Finally, New York State has legalized same-sex marriage. Now the big concern of NY lawmakers is how to respect the conscientious objection of state employees who consider themselves morally or religiously opposed to same-sex marriage. Under current NY law, such state employees could face criminal charges for refusing to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. But not to worry. Our state lawmakers are moving quickly to respect these state employees’ conscientious concerns, and even our most liberal lawmakers are on board. Soon our laws will give these state employees the right to keep, but only selectively do, their jobs. Depending on their morals, or their religion, they will get paid to selectively ignore New York law and the will of the majority of New Yorkers. However, no legislators in New York, or any other state, are willing to consider something like this for members of the U.S. armed services who have moral or religious objections to killing the people we want them to kill.

The lesson seems to be that in America we have a right to selectively conscientiously object to other peoples’ sex partners, but we have no right to selectively conscientiously object to killing people our government wants killed. For us, it is wrong to force a volunteer state bureaucrat with moral or religious objections to issue a same-sex marriage certificate; but it is not wrong to make a volunteer soldier with moral or religious objections kill people he didn’t imagine killing when he volunteered. As someone who has lived abroad, I can tell you that it is uniquely American to think that immoral sex is worse than immoral killing.

On April 4, 2011 I drove to downtown San Jose, California to attend a rally for workers' rights. The rally was sponsored by We Are One, and it honored Martin Luther King Jr.'s support of the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968. The We Are One rally was a great event, with people from all walks of life supporting the workers in Wisconsin and the rights of workers everywhere.

I walked around the crowd asking people if I could take their photos and they were all very happy to oblige. What impressed me were all the different types of workers who attended, from teachers to fire fighters to electrical engineers to technicians. Many of the people that I talked to were inspired by the workers in Wisconsin and the protesters in Egypt and the Middle East. The speakers were great too, especially Cindy Chavez, who was in the San Jose City Council and now a teacher at San Jose State University. Interspersed in this blog are photos that I took of the event.

I last talked with Terri Hodge the day after my post, reacting to her assertion that eminent domain was a greater issue in District 100 than education. She objected to the inference insisted that she understood the importance of and the need for a college education. Her comments came during an interview with the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News. She admitted that she should have phrased her thoughts better and went on to defend her legislative record on education. You can read about all of that here.

Throughout our conversation Terri sounded defeated and defensive.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate for S.C. governor Mullins McLeod announced today he was dropping his bid to become head of the state and will endorse Vincent Sheheen. Here's McLeod's full statement.

As if there’s nothing more insulting or embarrassing, we have a sitting lieutenant governor open his big mouth can compare the needy – including children – to “stray animals”.

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,” Bauer said.

This little interesting nugget regarding hunger in Texas. The state is being sued because its violating its own rules regarding the timeliness with which food stamp applications are processed.

That's right - sued...

We heard that S.C. Gov. Sanford is not going to be impeached. It’s “quite disappointing.” I was expecting something “Grand Finale,” maybe like “Crime and Punishment­.”

The irony in this story is, as everybody knows, ex-President Clinton’s “Maybe or Maybe Not with Cigar or etc.?” case created such a “National Saga” along with huge national spending of “Tax Payers’ Money” on the investigation and impeachment debate (by the way, did we really want to spend our tax payment on that kind of investigation, and, now, where is the guy who did the whole spending thing on the lunatic national investigation?).

But this old-enough-but-extremely immature guy’s neglect of his public duty for five days, disappearing, and actually doing “the ACTUAL THING” under the disguise of crawling around Appalachian trail (or where was it?) can be easily dismissed from impeachment?

It’s great to see Ms. Jenny Sanford to have her own strong standing when her spouse turned out to be not worthy enough to deserve her devotion.

My good friend Jonathan Eastvold has a great letter on the "I Believe" license plate issue in S.C. He's a Summerville resident, holds a B.A. in political science and biblical/theological studies from Wheaton College in Illinois and an M.A. and Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University.

Enjoy.

Did you happen to catch the eye-awaking story this morning in the Sun News about the state's prepaid college tuition program?

Fact: $140 per day to keep a person locked up in a Texas Department of Corrections prison facility.

Annualized cost for this "service" per inmate: $51,100.00.

Is it just me or, with these kinds of readily available resources, might there be a better way to respond to much of the prison population than the manner in which we currently work?

Given the rippling, better, long term tidal wave affect of incarceration on families, neighborhoods and individuals, I know there is a better way to use these funds.

Just thinking out loud...