HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE: The fate of the children — like patriotism — has emerged as one of the last best refuges for scoundrels everywhere. Certainly supporters of Prop. 8 — the successful statewide initiative that stripped same-sex couples of their all-too-brief constitutional rights to get married — argued were it not for their initiative, public schools would be compelled to teach that the union of Adam and Steve is every bit as sanctified as that of Adam and Eve. The fact is schools aren’t required to teach anything about marriage right now, and wouldn’t be, even if Prop. 8 had been defeated. Nor would churches that frown on same-sex marriage be compelled to perform same-sex weddings if Prop. 8 weren’t passed, another whopper put out there by the Yes on 8 crowd. So much for the religiously inspired respecting truth in advertising any more than their secular and heathen counterparts.

I have yet to figure out how allowing same-sex couples to get hitched has any bearing on the stability of heterosexual unions, but then, I’ve always been dense. I understand that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — whose members donated more than $20 million to the cause — fear we are risking cosmic calamity by allowing anything that so violates the will of God as gay marriage to go unchallenged. But I still don’t get it. If you’re a Mormon, you already believe the end is right around the corner. And if you’re a good Mormon, you’re already prepared for it. But with or without gay marriage, the end is still nigh. Like I say, I’m dense.

I only wish the people who cry such crocodile tears about “the children” had a smidgen of consistency to them. It’s well and good to defend the rights of all zygotes to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what about the 760,000 kids younger than 18 who have no medical insurance in California? Or the 30 percent of kids who live in poverty? I know it’s sort of old news, but where’s the hew and cry because one out of every four public school students in California drops out before graduating? Economists estimate California’s drop-out rate costs the state $46.4 billion in, among other things, the difference between what the dropouts earn and what they could have earned had they only graduated.

When California ranks 29th out of all 50 states for expenditure per pupil, 49th for the number of administrators per pupil, and 49th for the number of school nurses per student — one for every 2,200 students — there should be little wonder that we rank 38th in terms of student achievement. The only mystery is that we’re not actually doing worse. Or how we accept this with so little complaint.

Naturally, I’m hoping that the pro-Prop. 8 crowd will be screaming long and loud as soon as they find out how adroitly the Bush White House quietly gutted an important new regulation designed to protect “the children” from the mentally debilitating effects of airborne lead pollution. But I won’t be holding my breath, either. In this instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just lowered the threshold for how much lead various factories can emit through their smokestacks before triggering federal monitoring requirements. The L.A. Times reported how the EPA’s action stemmed from recent scientific studies showing that lead poisoning — even at even exceptionally low levels — has been linked to serious learning problems, aggression, and criminal behavior. The EPA decreed that for any factories emitting half-a-ton or more per year, monitoring stations must be installed. Naturally, the industry is howling; the new rules are fiscally infeasible and totally unreasonable, their lobbyists contend. Guess what? Two weeks after the industry’s most recent White House lobbying blitz, the White House quietly undid the new rules. In practical effect, the White House reduced the number of factories needing new monitoring stations from 203 to a mere 87. According to my calculations, that constitutes a whole lot of pissed-off and needlessly stupid postnatal zygotes whose pain and misery could otherwise have been prevented.

As for myself, I have to confess I find “the children” way too rough, tough, rude, and crude for a wimp like me. When local surf legend Randy Cone complains that when he tries to drop in, he invariably finds himself confronted by some 13-year-old surfer who tells him to go fornicate himself in no uncertain terms, he’s onto something. Even hard-core gang veteranos are complaining they can’t get no respect from the younger generation. Little wonder that parents from across the nation were taking advantage of Nebraska’s new and novel safe haven law by driving across the country, dropping off their out-of-control teens at some Nebraska hospital, and then fleeing just as fast as they could. Nebraska — otherwise known as the birthplace of Kool-Aid and Vice-Grips — passed a wide-open safe haven law earlier this year so that parents desperate not to be parents could drop off their newborns at a licensed medical facility, no questions asked, without fear of criminal prosecution. The bill was designed to prevent such parents from depositing their unwanted infants in a nearby dumpster. The bill was written so loosely, however, that it allowed parents to drop off children as old as 18. This past week, the Nebraska legislature finally plugged that loophole, but not before 36 teens had been dropped off, and most from out of state. The most recent involved a 14-year-old driven by his desperate mom all the way from Davis, California. Until the loophole was plugged, I had entertained delusions that Santa Barbara could address all of our “youth” problems — no matter how intransigent — by shipping all difficult, wayward, and underperforming teens off to Nebraska. Now, frankly, I have no clue what we’ll do. All I know is that it’s a good thing that all the people who supported Prop. 8 will be there, ready to lend a helpful hand, no matter what.

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