Oh, this is priceless.

Amidst the boycotts of Arizona being organized throughout California, some people are starting to realize maybe it’s not the best idea – turns out they kind of rely on our tourists for a lot of their income!

But what makes this especially good is that my friend Marek dug up this little gem – the California Legal Code already contains a law that is very similar to Arizona’s own SB1070 – except theirs is not nearly as carefully worded!

834b. (a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully
cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization
Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is
suspected of being present in the United States in violation of
federal immigration laws.
(b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected
of being present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the
following:
(1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen
of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent
resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time
or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of
immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall
not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date
and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding
documentation to indicate his or her legal status.
(2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien
who is present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal
justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or
leave the United States.
(3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal
status and provide any additional information that may be requested
by any other public entity.
(c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city,
county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with
jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent
or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly
prohibited.

Notice some of the similarities: Arizona’s law calls for “reasonable suspicion,” California’s calls for “suspicion.” Both laws require LEOs to check with the feds and alert them the person is in custody if they are here illegally. The differences? California’s law requires the LEO to inform them they must obtain legal status to remain in the US; Arizona’s makes it a felony. More poignant to the current debate, however, is that California’s law places no limitations on the suspicion: there’s no “reasonable” qualifier, and there’s no clause forbidding race, color, or national origin as a factor as there is in the Arizona law.

So, hey, California Liberals? Get the plank out of your own eye before you go worrying about us. And if San Diego could go ahead and boycott the rest of the state – you know, to be consistent? – that would be great. And entertaining to watch.

On the Prop 8 decision

The court upheld the ban, as they should have. They didn’t invalidate the marriages  made before Prop 8 went into effect, which is an interesting position to take, but not unexpected. The biggest issue I see here is that now they have two separate “classes” of homosexual people in California – those who got married, and those who cannot – which will inevitably cause legal battles down the road.

The text of Prop 8 is as follows:

This initiative measure is submitted to the people in accordance with the provisions of Article II, Section 8, of the California Constitution.

This initiative measure expressly amends the California Constitution by adding a section thereto; therefore, new provisions proposed to be added are printed in italic type to indicate that they are new.

SECTION 1. Title This measure shall be known and may be cited as the “California Marriage Protection Act.”

SECTION 2. Section 7.5 is added to Article I of the California Constitution, to read:

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

The phrasing of this seems to invalidate the marriages made during that interim, and that to uphold the proposition they would have to cease to recognize the marriages made even before Prop 8 was passed. This, at least in my eyes, would be the correct and consistent legal interpretation. As it is, by upholding the propositon going forward but saying they will recognize the marriages already on the books, the California Supremes have set themselves up for a steady stream of litigation from both sides seeking to push the decision off the fence.

Edit: Here’s the full decision, PDF warning. I haven’t read the whole thing yet as it’s 185 (!) pages, but the gist of why they chose to go this route seems to be that since it did not explicitly apply retroactively, then they will not invalidate those made before the prop went into effect. Seems a rather weasely way to get past the issue, but, there you go.

Pandering

Elizabeth Scalia is pandering to the Politically Correct crowd, and she’s doing it at Pajamas Media, which is not the best place to do that sort of thing. She criticizes both “the gays” and “the Christians” for behaving “badly” during the Castro district altrication – you know, the one I blogged about the other day in which a crowd of angry anti-Prop 8 thugs surrounded a Bible study and prayer group and poured coffee on them, urinated on them, grabbed a girl’s Bible and attacked her with it, and then tried to molest the members of the group as they were escorted away by the police. Okay, I think we can see where “the gays” behaved badly.

But what are the sins of the Christians? According to Ms. Scalia, it was “singing hymns and praying for them, which might have seemed both separatist and condescending.” She says this “as a Catholic,” who says she’d feel judged by the fact she was being prayed for by strangers.

So on one hand we have a group engaged in physical assault, verbal abuse, and public sexual misconduct… and on the other hand we have a group who was praying.

Yeah. Those eeeevil Christians sure need a good talking to.

Praying is something we are commanded to do without ceasing, and singing hymns like “Amazing Grace” and “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus” are hardly extreme measures. These people were holding a prayer meeting – the same one they held “almost every Friday night” according to the locals – where they prayed for the community and tried to share the Gospel.  This is commendable behavior, not something to be looked down on. I have yet to see a report from anywhere on this issue that says the prayer group did anything wrong, or did anything to provoke the attack other than praying and singing.

Yet Ms. Scalia says that what they did was very un-Christlike. Jesus would never have been so intolerant. I wonder, has she read Christ’s sermons? This was a guy who did not have concerns over coming across as extreme or controversial. Remember, he ransacked the temple and screamed at the Pharisees in public, decrying them as a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs, hypocrites in every sense – can you imagine someone running up the stairs of the Vatican calling out such a thing? No, Christ was truthful. He was direct. He was loving. But he was not afraid of confrontation, and he was not afraid of what the truth would bring. In the same vein, we should speak truth in love, but be careful that we do not worry so much about appearing loving that it is no longer the truth being spoken.