Today's Special: The state constitution

http://southflorida.metromix.com/politics/article/danation-todays-special-the/371563/content


Today's special: The state constitution
Make mine well-done, but hold the democracy.
By Dan Sweeney
April 8, 2008


Whether it's a presidential election year or not, one thing that a statewide election always guarantees is another batch of proposed amendments to the state constitution, some sensible, others mind-fuckingly stupid. Whether approving a high-speed rail system that would never come close to being funded (and, subsequently, would be abandoned), banning smoking everywhere except "stand-alone bars," limiting the confinement of pregnant pigs or violating the privacy rights of minors by forcing parental notification before they have an abortion, our state constitution has, especially in recent years, become a sounding board for every dumb special interest that could craft an amendment that sounded good to more than half the voters. Fortunately, a recent amendment called for that bare majority to be boosted to 60 percent. At the time, I considered that to be one of the worst of the proposed amendments to gain approval since I'd been keeping track of these things, as it appeared to take power away from the people. But let's be real — for the most part, it's not "the people" who are proposing these amendments and canvassing to gather the required signatures.

For example, Florida4Marriage.org, the organization that proposed the same-sex marriage ban that will be on this year's ballot, is just a façade for the Florida Family Policy Council. According to the Florida Department of Elections, John Stemberger, the Orlando attorney who is the president and general counsel for the Florida Family Policy Council, is also the treasurer and chairman of Florida4Marriage.org — indeed the address listed for Florida4Marriage.org is the same one Stemberger lists as his business address on his professional Web site, Orlandolawyer.tv. And the Florida Family Policy Council, in turn, is just one of the many state Family Policy Councils that are merely front groups for Colorado-based Focus on the Family, the deeply weird, far-right organization run by Christian conservative lunatic James Dobson. Stemberger, meanwhile, is a longtime Republican Party insider who served as the political director of the Republican Party of Florida in the early '90s. This is hardly the sort of grassroots referendum initiated by the people of Florida.

And why have a same-sex marriage ban, anyway? Here's a thought: If you don't want gay people getting married, then don't vote for a proposed amendment calling for gay marriage, in the unlikely event that such a proposed amendment would even get the required number of signatures to get on the ballot. Proposing amendments that disallow the enacting of laws seems, at best, a bit undemocratic. The political ramifications of the same-sex-marriage ban are something else to consider. In a year in which the Democrats are ascendant, will Florida prove to be only the second state to strike down such a ban, or will the proposed amendment motivate Florida Republicans and deliver the state to John McCain?

The other proposed constitutional amendment that has generated controversy materialized last week, when the state's Taxation and Budget Reform Commission voted to ax the constitutional ban on state funding for religious institutions, which opened the door for a revival of former Gov. Jeb Bush's school-vouchers program, which the courts killed in 2004. Good Lord, but Jeb's tentacles reach everywhere. The man will always be with us, influencing the state from behind the sequestered rooms of his Coral Gables high-rise, rather like a latter-day Howard Hughes, only more evil and less neurotic. Vouchers are, of course, an excellent way to snuff out an already sagging public-education system in Florida. This is great if you view a child's education as a useful commodity as opposed to, say, an education. It's the sort of free-market-as-panacea solution we've come to expect from Jeb and his ilk. But, of course, in the meantime, we're left with cripplingly underfunded public schools, the possible government regulation of private schools and a bunch of parents holding vouchers for expensive academies that, even with the vouchers, they still may be unable to afford. And where does it end? How long until the Bible becomes the commonly accepted textbook for world-history classes?

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