Month: January 2010

California/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Same-sex marriage pays off, proponents argue in California trial

by Fran Johns

When all else fails, talk about money. Proponents of same-sex marriage, in the San Francisco trial now being fought over the issue, brought in the big financial guns yesterday. They were operated by economist Edmund Egan.

Legalizing same-sex marriage would reduce San Francisco’s health and welfare costs because married people are healthier and wealthier than singles, and would generate revenue for government from a surge in weddings, the city’s chief economist testified Thursday at the trial of a lawsuit challenging California’s Proposition 8.

Edmund Egan’s testimony was the first attempt by the plaintiffs – two same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco – to assess the economic effects of the November 2008 ballot measure that amended the state Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Egan heads the Office of Economic Analysis in the city controller’s office. He argued that married individuals are generally healthier, less likely to need health care and more likely to be insured — all of which translates into greater productivity, more taxes paid, fewer costs to the community. He said it was not possible to put a dollar figure on projected savings, but estimated sales tax revenues would be in the area of $1.7 million and the city could also expect an additional $900,000 in hotel tax revenues from wedding-related spending.

Peter Patterson, lawyer for Protect Marriage, the Prop. 8 campaign committee, said Egan had greatly overstated the measure’s impact.

The 2008 figures reflected a “pent-up demand” for same-sex weddings that would surely decline, Patterson said during cross-examination. He noted that there was a sharp drop in gay and lesbian marriages in Massachusetts in the second year after they were legalized there.

Patterson questioned Egan’s assumption that married same-sex couples would be less likely to incur health care costs than unmarried partners, saying the economist had based his statement on studies of heterosexual couples. Those studies were irrelevant to a “gay-friendly city” like San Francisco, Patterson said.

One friend of this writer, partnered for over 35 years with the man he had hoped to marry “but we missed the window,” said yesterday that he’d be happy to furnish a list of potential weddings to Patterson, with the assurance that it would take a long time for them all to be accomplished. “But I think we’re waiting for the Supreme Court to opine on our marriage-worthiness,” he said.

Same-sex marriage pays off, S.F. economist says.

California/General interest/Lifestyle/Religion/USA/Women
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World peace could happen

by Fran Johns

We could have world peace. If everyone would simply agree to begin the day — tomorrow would be a good time to start — with a group Ommmm, peace would follow.

Optimally, your group would be led by Sr. Chandru — although the Dalai Lama would do, and since he’s right here on YouTube he is accessible to an in-home group. Sr. Chandru is affiliated with the Brahma Kumaris, a lady who travels through life in white robes and a cloud of peace and serenity.  It tends to rub off, even if your personal aura is less than serene that day. This morning Sr. Chandru led a group of people of vastly differing faith traditions in a meditative Ommmm to begin a meeting of the San Francisco Interfaith Council. Peace reigned.

I know, I know, not everyone is in synch with the Brahma Kumaris. But then, not everyone is in synch with fundamentalist Christianity or mainstream Judaism or radical Islam, which is why we need to sit down to a group Ommmm. I do know the Brahma Kumaris are the only Hindu sect (I hope I’m getting this right, but they are also very forgiving) that has women priests, and they are an incredibly peaceful sort. BK Sr. Elizabeth has her own little peace cloud, and before she adopted it she was a lead singer in Beach Blanket Babylon, which is known for a lot of good things to almost anyone who’s ever heard of San Francisco — but calm and serenity are not among them.

Some of us are better candidates for serenity than others, but nobody could get up from an Ommmm and charge off to battle. Therefore, with all the charging off to battle that is currently destroying the planet, perhaps an Ommm-first policy is worth considering.

I can put you in touch with Sr. Chandru.

California/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Money/Politics & Causes/Women
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Bone weary in America: contraceptives, celiac disease & other osteo-hazards

by Fran Johns

You might want to start paying attention to your bones.

Even if you’re not an over-50 hard-drinking guy, or a post-menopausal former-smoker gal — even  if you are, say, just a light-complexioned skinny person, your bones want you to understand they might not be able to keep you together forever.

My bones sent that message not long ago by summoning a few other medical markers. Anemia and exhaustion got my attention and lo! we discovered celiac disease. Who knew? Celiac sprue is a genetic condition half the country seems to have, now that it’s gotten half the country’s attention — and confirmed diagnoses are relatively easy to make. Because I am an asymptomatic celiac person, in my case it was just the ol’ bones sending a signal that they would like a little calcium, please.

Yesterday’s New York Times reported another new finding:

Almost half of all women who use a popular injected contraceptive lose a significant amount of bone mass within two years, and researchers now say the greatest risk is to smokers, women who don’t consume enough calcium and those who have never gone through a pregnancy.

A study that followed women who used the birth-control method — a shot of depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, better known as DMPA or Depo-Provera, every three months — found that 45 percent of the users experienced bone mineral density losses of 5 percent or more in the hip or lower spine, researchers said. The study appears in the January issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

More than two million American women use DMPA, including about 400,000 teenagers.

Researchers said the bone loss was of “significant concern” because recovering bone mass can take a long time, and the hip is the most common site for fractures in women later in life.

“We can now tell our patients, ‘Don’t smoke, and take your calcium every day’ — those are modifiable risk factors,” said the senior author, Dr. Abbey B. Berenson, director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “The flip side is that if I have a patient who smokes, I’m going to be more concerned about giving her Depo-Provera.”

Your bones could be aching for attention even if you’re still none of the above. The World Health Organization now has a nifty new bone-health tool called FRAX to help you figure if you’re at risk for fractures. You can visit their site, plug in country and ethnicity for your personal profile. You can also go to KnowMyBones.com (bones people are having a good time with titles and acronyms) and find out more about healthy bones and how to keep them thus.

Dem bones, as long as you help them, gonna walk around.

California/General interest/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/USA/Women
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Sorry, no photos in Prop 8 courtroom

by Fran Johns

So much for what proponents of marriage equality thought would have been a good idea:

The Supreme Court has indefinitely blocked cameras from covering the high-profile federal court trial on the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

The high court split 5-4 today, with the conservative justices in the majority.

Now in its third day, the trial in federal court in San Francisco is over the state’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage.

The presiding judge, Vaughn Walker, had proposed posting recordings of the trial on the court’s Web site after several hours of delay and allowing real-time streaming of the trial for viewing in other federal courthouses in California, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Gay rights advocates were calling Judge Walker’s earlier ruling a step towards openness and transparency. Proposition 8 supporters (who hope to uphold the voters’ ban on same-sex marriage in case you’ve been on another planet and missed the back story) were clearly — and probably rightly — afraid their supporters would fear being outed and skip testifying. A thoughtful person who lives in my house suggested it could be a bad precedent.

I personally was looking forward to looking in. But the Supreme Court didn’t consult with any of us. So now we’ll wait to see what they have to say when, as expected, this case gets to their chambers on appeal.

Supreme Court indefinitely blocks cameras from Prop. 8 trial – latimes.com.

California/General interest/Health/seniors/USA
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Nobody wants to talk about it

by Fran Johns

It’s the new Great American Conspiracy, the game of eternal youth. A little plastic surgery here, personal trainer there, here a test, there a scan, everywhere denial again. Death is optional, isn’t it?

Doctors are the happy co-conspirators in the game. They can always fix things up, can’t they?

Well, no. But a new study shows that doctors are just as happy to put off talking about end-of-life issues as their patients. This means that discussions get put off until they are beside the point because the patient died. Which saves all those uncomfortable moments… even if by the time he or she dies the patient has suffered distress that might easily have been avoided, the doctor has likely ordered expensive, agonizing, unnecessary tests and procedures (after all, isn’t the mandate always to treat, no matter what?) and friends and family are left emotional wrecks. All because it’s easier to be in denial than consider the possibility that we might actually — gasp — die.

It’s a conversation that most people dread, doctors and patients alike. The cancer is terminal, time is short, and tough decisions loom — about accepting treatment or rejecting it, and choosing where and how to die.

When is the right time — if there is one — to bring up these painful issues with someone who is terminally ill?

Guidelines for doctors say the discussion should begin when a patient has a year or less to live. That way, patients and their families can plan whether they want to do everything possible to stay alive, or to avoid respirators, resuscitation, additional chemotherapy and the web of tubes, needles, pumps and other machines that often accompany death in the hospital.

The right time to bring up these issues is today. When you’re 26. Or 52. Or 78 and feeling okay. Once someone is terminally ill it’s a whole new game, but to postpone talking about it, to behave as if never uttering the D-word means you’ll still live forever at that point is both foolish and costly. The reality is that we do postpone the conversation. But once a diagnosis suggests a foreseeable end to the living-forever fantasy the discussion should, for those very good reasons above, begin that day.

But many doctors, especially older ones and specialists, say they would postpone those conversations, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Cancer.

It’s not entirely clear whether these doctors are remiss for not speaking up — or whether the guidelines are unrealistic. Advice that sounds good on paper may be no match for the emotions on both sides when it comes to facing patients and their families and admitting that it will soon be over, that all medicine can offer is a bit of comfort while the patient waits to die.

Dr. Nancy L. Keating, the first author of the study and an associate professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard, said not much was known about how, when or even if doctors were having these difficult talks with dying patients. But she said that her research team suspected that communication was falling short, because studies have shown that even though most people want to die at home, most wind up dying in the hospital.

The researchers surveyed 4,074 doctors who took care of cancer patients, instructing them to imagine one who had only four to six months left, but was still feeling well. Then the doctors were asked when they would discuss the prognosis, whether the patient wanted resuscitation or hospice care, and where he or she wanted to die.

The results came as a surprise: the doctors were even more reluctant to ask certain questions than the researchers had expected. Although 65 percent said they would talk about the prognosis “now,” far fewer would discuss the other issues at the same time: resuscitation, 44 percent; hospice, 26 percent; site of death, 21 percent. Instead, most of the doctors said they would rather wait until the patients felt worse or there were no more cancer treatments to offer.

How much worse are patients supposed to feel? How many treatments will be offered, for how long, at what expense in dollars and in human suffering?

If doctors were honest about the pain, distress and discomfort involved in end-of-life treatments, if patients could be informed and then clear about what they would choose, if friends and families could be open, the savings in dollars and in human suffering would be immense. Sarah Palin didn’t want you to talk about it. Is she still calling the shots?

Second Opinion – Doctors Often Delay Conversations About Death With Terminal Patients – NYTimes.com.

California/General interest/Religion/USA
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Gay rights, hate crimes & social justice

by Fran Johns

Can hate crimes be erased from the U.S.? Probably not. Will same-sex marriage some day become the law of the land? Probably, eventually, so.

A few blocks around the corner from the federal courthouse in San Francisco where the latest battle for marriage equality is beginning an ambitious effort to combat hate crimes through community action was also getting underway on Monday morning.

Not In Our Town (NIOT) is a national movement planning a full-scale web organizing campaign  launch on April 6. Its focus is on mobilizing citizens in response to hate crimes, but its ultimate goal is to help build communities where such crimes won’t happen. Strategies were unveiled for a group of civic and religious leaders in San Francisco as part of the pre-launch efforts.

Not In Our Town began with a PBS documentary about Billings, Montana citizens joining together to respond to a series of hate crimes in their town. The story struck a chord with audiences, and created a model that inspired viewers around the country to hold their own campaigns against intolerance. Now in its second decade, the Not In Our Town movement continues to grow. Media company nonprofit The Working Group, which produced the PBS documentary, is the force behind NIOT’s emerging web-based organizational campaign

In the audience at Monday’s meeting, which was held at the San Francisco Public Library, were San Francisco Interfaith Council Executive Director Michael Pappas, Assistant District Attorney Victor Hwang (whose specific concentration is on prosecution of hate crimes), Director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services Mike Farrah and representatives of a host of community action programs such as AfroSolo — a visual and performing arts nonprofit working, among other things, to combat black-on-black crime. Plus a wide assortment of individuals from religious and community groups. The audience mix was, NIOT representatives said, typical of groups around the country from which community efforts have grown.

NIOT grassroots efforts have taken place in communities from Patchogue, NY to Ft. Collins, CO to Richmond, CA and dozens in between. If the interest shown in the San Francisco Library — while most eyes were on the courthouse around the corner — was any indication, an enthusiastic San Francisco NIOT group will join others for the April 6 launce.

California/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/USA
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Same-sex marriage trial underway in San Francisco — but no You Tube coverage for now

by Fran Johns

Shortly before the trial focusing on California’s Proposition 8 opened this morning, the Supreme Court blocked video of the proceedings on You Tube. Judging from the line-up of TV trucks and the impassioned testimony going on inside, it’s likely that a good sense of the action will be available.  But no on-site video.  Opponents of Prop. 8 had hailed an earlier order to allow posting of video on You Tube, but supporters of the anti-gay marriage initiative mounted a strong argument to get the U.S. Supreme Court to ban such action. An updated story link is included at the end of this earlier post.

California’s Proposition 8, the voter initiative that said marriage must be only for couples who can produce children, came up for discussion in a San Francisco courtroom beginning today.

The cameras-in-the-courtroom mini-drama, launched when maverick Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in favor of the YouTube postings, has become a significant sidelight to the main issue of the case.  Prop. 8 supporters fear their witnesses will be afraid to testify — public support of bigotry still being unpopular in California despite what the voters did when they passed the initiative; gay rights supporters are coming out, once more, for openness.

“What are they afraid of?” asked California State Senator Mark Leno Saturday. Leno was asked for his opinion while attending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s celebration with supporters in San Francisco. “As an advocate for open and transparent government,” he said, “what is there to fear? Taxpayers should be able to see the courts they pay for in action.” Leno, the first openly gay man elected to the California Senate and long a leader in gay rights and other progressive causes, called the State Supreme Court’s earlier ruling that upheld Prop. 8 last May “a rallying cry for all Californians who believe in equality and fairness… to stand up and fight the pervasive injustices LGBT people face in our community and our nation.”

The current primary issue, whether same-sex couples should have the right to marry, is being argued in San Francisco federal court beginning today. Judge Walker, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, has made it clear he anticipates his ruling will be appealed.

For two couples and their allies who have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s Proposition 8, the November 2008 initiative was merely the latest example of historic discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Same-sex marriage poses no threat to opposite-sex couples, children or the public welfare, they argue, and a ballot measure that revoked the marital rights of one “disfavored group of citizens” was an unconstitutional appeal to fear and prejudice.

For Prop. 8’s sponsors, a religious coalition called Protect Marriage, anti-gay bias is no longer significant in California, where legislators have legalized domestic partnerships and twice voted to authorize same-sex marriage. Discrimination also had nothing to do with the ballot measure, which merely wrote the time-honored definition of marriage into the state Constitution, they argue.

Extending wedlock to gays and lesbians, they maintain, would radically redefine marriage, weaken biological parents’ connection with their children, tell men that “they have no significant place in family life” and force many religious Americans to “choose between being a believer and being a good citizen.”

The competing legal theories that will come up in court are a bit simpler: whether Prop. 8 violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender, or whether it validly reserves marital status for those who can naturally conceive children.

The initiative overturned a May 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in California. The state high court upheld Prop. 8 in May 2009 in a challenge by gay rights advocates whose claims involved only state law and not the U.S. Constitution.

A few days before the state court ruling, two couples and a recently formed advocacy group, the American Foundation for Equal Rights, sued in federal court. Their lawyers are the unlikely duo of Theodore Olson and David Boies, who represented George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively, in the Supreme Court case that decided the 2000 presidential election.

Established gay rights organizations had avoided federal court, fearing a possible adverse ruling by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court. But with the fate of same-sex marriage in California, and possibly elsewhere, at stake in the trial, the advocates are all on board and most have filed supportive briefs.

Prop. 8’s sponsors – vaulted into the case by state Attorney General Jerry Brown’s refusal to defend the measure – say its clear-cut goal was to reinforce traditional marriage, and any inquiry into the campaign’s allegedly hidden motives is both intrusive and pointless.

“The traditional definition of marriage does not reflect animus against gays and lesbians,” attorney Charles Cooper said in court papers. “It simply reflects the fact that the institution of marriage is, and has always been, uniquely concerned with promoting and regulating naturally procreative relationships between men and women to provide for the nurture and upbringing of the next generation,” Cooper wrote.

The trial will test such assertions, with competing experts arguing about the history and meaning of marriage, the adequacy of domestic partnership as a marital substitute, and the social and political status of gays and lesbians.

Walker has kept his views to himself, but his rulings so far have dismayed some of Prop. 8’s supporters, who appear to be bracing their followers for a short-term defeat.

“The consistency with which the judge has sided with our opponents is anything but comforting to supporters of traditional marriage,” Andrew Pugno, general counsel for Protect Marriage, said in a letter to backers of the measure last week.

Fortunately, Pugno said, the last word will come from “the nine justices on the highest court in the nation.”

Prop. 8 trial begins today.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/01/11/state/n080724S48.DTL&tsp=1

California/Health/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/Women
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Pelosi keeps public — and her own — options open in San Francisco talk

by Fran Johns

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rallied the faithful in San Francisco Saturday afternoon, drawing the loudest applause (there had already been cheers for heavy-hitter Democrats, San Francisco liberal causes and hometown heroine Pelosi herself) with an assertion that passage of the health reform bill will happen soon. She said the House bill is the stronger,  and negotiations to reconcile House and Senate versions into a final bill “are intense.”

Whether that final bill will include the public option her audience of several hundred supporters clearly wanted remains in doubt – and Pelosi was keeping her own options open. “Any bill we approve will have to pass the Triple A test,” she said: “Affordability, specifically for the middle class, Accountability – insurance companies will have to be held accountable; and Accessibility.”

Accessibility, of course, brings the issue back to the public option, which the bill will have, Pelosi maintained, “…or what the public option was intended to do: keep the insurance companies honest.”

The invitation-only Saturday event was billed as a New Year Celebration, and held on the first anniversary of a similar gathering hailing her ascension to Speaker last year.  Both took place at Delancey Street, a residential self-help community founded in 1971 to help substance abusers, ex-felons and “people from America’s underclass” get back on their feet and into productive lives. A few of the 14,000+ who have graduated from Delancey Street programs mingled with the likes of former state senator and current California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton, prominent gay California State Senator Mark Leno, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Almost anyone who is, or aspires to be, anyone in local Democratic politics was working the room.

Pelosi worked it herself, smiling and greeting her way through the crowds for several hours. When she returns to Washington after this weekend at home, the greetings and workings are guaranteed to be a little more fractured.

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