Dear Mr. Hogarth,

You have to understand that although you and the rest of the liberal establishment has been successful in brain-washing the naive and ignorant "undocumented"/legal Hispanic in believing that you are all "concerned" for the rights of minorites, you underestimated our religious roots. The majority of Hispanics are Catholic. Catholics will draw the line at some point. In this case it was that belief that marriage is between a man and woman. You and the rest of the the Homosexual Mafia can scream and shout all you want, but the consciousness (belief in God) will ultimately prevail.

Sincerely,

Jesse R. Ortega Jr.
Delano, CA



Hello Paul:

I saw your article about the Prop 8 legal situation. You refer to Martinez vs. Kulongoski as an Oregon Supreme Court court decision, but it was a decision of the Court of Appeals. I have not been able to find (on the net) any documents that confirm further legal action on Martinez vs. Kulongoski since the opinion was released in May.

I agree that Martinez was weak. My own opinion of the California situation is that the California Supreme Court will declare Prop 8 to be unconstitutional, and will do so in a way that provides support for marriage equality advocates around the nation.

My opinion is based on reading the May decision in California (Marriage Cases), the 4 petitions filed against Prop 8, the amici briefs for one of those petitions, the Connecticut case (Kerrigan), and Martinez. Of course, I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the California Supreme Court (the 4-3 majority, that is) made clear how it would rule on an initiative like Prop 8. They prepared the ground with Marriage Cases.

It's going to be interesting to see how this turns out, and how quickly the court moves.

Bob Callaway
San Francisco



To the Editor:

The local pro-JROTC forces loudly deny that it is a military recruitment program. But that doesn't stop JROTC-supporter Paul Franson from writing in his November 14 letter to Beyond Chron that we should retain the Pentagon program so that "future generals and admirals" will come from San Francisco. As they say, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

And why should San Francisco send its youth off to join the Pentagon? To defeat "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," of course. Supposedly enlightened San Francisco JROTC cadets can get "ROTC scholarships, which lead to entering the active duty military as an officer." True enough, Mr. Franson, unless that cadet is openly LGBT, in which case both ROTC scholarships and military careers are not options.

Mr. Franson, and others like him, should study how the Pentagon was forced to end racial segregation. It wasn't ended by enlightened military leaders. Racial segregation in the military ended in 1948 after A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and one of the great black leaders of US history, launched a campaign of black resistance to the draft, threatening mass civil disobedience. Randolph and his allies went eyeball-to-eyeball with President Harry Truman. Truman blinked, and issued an Executive Order banning racial discrimination in the armed forces. That, I think, is a much better model for how to end LGBT discrimination in the military.

More than half of the federal budget today goes to the Pentagon and its illegal and immoral wars. Militarism and its consequences are a plague upon our nation. Enough is enough. Let's spend our money on educating our youth, not on putting them on a military track.

Marc Norton
San Francisco



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