ASUC Endorsements

Please accept my apologies for not posting my endorsements sooner, but I was giving as much time as possible to allow for candidates to return my endorsement surveys.

And the endorsements go to….

For President: Travis “SEO” Garcia

While I don’t expect Garcia to actually win this race and would have recommended that he also file to run for a Senate seat, he does bring to the table the best possible platform. Most importantly, this is the only candidate that is free from the baggage of both the Gabriel Legacy and CalSERVE’s history.

For Executive Vice President: Taylor Allbright

Taylor Allbright has a long history of working across party lines to serve students. After her first (failed) senate campaign, Allbright still worked within the system as a student leader. Moreover, this is the only candidate running that I believe actually knows what she is getting into if she were to win. Senator Allbright knows the ASUC structure, knows what students want, and knows how to get the projects done.

For Academic Affairs Vice President: Carolina “Caro” Jauregui

Jauregui lists specific, tangible goals to benefit the student body—namely restoring dead days and the drop deadline. For a long time, these were the goals of Student Action. Unfortunately, SA seems to have forgotten the role of the various officers and Curtis Lee seems to only list the constitutional duties of the AAVP as his campaign platform.

For External Affair Vice President: Justin “Screw Residents” Azadivar

Azadiver, otherwise known as Beetle, has the longest history of advocating for students in Berkeley. Also, his goal of world domination is infinitely more attainable than those of his opponents. Making use of a ridiculously liberal student organization (UCSA) or even more liberal city council (Berkeley City Council) is useless as nobody will take either entity seriously. Likewise, it is laughable to think that this office can clean the streets of Berkeley and make them safe—EAVP candidates have run on that platform for over a decade now and all have failed.

For Senate:
137. Alex Mastrodonato, Apple Engineering
95. Chad “Big Axe” Kunert, Berkeley College Republicans
70. Marybeth Moore, Unite Greek

James Fullmer on Gay Marriage

The California Patriot Blog recently had a comment thread in which James Fullmer (a member of Berkeley College Republicans and managing editor of the California Patriot) and I debated Gay Marriage. However, as the comments became longer and longer, I decided that it would be appropriate to place a post on my own blog to continue the debate, already in progress.

Please feel free to add your own comments here.

“In allowing a government to determine which relationships are recognized and which aren’t, we are giving the [government] too much power.”

Then, government should stay out of marriage altogether and leave it up to individual churches. How very libertarian of you.

In general, I am very libertarian. I do believe that the government should keep its nose out of marriage except that so many of the privileges tied to marriage under federal law are based on the word “marriage” that it would be tedious to remove marriage from law. Besides, we know the government wouldn’t go along with those plans any time in the near future. So marriage should be offered equally to straight people and gay people.

The government recognizes and subsidizes marriage because marriage 1) provides a mass social framework that allows for the raising of children in two-parent homes with both a male and a female influence and 2) provides a mass social framework in which individual men protect individual women (who are generally physically the weaker sex) and individual women make sure individual men (who are generally the more idiotic sex) don’t do anything too stupid. This saves the government from having to do all the safety and police work itself. (You’ll pardon me for being unbearably traditional and generalizing in my views of the sexes.)

And the reason why two people of the same sex don’t qualify for this governmental recognition is because - at least in the eyes of society today - a relationship between two individuals of the same sex does not fulfill those two criteria. Both are up for debate, of course, and incidentally I think the strongest argument for gay marriage is that it does provide social stability. The whole “marriage tames men [and women, in this case]” argument.

Yeah. Not so much. I have a hard time taking any part of that argument seriously. For arguments sake, I will refrain from criticizing these rather sexist statements regarding the weakness of women and idiocy of men. Though such notions of sexual differences are still in vogue in places like North Korea they have been decreasing in popularity in the US since about 1910. But I digress.

If government sanctioned marriage is intended to provide a mass social framework for heterosexual, two-parent families then it has been a horribly failed experiment. The major flaw with that argument is that marriage and fertility have no correspondence, at all. Married people do not need to have or raise children to be married or even be ABLE to have or raise children to be married. If this were the case, elderly, infertile, and those without the desire to have children would be forbidden to marry for the same reason Gay people are not allowed to.

Further, last time I checked, one did not have to be married to procreate. In fact, it is not even a requirement to be heterosexual to parent a child. Lots of Gay people have children—whether from a previous heterosexual relationship, adoption, artificial insemination, or other means.
Yet, children of single parent families and Gay families are punished under a system that attempts to promote heterosexual marriage. If the government really cared for the upbringing of children, it would promote stable homes-regardless of the gender of the parents-by allowing all parents to marry and would provide shared custody to both parents (provided they are capable of caring for the child and are non-abusive) for the unfortunate event of a separation or death.

I am not convinced that there is a social benefit to children from heterosexual parenting. Clearly heterosexual homes have misinformed Mr. Fullmer regarding gender roles. The social structure promoted by heterosexual marriage is not necessarily detrimental, but neither is the social structure promoted by Gay marriage. That is to say that both can promote stable, loving, and caring homes for children to be reared in but neither necessarily provides such a functional environment. More structurally, both can raise children but neither must. Negatively, both can have the same faults—selfishness, abusiveness, and other causes of distress—but neither must.

Gay marriage has the same societal benefits that heterosexual marriage does. By this logic, there is no reason to incentivize heterosexual marriage over same-sex ones.

No, because given the two reasons government recognizes marriage that I listed above, an interracial marriage is no different from an intraracial marriage. Anti-miscegenation laws were attempts by racist idiots to preserve “racial purity” and had nothing to do with whether or not a particular marriage was beneficial to society. Racism and homophobia are both terrible things. However, there actually is a non-homophobic case against gay marriage; if there’s a non-racist argument against interracial marriage, I’ve yet to hear it. So let’s dispense with this analogy, shall we?

Gay marriage and Straight marriage are not intrinsically different. Laws preventing Gays from achieving marriage rights are put in place by homophobes trying to preserve a view of society that never actually existed. Gay marriage does not harm society any more than heterosexual marriage nor does heterosexual marriage benefit society any more than Gay marriage. If there is a non-homophobic case against gay marriage that is based in reality then I have yet to hear it.

“In allowing a government to determine which relationships are recognized and
which aren’t, we are giving the [government] too much power.”

No, quite frankly, we’re not. Marriage, as we’re discussing it, is recognized by-guess who-the government. For the purposes of this discussion, marriage is a government program. If the government has a program, it can set requirements for who qualifies for that program.

As “Republican” and “Conservative” as Fullmer claims to be, it appears that he has forgotten the greatest of Conservative tenets: promotion of small government. This nation and the GOP were both founded on the value of personal liberty over ill-placed government sovereignty.

Simply because the government can and does doesn’t mean it should set certain requirements for certain government programs. In fact, the Supreme Court has often held that the government can not impose certain requirements preventing people from partaking in government programs if they are improperly established, are discriminatory, or otherwise are wrongly imposed. Any argument that something is proper because it is status quo is illogical.

As I’ve said before, if the government interferes with our rights to enter into consensual relationships with whomever we want, then I’ll be out there with you protesting it. But don’t mistake the fact that some relationships qualify for government recognition for an inherent right to have a relationship recognized by the government.

Somehow, I do not think we will see Mr. Fullmer fighting for Gay rights on the front lines any time soon.

Berkeley College Republicans in the Wall Street Journal

On Friday, when I did my usual look through The Wall Street Journal, I saw a familiar face. Between the sketches of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Pelosi, and various other political heavyweights was the poorly drawn image of fellow Golden Bear, Josiah Prendergast, President of the Berkeley College Republicans.

Chris Page at the Cal Patriot Blog already blogged about BCR's Wall Street Journal article. Unfortunately his coverage of the article lacks any real news. We already know BCR is a big group on campus and that the conservative mindset is a novelty in the People's Republic of Berkeley. However, he asserts that Republicans are needed in Berkeley more than anywhere and that is why they are a big group. In reality, the number of Republicans on campus is more a function of the increasingly moderate to conservative makeup of the student population. But the size of the club is mostly correlated to the activities of the organization.

The Berkeley College Republicans have fun. Students like to be involved in groups that are fun. It should come as no surprise, then, when BCR posts such large numbers. Really, who doesn't like a group that has lively political debates, fantastic guest speakers, huge events attracting worldwide media coverage, ice-skating trips, parties, bar nights, and other activities when people want to organize them? They really try to have something for everyone.

Another key to the success of BCR is that they avoid really divisive topics. The members of BCR, contrary to popular belief, don't sit around and talk about how wonderful it is that we are in Iraq right now or how awful abortion is. When those sorts of topics are brought up in meetings, it is usually in a debate format with two people passionately debating the issues with formal rules followed by the questions and comments of other members.

Berkeley College Republicans can thank their own efforts for developing an organization that people want to be a part of. Good job, guys! Thanks for keeping a conservative beacon on our liberal campus!

UPDATE: Josiah Prendergast, President of BCR, has been asked to appear on Hannity & Colmes on FoxNews on Wednesday. The show will air at 6pm and 11pm, PST.

UPDATE: The CNBC show "Kudlow & Company" is airing a debate at 2 pm tomorrow between Josiah and a representative of the Cal Democrats regarding the November election, students inpolitics, and the future of America.