TEACHING THE WRONG LESSONS

When I was about five or six and living with my parents in the Berkeley
hills, I wandered over to a neighbor's yard one day, as I often did, and
began rough-housing with some pups her dog had given birth to a half year
earlier. As young dogs do with each other, the pups liked to wrestle with
me and would give me playful bites that never broke the skin. I would shake
them loose, and they would rush back for another bite.

On this particular day, however, the neighbor lady looking out her window
from a distance somehow came to the conclusion I was brutalizing her dogs,
and she immediately called my mother to complain.

When I got home, I was immediately called on the carpet for my bad
behavior. I protested that I had only played with her dogs as I always did
and had done wrong. My mother would hear none of that. If our neighbor, a
mature and reasonable woman, saw me mistreating her dogs, that was enough
for Mom.

I was ordered to immediately call the neighbor and apologize for being mean
to her dogs. "But I wasn't mean to them," I insisted. "The dogs and I were
just playing."

My mother was becoming increasingly annoyed at my recalcitrance and warned
me that I'd better stop stalling and call the woman or she wouldn't let me
go on a trip I was looking forward to.

I was trapped and angry. I had to apologize for something I hadn't done or
miss out on the trip. With my stomach knotted, I called the woman,
apologized, and sullenly told my mother, "I did it." In all my childhood, I
can vaguely recall only a couple of other instances when I was forced to
apologize when I was innocent, but it took only a few such occasions to
teach me a dreadful lesson: apologies were merely lies people told to
escape undeserved punishment. There was no need for the supposedly
aggrieved person to believe I really felt remorse. All that mattered was
that I was made to feel shame and that the other person could feel
vindicated. It took years to unlearn that lesson.

So I wonder whether the Supreme Court's striking "under God" from the
Pledge of Allegiance, as it is said in schools, was really such a bad
decision. I personally am proud to sing, "America, America, God shed his
grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea."
And when I hear Ray Charles sing it, he can bring tears to my eyes. I also
realize that the girl who is at the center of the Supreme Court case is a
believer and that it is her father who is the atheist. But all this is
irrelevant to the basic issue.

They may be in a minority, but some students are, in fact, atheists. Do we
really want to put them in a position where - at least in some parts of
this country - their choice is between social ostracism and mouthing a
fundamental belief they don't hold? Put them in that bind day in and day
out and see what lesson these children learn about honesty and about the
significance of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

I have a similar objection to anti-marijuana laws. Like liquor during
Prohibition, anyone who wants pot can get it, and lots of people do. Like
drinkers who consume alcohol in moderation, typical marijuana smokers find
it harmless. Marijuana causes fewer day-to-day disturbances than alcohol
because - for whatever reason - some drinkers become "mean drunks." Almost
every week in West Marin, sheriff's deputies are called out to deal with
some disorderly drinker. In contrast, I can't recall a deputy ever being
called out to deal with someone being "mean" simply as a result of smoking pot.

So what lesson does this teach society? I suspect the message many people
get from federal marijuana laws goes something like this: not all laws
makes sense; some exist for purely political reasons; if that's the case, a
rational citizen will decide for himself which laws to obey because it may
not be ethically or morally wrong to break some of them; just don't get
caught. I'm not sure that's an ideal attitude for our judicial system to
encourage.

Finally, what are we to make of this? University of California regent Ward
Connerly, who keeps fighting affirmative, is trying to prohibit
California's schools, as well as state and local governments, from keeping
track of employees' and students' races. He says he's trying to end racial
discrimination. More-liberal blacks say he's trying to make it impossible
to determine if racial discrimination ever ends.

Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative had been heading toward the November
ballot but now is scheduled for a statewide vote in March 2004; much as I
hate to acknowledge it, polls have shown that if the vote were held right
now, the initiative would win.

So how can one explain West Marin's State Senator John Burton proposing to
give American Indians (based on their race) the power to veto development
in geographical areas they deem sacred (based on religion)?

Here's one explanation. Now that California voters have made various Indian
tribes fabulously wealthy by giving them a monopoly on casino gambling in
this state, Indians are pouring money into certain campaign coffers. Only
Gov. Gray Davis has received more tribal money than Burton, $840,000 v.
$485,000.

Doesn't it seem odd that while the US Supreme Court says we have to drop
"under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance - and while most Californians
think schools and governments should not record people's races - Burton's
Senate Bill 1828 would make race and religion the ultimate arbiters of
development in this state?