Thinking Allowed

For once, I found myself agreeing the other day with something that the executive director of the Family  Policy Institute of Washington said.

During a radio interview on one of the Seattle news/talk stations, Joseph Backholm was talking about the likely referendum next fall on the marriage equality law the governor signed this week.

Near the end of his conversation with the radio host about how emotional and divisive the campaign might be leading up to a public vote on same-sex marriage, Backholm said, “Whatever the outcome, we still have to live together and we have to get along.”

We sure do. And people on both sides of this issue will do well to remember that, so hopefully one side won’t get vilified as hateful bigots and the other cast as godless sinners.

I think the best way to avoid such nastiness would be to just not have a public vote on whether discrimination against gay people should be continued in this state. Maybe the California ruling that laws banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional would deter the folks who want to overturn Washington’s marriage equality law before it ever takes effect.

But that’s wishful thinking, just like hoping that the petition circulators won’t be able to persuade enough people to sign to get their measure on the ballot.

That radio host said something that made sense, but also seems like wishful thinking. Besides saying he hopes the marriage equality bill isn’t overturned, he said he’d like the folks against gay marriage to offer some basis for their opposition other than the same old biblical platitudes.

But really, what else do they have?

Guess we’ll find out, like it or not. And if the outcome doesn’t go their way, remember, we still have to all get along.

Remember a few months ago, when there was a disturbingly negative campaign being waged in Port Orchard before the November election?

At least one person who had a stake in that election does, and he took an opportunity last week to ask a question that’s been gnawing at him since then.

“Now that the election’s over,” City Councilman Jerry Childs said Friday as the council began its annual retreat, “there are some issues that have been kind of lingering for me.”

Childs was the only incumbent who wasn’t running unopposed in his re-election bid, so he was the only council member who was out knocking on doors in the fall. And he was dismayed at all the “negativity” he encountered regarding people’s views of how the city was being run.

At various candidate forums there was a lot of talk by the man who wanted to be mayor, Tim Matthes, about the need for more transparency in city government. Candidate Matthes also regularly held up a prop — a hand-lettered blue pamphlet — as an example of an ethics manual that he said the city needed. He didn’t say why an ethics manual was a pressing need, nor did he identify any issues on which there was a glaring lack of transparency.

Childs, who stressed how important his integrity and reputation were to the leadership positions he held during his long fire department career, said this “unsubstantiated innuendo was kind of troubling,” because accusations made by Matthes and/or his supporters were not documented.

So he politely but effectively called out the new mayor — who was elected by a five-vote margin — on what he was talking about during the campaign when he repeatedly said there should be more transparency and urged adoption of an ethics manual.

He asked, in essence: Whaddaya got?

And here’s what the mayor had: Nothin’ — he had nothing.

His vague response was that he still thinks an ethics manual would be a good idea, his intention was to write it together with the council (and maybe sing Kumbaya?), and that his campaign comments were not “personal” nor meant to disparage anyone on the council.

It was Childs that brought the issue up, but others on the council didn’t hold back once he did, and they didn’t take kindly to having their ethics or integrity questioned.

Carolyn Powers said in all her years on the council she hasn’t had any colleagues who weren’t ethical, and added that “without a manual, we should understand what ethics is all about.”

“I also take offense at the ethics manual issue,” and how it was used for political purposes, Rob Putaansuu said. “But I want to put that behind me.”

He seemed to express the consensus view when he said “I don’t see any need at all for this body to have an ethics manual.”

As for the negativity that permeated the fall campaign, the mayor knew Childs was referring partly to the committee of Matthes supporters who sent out controversial mailers. So he tried to deflect that by saying he “did not control” how the campaign went, and Matthes insisted that people should believe him when he says over and over that he had nothing to do with that committee — even though his closest advisers were among the handful of people in that much-maligned group.

Matthes also tried to find a way out of his awkward situation by using a well-worn political cliché: “I think we should put all this behind us and move forward for Port Orchard.”

Not so fast, said Childs, who made clear that he and the council hope to work well with the new mayor going forward. But he also wanted to “basically set the record straight” and get some “closure” on the issues of transparency and ethics, so he pointedly asked if there was any specific example that prompted Matthes to focus on those themes during his campaign.

The mayor looked a bit baffled that he was being called to account for his own words, and he meekly offered that his comments were “in general, and if there was something specific I would have brought it up.”

So: nothin’.

Before they moved on to their discussion of short-term and long-range goals for the city, Childs succinctly stated why he’d asked for such a discussion to start their retreat.

“Because Tim was raising these questions (during the campaign), I just thought there might be something specific he could tell us,” he said. “But I haven’t heard anything yet.”

No, and that’s perhaps instructive. Matthes did the job he was recruited to do — be the front man for getting the previous mayor out of office — but now it’s time to find out if he can do the job he was elected to do.

The American Revolution is revered as the populist movement that gave rise to our democracy. In America’s third century since that anti-establishment upheaval, we need an encore, a revival.

Not another armed insurrection, but a return to the rebellious mindset that led — and might lead again — to meaningful democracy, to people thoughtfully asserting their power over government, instead of acquiescing to a government devoted to and driven by the wealthy.

If there’s going to be a revolution that effectively challenges the status quo — and I’d like to think most of us would sign on for that — it will probably be inspired and led by people like Eric Byler, who came to our soggy corner of the country this week to talk about the Citizens United decision. But what’s really striking is how Byler, a filmmaker, talks about narrative.

In the outraged public reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling from two years ago that regards corporations as people and money as speech that can’t be restricted, Byler sees a parallel to one of the most glorified moments from the narrative of America’s revolutionary conception: the Boston Tea Party. That event “was a response to an abuse of power, and to collusion by government and a corporation,” Byler observed while speaking Monday night to about 40 people at a forum held to discuss the Citizens United ruling.

The corporate-government nexus that’s so powerful in post-recession America is a primary reason Byler co-founded the Coffee Party USA two years ago, with the aim of creating a diverse, transpartisan grass-roots movement. It took shape largely in response to what he perceived as two “acts of desperation” by the wealthy and powerful — the Citizens United ruling and “the creation of the Tea Party narrative.”

“They spent a lot of money creating a narrative … that the American people reject the outcome of the 2008 election,” he said.

Byler, a youthful looking, 40-year-old Chinese-American, isn’t some ranting radical; he’s not particularly animated when he speaks. But at Monday’s forum where local organizer Don Manning arranged Byler’s appearance the day before he attended the Seattle International Film Festival, he spoke with a thoughtfulness and unmistakable conviction of purpose.

As an artist and communicator, maybe even a visionary, who’s utilizing the full potential of social media to build a global network of activists, Byler encourages others to engage in the “narrative war” and to realize that they don’t have to accept the content and messages controlled by corporate interests, but rather they can be “creators and spreaders of our own content.”

He’s heartened by how the Occupy movement — “America’s belated entry into the global democracy movement” — has endured and disproved the disparaging narrative that corporate media and other naysayers tried to impose on it.

“The fate of democracy and the fate of the Internet are linked,” Byler said.

Here’s hoping that will be a successful partnership, and revolution.

Reading articles and comments on various websites the past few days about whether the Legislature will pass a bill making same-sex marriage legal in Washington, there was one sentence I found particularly arresting.

An Associated Press story said state Sen. Brian Hatfield, a Republican who’s one of a few undecided legislators still wrestling with whether to vote for the bill, “understands the opinions on both sides.”

The article goes on to note: “He has become a devoted Christian in recent years but also talks with liberal groups.”

Say what?

Either Hatfield or the AP reporter — and I suspect it was the latter — seems to be implying that devoted Christians and liberals are mutually exclusive groups.

So if you’re a devoted Christian, there’s obviously no way you could be a liberal, and vice versa. Is that it?

Well, I’m acquainted with devoted Christians who hold liberal views, about marriage equality and other social justice issues. Also, numerous Christian ministers and congregations have signed the Washington State Faith Leaders’ Declaration of Support for Marriage Equality. Not to mention that the namesake of Christianity was a notable liberal who challenged the status quo in his day.

So assuming that anyone who’s a devoted Christian is not a liberal, and is opposed to same-sex marriage, propagates a false dichotomy.

But certainly it’s a difficult decision for a lawmaker or anyone else who’s conflicted over their personal religious beliefs and the issue of equal rights for all citizens.

Hatfield is quoted in the AP article saying “The supporters of the bill determine you’re a ‘hateful bigot’ if you vote no, while the opponents question your faith and say you’re ‘turning your back on God’ if you vote yes.”

That’s a tough spot. I wouldn’t label anyone a bigot for voting against this bill based on their sincere convictions, although I don’t believe anyone’s religious beliefs should deny equal rights to others and I think it’s clear that opponents of same-sex marriage are on the wrong side of history.

I have more respect for Hatfield’s honesty in grappling with his decision than I do for the desperate attempts by the state’s Catholic bishops and The Family Policy Institute of Washington to justify continued discrimination against same-sex couples.

According to an article on the seattlepi.com website, a letter from the bishops was sent to Catholic churches across the state to be read or made available at Sunday’s Masses. The bishops argue that it’s not because of any religious beliefs that marriage should be defined as a union of one woman and one man, but rather that it’s imperative for procreation. The letter cites the “irreplaceable potential of a man and woman to conceive and nurture new life, thus contributing to the continuation of the human race.”

Well, the human race numbers more than 6 billion, so same-sex marriage poses no impediment to procreation. And by the way, a lot of that babymaking happens outside of marriage.

As for the bishops extolling the “incomparable benefit” to children of having “a loving mother and father committed to one another in a lifelong union” — which has never been in dispute — that stance both disregards the huge number of children living in single-parent homes and disrespects committed same-sex couples who love and nurture children in a stable, two-parent home.

But for sheer illogic, The Family Policy Institute of Washington takes the prize. Here’s a comment from the organization’s executive director, Joseph Backholm, in a Seattle Times story:

“The idea that there is no difference between a heterosexual relationship and a homosexual relationship and that the law should recognize no difference, assumes there is no difference between men and women. This would be the state taking a position and saying, ‘We will no longer encourage arrangements that will give children both a mother and father.’ ”

Again, if it’s the role of the state (or churches) to keep nuclear families intact, it’s doing a lousy job.

Same-sex marriage will not destroy the social fabric, despite the Catholic bishops’ warning that passing a marriage equality law would be “adding to the forces already undermining family life today.” That hasn’t happened in the six other states that have legalized same-sex marriage, and it won’t happen in Washington.

Maybe the bishops and Backholm should consider the explanation that Republican state Sen. Cheryl Pflug offered in the AP story about why she’ll support the marriage equality bill.

“I don’t feel diminished when another human being is allowed to exercise the same rights that I enjoy,” Pflug said. “I would feel diminished if I voted to deny others the right to exercise those same rights and freedoms.”

Even after the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the state is not adequately funding basic education, and retained authority to ensure the Legislature does what the state’s constitution explicitly requires — which is to adequately fund basic education — you still hear comments like this from lawmakers who just don’t get it:

“We need to be using our existing money to the best possible impact for our students. Just putting more money into the current system will not necessarily yield a better result,” Rep. Bruce Dammeier of Puyallup said in a radio interview on KUOW this week.

He’s the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee, yet the high court’s clear message that our schools are not adequately funded and legislators like him better fix it seems to go in one ear and out the other.

Of course schools need to use existing money to the best possible impact for our students. But how can it not register with any legislator that the Supreme Court just unanimously said the existing money is not enough?

And as local school board members have said, neither Gov. Chris Gregoire nor anyone else should pitch the half-cent sales tax increase she’s requested as a school funding measure.

“Quit making K-12 education the scapegoat for taxation plans,” was South Kitsap school board president Kathryn Simpson’s message to 26th District legislators at a forum in Port Orchard last week.

The court has reiterated that providing adequate and stable funding for education is the “paramount duty” assigned to the Legislature in the state constitution.

And even with that court ruling — which essentially gives the Legislature a 2018 deadline — everyone knows that significant improvement in education funding is still years away.

“There’s still going to be a period of years where kids going through our system are not going to get the best education we can give them,” said Keith Garton, a teacher who’s been a South Kitsap school board member since 1998.

“And you can’t redo it.”

You meet all kinds of folks when you work as a journalist; that’s one reason I love the job.

Reflecting on the year that brought me to Port Orchard, I’m heartened to have gotten to know and write about people such as James Dean, Todd Penland, Ann Adkinson, Jesse Truax, Sheila Cline and Doris Worland.

And two of those folks did some fine writing for us, submitting guest columns for our op-ed page. They wrote about what they were doing in the community, and even though their organizer roles were vastly different — Sheila with the Jingle Bell Run and Todd with the Occupy movement — I believe both of them were trying to fulfill their personal visions for making this a better community. You have to salute anyone committed to that.

Looking ahead to 2012, I’m delighted that I will be writing more about Mr. Dean soon, since he’ll be receiving an award in a couple months at the annual Red Cross Heroes Breakfast. He was a central figure in one of the most remarkable stories I covered this year, when he helped get an unconscious young man out of a vehicle that had crashed into a house and burst into flames.

And I’ll also be pleased in the coming year to hear more of Pastor Adkinson’s sermons; to visit Mr. Truax again to see the special treatment he gets on his 92nd birthday after his daily workout at Olympic Fitness; and to go out again in the fall to gather some more surplus apples with Doris Worland for the food bank.

Judging from spending the last half of 2011 as a newcomer in this community, I’m sure that a year from now I’ll have become acquainted with plenty more folks I’ll want to write about when I reflect on the highlights of 2012. Hopefully some of them will be neighbors we’ll get to know now that we’re settling in to our new home in Southworth.

I might find out this year whether I’ve got what it takes to fit in as a Rotary Club member, and I appreciate the invitation to give it a try.

Or maybe an opportunity will come along to sail off, figuratively speaking, with the singing Southworth Buccaneers, a few of whom I met recently when they showed up in pirate garb to present a donation to the South Kitsap Helpline food bank. Not in the form of a check, mind you, but rather a wicker basket serving as a treasure chest filled with over $1,000 in small bills, collected from patrons they serenaded at local pubs. So I’ll get an eye patch, hoist some grog and sing off-key with the best of them, if they’ll have me.

So to everyone who’s welcomed me as editor of the Port Orchard Independent this year, please stay in touch regularly so we’ll become even better friends in the new year.

And by all means, whether or not we’ve met and whether we agree or disagree on a particular issue, please offer any suggestions you have for how this newspaper can continue to be relevant as we chronicle life in our community week by week.

— From Thinking Allowed by Tim Kelly

I often got a chuckle out of “Deep Thoughts” when I watched “Saturday Night Live.” The random absurdity of it was amusing.

That came to mind as I mulled over some random manifestations of absurdity this week:

• An email came in with the heading “McKenna thanks Congress for unplugging robo-call bill.”

Hardly anyone finds anything to thank Congress for these days, but our state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate was grateful that sensible congresspersons (an oxymoron, perhaps) decided to withdraw the Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011, which according to the AG’s news release “would have opened up mobile phones to robo-calls from businesses, whether consumers wanted to receive those calls or not.”

So, he’s thanking Congress — which currently has an approval rating on par with “co-workers with poor personal hygiene” — for not doing something that would have annoyed the heck out of millions of people. Who thought this was a good idea in the first place?

• Our online poll question this week asks readers if they approve of the appointment of Dee Coppola, wife of the mayor who lost his re-election bid, to the city planning commission. But we already know one citizen’s opinion.

Kathy Michael, wife of the mayor-elect’s trusted adviser, was quoted in a Kitsap Sun article saying “Appointing his wife when there were two extraordinarily more qualified candidates, it’s tragic, just tragic.”

Are we being a wee bit dramatic here? Just a tad over the top?

Seems like “tragic” ought to be reserved for, say, airplane crashes that kill scores of people, or a family losing their home in a Christmas Eve fire.Not an appointment you don’t approve of to a volunteer advisory board.

But when you wouldn’t have a good word to say about someone even if they brought about world peace and found a cure for cancer, such a laughable comment is hardly surprising.

• I also thought it was a little over the top to read an email from a guy who insisted it’s my job as a journalist “to report the facts and educate the American people.”

Though I resisted the mantle of educator of all Americans, our subsequent email exchange led to this week’s guest column by Caleb Wilson about a bill in Congress that could drastically change how we access news and entertainment on the Internet.

In his view as a Web-savvy young adult who’s grown up in the digital age, Wilson thinks it’s imperative that the American people demand that their elected representatives stop this ill-conceived and potentially harmful bill.

His assessment may be right on, but I’m relieved that he didn’t say it would be tragic if the bill were passed.

• One last note that’s neither random nor absurd: I’d like to wish all our readers a blessed and joyful Christmas.

The election’s over, the votes counted twice, and Tim Matthes won.

People for a Better Port Orchard did not.

In fact, this will be remembered as a tainted election because of the the connivers in that group.

That’s not to say Matthes doesn’t deserve to be mayor. He got five more votes than his opponent, so he’ll be duly sworn into office, and I wish him well in the job for the sake of everyone who lives in Port Orchard.

But I wonder if any of his supporters who funded People for a Better Port Orchard would swear that the guy they backed to oust a mayor they loathed had no idea what was going on when this committee carried out its dirty work?

It’s probably not worth writing more about this group, who refuse to admit how they blatantly distorted the “facts” in controversial campaign mailers they sent out attacking Lary Coppola.

The nominal leader of People for a Better Port Orchard — college student Rebekah Johnson — sent out a gloating email after this week’s recount, still claiming that the committee “simply circulated the facts about his actions and involvement in issues and decisions as Mayor.”

That’s simply not true, and she knows it; and the rest of that arrogant little cabal behind her know it, too.

So does Mayor-elect Matthes, who told me during an interview last week that he was “not all that enamored with your reporting on that group,” and said that was why he hadn’t returned my calls for three weeks after Election Night.

If Matthes sincerely wants to get folks from both sides of this divisive mayor’s race working together for the good of the community — and I believe he does — then he should assure people that his actions and decisions as mayor won’t be furtively directed by any key advisers who had a role in People for a Better Port Orchard.  Nobody voted for them.

Maybe he’ll revert to not talking with the hometown newspaper again after reading this — and after listening to those advisers again, perhaps — but I’d welcome a guest column from the mayor-elect next week in response.  And I’ll take your calls anytime.

“Will You Support Marriage in Washington?”

That’s the bold headline on an email that came in this week.

My answer: I think I already do; my spouse and I have been married for more than 15 years (some of them happy, to borrow a joke from Al Franken.)

But reading further, the email from the Family Policy Institute gets more specific, asking if I will make a tax-deductible donation to help support marriage in Washington.

Answer: No.

Not if won the lottery; not if I inherited a thousand shares of Apple stock; not if I found a pot of gold. Would not give a nickel to support this group or its lost cause.

Discrimination is not my cup of tea.

Although the word “gay” is nowhere to be found in this email, its plea for money, ostensibly to support marriage, is about one thing only, and that’s preventing same-sex couples from having full, equal rights.

That’s what the Family Policy Institute would tell you if they were telling the whole truth, but instead its email begins with a provocative (though false) political claim, calculated to make their fundraising pitch seem more urgent: “The majority caucus in the state house recently voted that their number one legislative priority for the 2012 legislative session was to redefine marriage.”

Not true, state Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor, said when I spoke with him about this.

And of course religious conservatives recognize the code words “redefine marriage” as meaning allowing gays to marry.

People who sincerely believe that homosexuality is wrong, that it’s a sinful choice their religious faith won’t let them condone or abide, those folks are as entitled as everyone else to express their views. But they are not entitled to use the law to impose their religious beliefs on others.

Religions can choose to discriminate against gays; government cannot.

So I would support marriage by divorcing it from government administration. All the government should sanction are civil unions for any couples who want to be legally joined, leaving marriage
to the discretion of religions. Each church decides whether or not to bestow a matrimonial blessing on same-sex couples, as the pastor and congregation see fit.

The Family Policy Institute email says its cause needs “informed churches, motivated pastors, and thoughtful, courageous citizens.”

But the group deliberately misinforms those folks by telling them that “While Washington faces record deficits, high unemployment, a failing education system, and a suffocating regulatory environment, the majority in the Washington State House decided that redefining marriage was the most important thing they could do as legislators.”

Thoughtful, courageous citizens know the issue of marriage equality isn’t going away. And groups such as the Family Policy Institute are no doubt troubled by a recent state poll that found 54 percent support for allowing same-sex marriage.

But there’s just no basis for the scare tactic of making House Democrats the bogeymen by claiming their top 2012 legislative priority is a same-sex marriage law.

Obviously, as Seaquist noted, those Democrats are currently part of a special session that has all legislators focused on the urgent task of addressing the state’s daunting budget shortfall.

State Sen. Ed Murray, a Seattle Democrat, has said he plans to introduce a same-sex marriage bill in the next session, but that’s hardly surprising since he’s an openly gay legislator who has worked for several years to get domestic partnership bills passed. But Murray also said passage of a same-sex marriage bill is “not a sure thing.”

That’s one state senator talking about a cause he believes in. It is not an expression of what his party’s entire House caucus considers the top legislative priority for the coming year.

But apparently truth isn’t a high priority for the Family Policy Institute. Desperately trying to maintain discrimination is.

Elsewhere on this page is a letter to the editor that claims the Port Orchard Independent engages in wanton censorship to stifle free expression and prevent information from being published.

The very presence of that letter disproves any such claims.

As expected, switching our online comments to a Facebook-linked system has drawn some criticism, and some irascible commenters probably will stop posting since they can’t remain anonymous.

That isn’t stifling anyone’s freedom of speech. Nor is it censorship.

If someone wants to accuse us of censorship for not printing every single letter we receive, or for deleting a few online comments that clearly violate the standards we set to keep such discourse civil, OK, that is a mild but necessary form of censorship.

But it’s just paranoid and asinine to view that as some sinister form of über control employed to silence and intimidate anyone who criticizes or disagrees with us on any issue.

During the four months I’ve been the editor here, there have been plenty of letters and online comments from critics who have read me the riot act over something I’ve written. Comes with the territory, and not a single harsh word of that criticism was censored.

We don’t always have room to print every letter to the editor, even though during this fall’s campaign season we often filled this page and extra pages with letters endorsing candidates.

We don’t publish letters from outsiders, which address national politics and are usually emailed en masse to media outlets all over. Our letters space is reserved for local readers speaking out on local topics.

And sometimes, but not very often, we decide not to print a letter because the writer is incoherent, or blatantly misrepresents the facts, or engages in ad hominem attacks. We make no apology for doing so.

As for online comments, it’s simple: Anyone who wants to participate in the forum we offer is welcome to put their two cents’ worth in, but you don’t have the option to do it anonomyously, or to make derogatory, disrespectful remarks about others.

If that’s not a policy someone can abide, there are — as commenters on our website have pointed out — other places to write whatever you want and not have to put your name on it.

— From Thinking Allowed by Tim Kelly