Wow! I Never Would Have Guessed!

There are moments that you find yourself reading or hearing someone make a statement that just makes your head spin, and you find yourself asking, "Are you really this utterly clueless?" One of those moments was many years ago, sitting outside at All-American Burger on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, shortly after Tom Hayden's forces had taken over the city government.

There were two "progressive" sorts having a chat at the next table, from their accents, not West Coasters. One of them observed, "The Los Angeles economy is very robust, in a laissez-faire sort of way, but you know there is absolutely no provision for public policy planning." Gee, you think there might be a connection?

I think back to where I lived in Santa Monica, as the New Yorkers arrived, gratified that apartments were available near the ocean, relatively cheaply, and without having to engage in the bizarre sub-sub-sub-sub-subletting commonly done in New York City to get into a rent-controlled apartment. And so within a few years--they passed a rent control law to help make Santa Monica like the place that they couldn't afford to live.

Sometimes people recognize that there is a gap between what they would like to believe, and what is. When we first moved to Boise, we met a doctor and his wife at a social event. When he finished his residency, and they were ready to settle down, they looked all across the country--and picked Boise, because they wanted to have kids and raise a family. They somewhat sheepishly admitted that while they were both very, very liberal, and felt a little strange about moving to Boise--they also admitted that it was a much better place to raise a family than the liberal areas where they might have felt politically more comfortable. At least they recognized (in some abstract sense) that there was a gap between their politics and what was good for child rearing.

Bryan Fischer brought to my attention this article about Boise's homosexual activist community from the June 6, 2007 Boise Weekly that shows a really serious cluelessness:

Like many other movements, gay and lesbian groups turned to media to help spread the word. Diversity is one example of that.

Another is an innovative Web site built by Jody May-Chang, a Boise Web developer who moved to Idaho from California in 1999. PrideDepot.com, May-Chang's Web site, has a national feel to it, but it's built and maintained in Boise as a labor of love and a necessity, May-Chang said.

She and her partner wanted to raise her young son in a place that was more quiet and peaceful than Santa Barbara, Calif., where she'd lived since 1978. They moved to Boise, and although they loved their new home, its political and social situation were a far cry from California's liberal centers.

"It was really culture shock, coming here," May-Chang said.

May-Chang had been an activist in California, where the gay and lesbian movement is a vibrant and accepted part of the social whirl. Not so in Idaho. So, when the lesbian couple and their son moved in, they peeled the provocative political stickers from their car and tried to settle comfortably into their new, pleasant life in Idaho. May-Chang was happy as a mother, and her son thrived here.

"Parenting really is a form of activism, if you think about it," May-Chang said. "I take that as a deep form of social responsibility."

But over time, May-Chang said, she began to notice a number of limitations in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community here, not the least of which was its apparently small size.

"It was very fragmented," May-Chang said. "It's nobody's fault. But it felt like I stepped back 10 years."

Her reaction is traditional in two ways. As a parent, she wanted a better place for her child.

Now, it is certainly possible that what makes California a bad place to raise kids has nothing to do with California's liberalism. (Notice that I said, "liberalism," not tolerance. California isn't really tolerant; it's just intolerant of different things.) But May-Chang doesn't seem to have even considered the possibility that stepping "back 10 years" about one issue might be the reason for the other differences, as well.

UPDATE: Just to be clear on this: I'm not saying that California's very supportive approach to sexual orientation is what makes it a bad place to raise kids (although I don't think it is a positive, either). I'm saying that all this stuff goes together: the supportiveness of homosexuality, the tolerance of groups like NAMBLA, the unwillingness to punish violent crime (while pursuing gun ownership like it is somewhat sort of perversion).