Advertisement

Opinion: In today’s pages: Marriages, mortgages, and the fate of the SUV

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Columnist Tim Rutten wonders if a gay marriage ban will ultimately backfire on the GOP:

Those pushing the ‘Marriage Protection Amendment’ have at their disposal the language of personal faith and religious tradition, which they surely will make the most of. But the genius of the American system is that it recognizes majoritarian tyranny as a threat to liberty right alongside power concentrated in the hands of the few. That gives a besieged minority, which this ballot initiative surely makes of gays and lesbians, a well-tested political vocabulary with which to make the case against injustice.

Advertisement

Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione looks to a future without nuclear weapons, and author Eric J. Weiner says foreign-government-run investment funds are keeping the American economy afloat.

The editorial board urges California to proceed with same sex weddings, criticizes Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) for her mismanagement of three mortgages, and wonders if it’s the end of the road for the SUV:

In some of L.A.’s wealthier neighborhoods, the homeowners seem to have swapped cars with the hired help. While just last year the well-off were commuting to work in SUVs even as domestic workers pulled into their neighborhoods in cheap subcompacts, today you’re likelier to see the moneyed set behind the wheels of Toyota Priuses, while their maids shuttle about in behemoth Lincoln Navigators.

On the Letters page, readers react to the story about liver transplants going to Japanese gangsters. Anaheim’s George Goodwin says, ‘I cannot express the feelings that arose with my memories of that good woman’s courage in the face of great pain and her dauntless hope of a transplant, and how it feels now to know that she and other good souls passed when criminals with lots of money were saved.’ But UC Irvine surgery professor Elliott Brender asks, ‘When I am faced with a dying patient, should I tell him I will not provide care for him because he is a criminal?’

*Cartoon by Matt Davies, The Journal News

Advertisement