in a group of people that believe the human being is ultimately all powerful and will solve his own problems. The religious view is that man was born in sin and is doomed unless they accept Jesus Christ. I kind of believe the Buck Rogers stories, where eventually mankind blows himself up. I think that if the world kept evolving, we'd probably have something like that. So what they are saying, even in cartoons they know, ultimately, man will be his own destruction. But yet humanism says we will conquer all as man. I just believe the Bible. To me it is easier to believe that I can tap into somebody else because I am not perfect.

Such a message travels easily through a place like Vista. Built upon undulating hills, seven miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, the formerly citrus - and avocado - growing town has been transformed in the last several years into a model American edge city. The Shadowridge housing development, where many of the white flighters live, sprawls atop the southern rim of the city, scarred by row after row of two story replicant Spanish homes, so unvaried in size, shape, and color that even Steven Spielberg might find the location bland. Street signs are markers for fauna and flora -- Quail and Chaparral -- that have been paved over. At intervals of no more than five minutes driving time, malls punctuate the ceaseless monotony.

Farther down the road, entire hillsides are scored with paved streets leading to empty pads, awaiting the next set of stuccoed and tiled domiciles. Vista, as John Tyndall noted, "was recently rated one of the best communities to bring your children up in."

It is in just such a place that America's white, middle class, educated voters have created a refuge, built along an interurban corridor, an hour or so away from the fading cities to the north and south. The frightened, confused, and angry accountants, real estate brokers, and investment bankers who've settled in Vista escaped Los Angels in the 1970s, only to abandon the all white subdivisions of Irvine, in Orange County, in the 1980s.

Even the Orange Line -- once the great divide between the urban anarchy of L.A. and the quotidian life of Orange County -- no longer offered enough protection. The migration away from the social strife -- and the abandonment of the social contract -- has ended in the selfish demimonde of San Diego County, adjacent to the Mexican border.

Taking advantage of laissez faire Reaganism, when environmental concerns, zoning laws, and tax tables were altered to promote real estate speculation, Vista grew like topsy. Its population doubled in less than 10 years. The town went from a community of marines (from nearby Camp Pendleton), mobile home dwellers, and retirees, to a community of younger, middle class, pull - up - the - drawbridge families. The relative tranquility of Vista was "nirvana," as one longtime resident put it, attracting parents fretting over the collapse of the cities, and worried that deindustrialization might drag them down, too. "The first thing anybody asks you in Vista," says one resident of four years, "is, when did you move here?"

From these ranks come another species of voters. They are not the old, rock-ribbed Republicans. Nor are they the rural or Southern yahoos. These are the new Republicans: the deeper they move into housing-track isolation, the deeper they reside within the self-enclosed weltanschauung of suburban flight, the more they fear the outside world. Just as Orange Count was once the hallmark of Goldwater Republicanism, and now has Latino and Vietnamese communities, Vista itself has been plagued by gangs and racial discord. There were even two shootings recently at a local high school. Something as prosaic as Interstate 5, the road linking Vista to Los Angeles and San Diego, offers a constant reminder that America is besieged, in decline. There, on the roadway 10 miles north of Vista, huge signs warn drivers to be aware of desperate families of Mexicans dashing across the highway hoping to escape the Border Patrol.

Sandwiched between Mexico and Los Angeles, it's now a wonder people in Vista are looking skyward for salvation. "You know," said Lance Vollmer, a Republican who was defeated in the school board race:

Vista has become a home to storefront churches. All the economic unpleasantness of the past few years leads people to seek a little comfort. It's those people on Shadowridge, who are busting their humps to pay off their mortgages. And then they go to church - and it isn't the kind of church we went to. The church becomes their community. The block is not their community. The neighborhood is not their community. The church is. That is the kind of zeal that leads to fascist resolve.

Inside those churches are cradle to grave social services, from hiking in the Sierras to Christian family counseling, and preachers dispensing Reconstructionist cant about the biblically mandated duty to build a civil society based upon the Word of God, without which there will be no Second Coming of Christ.

"The fundamental battle going on," Oregon's Craig Berkman said:

is that people are seeking to use government as the last, highest, moral authority to rationalize their life view. I don't have a problem with an individual using persuasion to talk to me about their world view. The First Amendment encourages that. But for them to say the government is going to be their mouthpiece because they got elected is like Constantine waking up one morning and saying that the Roman Empire is going to be Christian.

Can the electoral victory in Vista be duplicated, or will the Christian right collapse as it strives to achieve higher office? "The bad news is," argued Allan Hoffenblum, a GOP consultant in Los Angeles, "they've made enormous strides. They are a major force and have made a concerted effort to dominate the party in California. The good news is, they only represent 11 per cent of the vote."
Eileen Padberg, a veteran prochoice Orange County Republican, added, "They are like cockroaches. When you shine alight on them, they scurry back into the woodwork."

But when the Christian right candidates disguise themselves as middle class populists, they rack up victories. At the California Republican Party central committee last month, the religious right flexed its muscle. It forced Republican governor Pete Wilson to retain an anti abortion plank in the party platform, even though the bitter issue contributed to the worst drubbing California Republicans have suffered in 20 years. And, through their control of the Orange County Republican Party machinery, in a March 2 special election, they were able to propel into the State Senate Rob Hurtt, a financier of the Christian right in California, and one of the most right wing candidates ever to take office in Sacramento. This, despite the fact that Orange County voted for Clinton in November.

Which could be the good news for the Democrats in 1996, at least nationally. When asked recently on the David Brinkley show whom he thought Clinton would run against in 1996, Democrat mastermind James Carville, reflecting on the Republican debacle in Houston, laughed and said, "Pat Robertson."

This story was prepared in part with a grant from the Fund for Constitutional Government.

BROOKLYN DODGERS

DONNA-MINKOWITZ

"Only 15 per cent of registered voters vote in City Council races, and elections are usually decided by only 3 percent," the Coalition's area director, Reverend Terry Twerell, told us. He said the Christian Coalition will distribute 500,000 voter guides to conservative local churches in time for the school board race. They also plan to use voter ID, a method in which voters answer a phone or written survey about their views and are later reminded to vote only if their views echo the Christian Coalition's: a voter-ID form distributed at the meeting asks people to check whether they would favor a law in New York that "grants minority status to homosexuals."

One look at the mostly female crowd conformed my impression that Gotham's conservative christians dress far less con­servatively than their counterparts in Vir­ginia, Colorado, and Texas. Many of the young women wore jeans or tight stretch pants, with glittery costume-jewel-be­decked T-shirts. One babe in a Rush Limbaugh tee even affected a quasi-grunge look with a flannel shirt tied in back. The guys, in sweatshirts, jeans, and 'staches, could have passed for undercover cops or '70s gay male clones.

As if custom-tailoring his message for New York's more diverse electorate, ­Twerell showed us an artfully "moderate" video interview in which Coalition executive director Ralph Reed says the Coalition believes in "pluralism and tolerance."

Reed even claims that Pat Robertson supports equal rights for women (though he doesn't explain why Robertson campaigned last year against Iowa's ERA, with that famous letter reminding voters that feminists kill their children and become lesbians).

Nuts-and-bolts organizing tips came next. "We have wonderful IRS lawyers who can explain to your pastor what he can and cannot say and still keep tax-deductible status," Twerell enthused. "He can't say, `Our Susie is running for school aboard and you should vote for her,' but he can say, `Our Susie's running for school board, let's all pray for her!"'

The most unwittingly humorous moment of the meeting came when Twerell told the half-white, half-Latino audience that "We need to be bilingual. We'll have voter guides in Spanish as well as english." In Vista, Cali­fornia, the Christian Coalition ran a slate of school board candidates who campaigned (and won) on an anti Latino, anti bilingual education platform.

[Brian]

I've seen a couple of posts asking why those of us who support equality believe that the courts have a shot at blocking this initiative. As far as I know, it's not allowed in Massachusetts for a citizen-driven petition to seek to overturn a high Courts opinion.

[John Hosty]

Exactly my point Brian. They have also turned down the attempt to dilute our rights by creating civil unions for gays instead of full marriage. The SJC knows that not allowing gay people to marry is a violation of equality, and although they cannot force individuals to stop behaving poorly, they can stop our local governments from participating in sexualy oriented discrimination. The petition was nothing more than Wallace standing in the door of the schools of Birmingham type saber rattling. The SJC will not permit an unconstitutional change to the constitution to take place. That is their job, to be the voice of reason when all of us are lost, following our hearts instead of our minds. There reasoning is pretty well thought out, you can find it on the web so read it if you haven't.

[Alex]

John,

I am just wondering, didn't the Hawaii Supreme Court rule that the state's marriage laws were discriminatory only to allow "the people" to vote and write discrimination into the state's constitution? Does MA law differ from HI law?

[John Hosty]

Yes it does. They already made it clear that we are not going to go down that path here. Any change to the constitution that is unconstitutional will not be allowed. There will be no backsliding of civil rights here.