I’ve decided to dig more fully into the timing of AB 849, the gay marriage bill that was just passed by the California legislature and is awaiting either a signature or a veto on governor Schwarzenegger’s desk. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to link to the page that shows the history of the bill as it is using “post” type cgi scripting and as such it is difficult to recreate the link. I’ll just cut and paste the history for now. If you’re interested in seeing the text yourself go to the California Assembly website, click on the Legislation link on the left, enter AB 849 in the search box and click on the history link of the resulting page. Here it is:

• Sept. 6 Senate amendments concurred in. To enrollment.
• Sept. 1 In Assembly. Concurrence in Senate amendments pending. May be considered on or after September 3 pursuant to Assembly Rule 77.
• Sept. 1 Read third time, passed, and to Assembly. (Ayes 21. Noes 15. Page 2471.)
• Aug. 30 Read second time. To third reading.
• Aug. 29 From committee: Do pass. (Ayes 7. Noes 6.).
• Aug. 15 In committee: Placed on Appropriations suspense file.
• July 13 From committee: Do pass, and re-refer to Com. on APPR. Re-referred. (Ayes 5. Noes 2.).
• June 29 Re-referred to Com. on JUD.
• June 28 From committee chair, with author’s amendments: Amend, and re-refer to committee. Read second time, amended, and re-referred to Com. on RLS.
• May 19 Referred to Com. on RLS.
• May 5 In Senate. Read first time. To Com. on RLS. for assignment.
• May 5 Read third time, passed, and to Senate. (Ayes 73. Noes 0. Page 1374.)
• Apr. 28 Read second time. To third reading.
• Apr. 27 From committee: Do pass. (Ayes 13. Noes 0.) (April 26).
• Mar. 3 Referred to Com. on W.,P. & W.
• Feb. 20 From printer. May be heard in committee March 22.
• Feb. 18 Read first time. To print.

This is as of Sept. 6th and as such doesn’t contain today’s passing by the Assembly. For those (like most Americans, like myself) who don’t understand all the ins and outs of the legislature, I’ll do my best to decode the language (I had to do some research):

The bill was originally created on February 18th of this year. Although it doesn’t say it in the above text, it was created by Assembly member Berg. The bill had nothing to do with gay marriage. It was about fish and game research and regulations. The bill was in the committee process until April 27th, at which point it went to the Assembly floor. On May 5th it was passed, still in its fish and game format, 73-0 and went to the Senate. I don’t understand how this all works, but instead of being voted on by the senate shortly after May 5th, it went back to committee on May 19th, where it would wait for its transformation.

On June 28th Mark Leno, assumably with Berg’s help (again, I don’t understand all the ins and outs of how this stuff works) was able to re-write the bill to place in it the exact same contents as AB 19, the original gay marriage bill that was defeated on June 2nd in the Assembly 35-37. This had the effect of giving AB 19 new life so that Mark Leno could try again later, perhaps when the timing was better, to get the same bill passed.

At that point, the “amended” bill went back into committee. On August 29th, the day Katrina hit, after sitting around in the Appropriations committee suspense file for two weeks, the committee voted 7-6 to send it to the Senate floor. In fairness to the committee, bills often spend a fair amount of time in the suspense file while other bills are being discussed. I’m not sure if there is a specific ordering or priority. This is what I’d like to find out. Did this bill get bumped up the order to get through on August 29th? Or were they stalling on a vote that should have happened a week prior? Or was it un in the “proper” order and they just moved quickly once the timing was right? Or did nothing suspicious happen at all here and the timing was just lucky? I really don’t know how this all works but I want to dig to the bottom of it. Anyone know more to help me out?

After going to the senate floor, they voted on September 1st 21-15 to pass the bill. In theory, this bill had already been passed by the Assembly (back in its fish and game days). However, since the bill had been amended subsequently to that, it had to go back to the Assembly to be re-voted upon. It passed on September 7th with a vote of 41-35.

That’s all she wrote folks, history wise. I’m going to continue to dig to the bottom of the timing in the Appropriations committee to fully understand the timing. It seems pretty suspicious to me that it was passed by the committee THE EXACT SAME DAY that Katrina hit. Also expect analysis later this evening of who’s votes changed since the Assembly voted down AB 19 35-37. Remember that AB 849 was the EXACT SAME law (as in identical text) as AB 19. It passed 41-35. I’ll give you the rundown on who’s votes switched without the media scrutiny that would have been given this bill in normal circumstances.

Well, the shit has hit the fan! The California assembly just passed (41-35, 41 being the minimum number of votes needed to pass the bill) the gay marriage bill that the California senate sent them a few days back. Because it already passed in the senate (and very quietly I might add) it now it goes to Gov. Schwazenegger to either veto or sign.

I’m not sure what angers me more:

– That we already voted on this as a state and 61% of us said no. Talk about usurping the will of the people.
– That doing it now, when the attention of the people is focused elsewhere, is a blatent attempt to avoid the wrath of the people (who would be placing a lot more pressure on the legislature to vote against the bill).
– That the decision is morally wrong.

I guess the final item really upsets me the most, but the other two bother me the most in a political fashion.

What I love is how groups try to sugar coat this. Reading the ever unbiased SF Chronicle artcile you get quotes like: “The bill, AB849, does not require any religious organization to recognize or perform marriages for same-sex couples.” Actually, since it is illegal for any organization, church or otherwise, to discriminate against a gay person in their hiring practices and if gay marriage is allowed they will be forced to provide marital benefits to the other person in the partnership, then churches will be forced to support and recognize gay marriage. If you don’t think this is true, just ask all the Catholic organizations who are forced to provide FREE birth control pills as part of their health insurance despite the Church’s belief that any form of birth control is morally wrong.

Also, to act as if the legislature is being generous by not “requiring” churches to perform gay marriages is ridiculous. Churches aren’t required to marry anyone and can discriminate in any fashion they want, including racially and sexually, in regards to the church’s membership and what ceremonies they’ll perform for/on anyone, including members. (Notice that this is separate from hiring practicies.) Do you think that if the state had any right to regulate in this fashion that the Catholic Church could get away with an all male priesthood? Absolutely not.

Here’s what to expect from here: The governor has a tough choice on his hands. He hasn’t wanted to get tangled up in moral issues because it is not really the focus of his governorship. But, he’s got no choice now. If he thinks he can sign the bill and place the blame on the legislature, he’s sorely mistaken. He will be held accountable by the 61% of Californians who think gay marriage is a bad idea. Of course if he vetoes it, he’ll be stepping in the middle of a subject he didn’t want to get involved in. So, he’s got a tough choice to make and I hope he vetoes it. If he vetoes it, the legislation is dead. The legislature doesn’t have the votes to overturn a veto. What’s left then for the proponents of the legislation is their legal challenges to Prop. 22 (the proposition that made gay marriage illegal).

For the opponents to the legislation, they will be pushing forward with the constitutional amendment to make gay marriage contrary to the state constitution with even more vigor now that it is clear that they can’t keep the legislature from trying to make it legal. Without the constitutional amendment, it’ll only take a pro-gay governor to change the landscape. Similarly, if Schwarzenegger signs the bill, they’ll immediately challenge the legislation saying that it is contrary to Prop. 22, which, from my understanding, should take precedence. So no matter what, if the bill is signed or vetoed, the issue is still headed for more legal challenges.

So here is what I’ll be doing:

– The governor will be getting a letter from me today. I hope that everyone who reads this blog will do the same.
– I’ll be writing my assemblyman and state senator thanking them (in my case they voted against the legislation) for their votes and encouraging those who live in districts with representatives who voted for the legislation to write them letters rebuking them for their votes.
– I’ll be considering a donation or other forms of support to one or more of the prominent groups fighting for the constitutional amendment including www.voteyesmarriage.com and Campaign for Children and Families.

I encourage all to do the same.

Until after the game that is…

I just wanted to give anyone who cares the link to the map of what regions of the country ABC will be showing the Cal vs. Washington game at 12:30 PM on Saturday. Basically, if you live in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, the western part of Montana or the southwestern part of Wyoming, you’ll see the game. If not, you’ll be stuck with some other stupid game.

OK, I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled Catholic topics of discussion soon. But for now, consider the blog renamed: As we watch the Cal Bears.

In any case, as I predicted (see the post title), the Bears are up to 16th in the AP poll and 17th in the Coaches poll from 19th and 20th respectively. As I said, most pollsters don’t get in depth coverage of all the top 25 teams, particularly those lower in the polls and also those on the west coast (that ‘ol east coast bias). As such, Cal’ s mediocre performance and loss of its starting quarterback are completely irrelevant to the polls. All that matters is Cal 41, Sac State 3.

Plus it’s hard to lose ground when the likes of Oklahoma and Auburn lose to nobodies (TCU and Georgia Tech respectively) and Boise State is put back in its place (i.e. not worthy of a ranking) by Georgia. We leap frogged all three of those teams. We also leap frogged Texas A&M who lost to a respectable Clemson team.

However, one team leap frogged us: Arizona St. after beating up on Temple.

OK, I’m worried this may end up being a weekly post…

Nevertheless, Ayoob did enough in practice on Monday to convince Tedford that he could hit smaller barns than on Saturday. Let’s hope he can actually hit the wide-open wide-receivers next Saturday. For those who care, the game will be televised on ABC at 12:30 PM PDT on the west coast. I’ll be trying to block the game out of my mind while enjoying myself in the mountains with Wendy and the boys. I’ll Tivo it, not so much to watch but to be able to get the real story on plays and occurances that never seem to get mentioned in the newspaper articles.

I was at the Cal Bearts game yesterday and as a fan who has sat through the good years and the bad years, I think I can offer some good insight into their play and their outlook for the season. I’ll post in list format, starting with the good news:

-The defense looked surprisingly strong. There are those who will discount their performance because it was only against Sac State need only look around the conference at the scores this weekend. A lot of powder puff teams put double digit scores against good Pac-10 teams. The reality is that when you’re team puts up 40+ points, you’re likely to have a more relaxed “don’t give up the big play” mindset. The Cal defense shut the door all day long, applying good pressure and having mostly good pass coverage (minus one should have been a touchdown, boy did we get lucky, coverage failure). Even the 3 points were not given up easily and a couple of lucky plays were key to them getting in field goal territory. Heck, we only gave up 121 yards through the air and 71 yards on the ground. Even against Sac State, those are stats to be proud of. In my opinion a lot of questions were answered on defense and in a good way.
-Nate Longshore (the starting QB) played as advertised and it is clear why he got the starting job. While there were some jitters, overall he had good arm strength, good decision making skills and fairly good touch. In fact the only area he didn’t live up to the hype was in lower leg bone strength… such a shame. More on this later.
-The wide receiver core looked good. They were running sharp routes, finding the seams, and they were FAST. This is one of the fastest receiving cores I’ve ever seen at Memorial stadium. Actually, I’m almost as excited about this crew as I was about the duo we had last year. In some ways it is even better as we have a lot more depth, so the 2005 equivalent of Lyman going down the USC game won’t be nearly as devestating.
-Marshawn Lynch (the main running back) lived up to the high expectations and definitely seems able to be a every down back. In fact, he seemed to get stronger as the game went on. Along those lines, I think his intensity to start the game was a little low. Tedford had said that the coaching staff had been telling him to know when to give up so that he doesn’t cough up the ball when he has no chance of making extra yards. I think part way into the game either he and/or the coaches realized that you can’t keep that man on a leash because he seemed to step it up a notch. The only question mark I saw from that point was his ability to rush inside the tackles because he didn’t do nearly as well as I would have hoped, especially against a division I-AA team. Supposedly, run defense is one of Sac State’s strengths, so lets hope that’s true and that the offensive line was having first game jitters.
-Now things start to go downhill from here… Particularly in the first half, the offense didn’t seem to be in sync. As Tedford said, it seemed like they hadn’t practiced in two weeks. I suspect this is because it was the first game for a lot of players and there were a lot of jitters. I suspect that between the experience of playing in an actual game and Tedford taking them out to the woodshack tomorrow at practice, this’ll be cleared up by next week.
-Ayoob, the highly touted JC transfer quarterback, STUNK. I mean he couldn’t hit the side of a… there’s got to be a witty thing besides ‘barn’ to say here. In any case, the good news is that his decision making skills were good and he was more nimble in the pocket than Longshore. One has to believe that he threw the ball better than that at his JC college, so there is hope. However, some players can not make the adjustment to the next level if nothing else because they crack under the increased pressure. Let’s hope that’s not the case here. But let’s not minimize the fact that a two man quarterback controversy should be solved when one of them gets injured. When the third guy is all of sudden the new quarterback of controversy, that speaks to how poorly Ayoob played.

So overall, outside of the quarterback situation, I’m encouraged. They’ll still be some growning pains, but with Washington (even Wilmingham can’t save us), Illinois (we need overtime to beat Rutgers), New Mexico State (can we really field two football teams in this state?) and Arizona (it can only go up from last year) on our schedule for the next 4 weeks, I think we’ll be able to work out those kinks before our first big challenge at UCLA on October 8th.

So all that remains in the quarterback situation… ugh.

My favorite blogger is back online! Go see Mark Shea’s blog – Catholic and Enjoying It!.

I have a tendancy to slam columnist when they’re idiots. But I don’t want to give the idea that I don’t like columns. Case in point, this column was great. I particularly like humorous columns!

Well it turns out the rumors were right. Nate Longshore gave Joe Ayoob the booya and took the starting job from him. He’ll be starting the game vs. Sac State and although Tedford has promised some starting time to Ayoob, it looks like the job is Longshore’s to lose.

To quote Tedford:

“Nate Longshore is going to start the game for us. He has done an excellent job for us, not only through the spring, but it’s evident that he worked really hard through the summer. He has really done a nice job of understanding what we are doing schematically with our offense, has really been consistent and accurate with throwing the ball, so I feel that he has really performed well. … We hope that both of them (Longshore and Ayoob) will play in the first game and we’ll see what happens from there – how they handle game situations and continue the competition. Right now Nate (Longshore) is the guy.”

OK, I was reading the preview for Saturday’s Bear’s game against Sac State and there were a couple things they said about Sac State that really threw me off:

1. Sac State was 3-8 last year (tied for 6th place out of 8 teams). Yet they had “nine all-conference selections”. How can such a crappy team have 9 players who were the best at their position in the conference? There’s only about 25 positions (22 on offense and defense plus a punter, kicker, and maybe a return specialist or one or two others). I have a hard time believing fully 1/3rd of them came from one of the worst teams in the conference. I mean, was this academic all-conference selections? Or did it include 3rd string all-conference? What ever it is, there’s something wrong or misleading here.

2. Also odd, they were 3-8 last year and they’re returning 17 starters (that’s probably from the 22 on offense and defense), but they’re picked to finish last in the conference this year. What’s so wrong with this team? They didn’t even finish last, last year. What’s the story?