Not a good idea, even if bipartisan

A bill has been proposed by Barney Frank and Ron Paul to legalize marijuana. I think it's a terrible idea.

The plus on the bill is it would hand back to the States the right to decide whether the drug should be legal; I think that generally that sort of thing is a good thing, but not in the case of a dangerous drug which (for some reason) has lost its stigma among some people.

Some people argue that it's safer than alcohol and tobacco; I'm not so sure. People have been using those two for centuries; in the case of alcohol, for millennia. People have some idea of the effects of these two drugs, they know the risks, as well as the positive effects. Cannabis, by contrast, is a fairly new drug. On top of all this, it's usually smoked rather than ingested, so the dosage is harder to control than alcohol (though the same as tobacco). I will always say to anyone that claims that cannabis is safer than alcohol and tobacco: "Prove it." Until then, I say, keep it illegal. Let's not give people too many ways to curdle their brains. Alcohol is enough.

Ken Mehlman comes out as gay

Ken Mehlman, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has come out as gay in an article in The Atlantic magazine. This is an undisputed fact. But what I wonder about is that he says that he "arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently," according to the Atlantic article. I mean, he is 44 years old. He denied being gay four years ago after he was outed on CNN. I can't imagine that at the age of 40 he hadn't figured it out.



But I don't fault Mehlman that much. The fact is that the real villains of the piece are the "social conservatives" who have invaded the Republican Party. Mehlman has stated in the Atlantic article that "it would have been impossible for him to go against the party consensus." And the question is, why was the party consensus so badly aligned against gay rights?



Mehlman has worked in the past for such Republicans as William Weld and Rudy Giuliani, the kind of Republicans that I think merit support. It is too bad, though understandable, that he felt unable to tackle the "social conservatives" head on as RNC chairman. And unfortunatly, having waited so long, he will not have the power he had then to pull the GOP in the correct direction, while gay activists will say that his "mea culpa" is too little and too late. (Sorry to use a Latin phrase from the Catholic liturgy in discussing a fellow Jew, but it was the most appropriate phrasing!)



Democrats like Barney Frank can be openly gay and remain in power. It is very unfortunate that Republicans can't. Gay rights have nothing to do with the economic issues that should be the ones dividing the two parties.

The politics of sex

Larry Craig, a senator from Idaho, recently got arrested in a police sting in a men's restroom and charged with disorderly conduct in a plea bargain. The big headline on the paper I saw this morning was Craig's proclaming he wasn't gay.

That this should matter is really a shame. But Craig is a conservative Republican, and as I mentioned in my Aug. 15 post, some people think that conservatism on some issues means you have to be on all issues, and anti-homosexualism is considered a necessary part of conservatism in many people's eyes. So a liberal like Barney Frank or former governor McGreevey of New Jersey can be gay, but not a conservative senator from Idaho.

That's really stupid. Why a person who is gay can't be a conservative (or vice versa) escapes me. What sexual orientation has to do with economics (or gun control, or almost any other issue in politics) escapes me.