Learning to Practice What We Preach

When you’ve listened to speaker after speaker and know what they’re going to say and there are more to come and it’s already pushing 9 p.m., your mind tends to wander. So it was one night last week in a Westminster School District auditorium, while watching democracy at work, that I flashed on Iraq. It didn’t hurt my analogy that there was a peacekeeping force of 19 (Huntington Beach and Westminster cops) in and around Stacey Middle School to maintain order.

Is this what we’re selling in the Mideast? That three public officials, citing their interpretation of morality and religious imperatives, refuse to follow the law?

How many times have U.S. officials referred to the “rule of law” being our goal in Iraq, even as its citizens squabble over centuries-old religious and cultural differences? Before we insist on the rule of law in Baghdad, how about Westminster?

The three board members forming the majority have made it clear they don’t like new wording in state law that expands antidiscrimination protection to people with gender-identity issues. Even though a duly elected Legislature approved the language and the governor signed it into law, that’s not good enough for the board majority.

It’s not just the three-member board majority that values religious conviction over law. A number of speakers in the audience, while heavily outnumbered, encouraged the three to hang tough.

They argued, in essence, that the three members were elected to make tough decisions and, therefore, ought to be allowed to vote as they saw fit. That sounds Jeffersonian, but it’s a philosophy its proponents would drop in a minute if the board, for example, voted to hire a convicted child molester as principal of one of its elementary schools.

Against state law to do such a thing? Big deal. According to the majority’s supporters, the board is hired to make the tough decisions.

Opponents castigated the three for their arrogance or insensitivity. How dare you, asked one woman, impose your religious beliefs on everyone else? Board President James Reed minced no words in saying he was contemptuous of one of his fellow members’ continuing presence on the board.

The how-dare-you question, asked more than once, was never answered. Had it been, the debate would have made for fascinating town hall discussions. Unfortunately, the evening was crafted only for denunciations and unchallenged moral assertions.

The majority has said it acted on conscience, refusing to betray deeply rooted philosophical or religious convictions.

Excellent motive, wrong conclusion. For public servants, a true act of conscience would be to say that supporting a state law that violated religious beliefs required them to resign their positions.

Unless the three conclude there were no Christians who spoke out against them, you’d think it would dawn on them that their religious interpretation might be open to, uh, interpretation.

To skip past that and impose their religious belief on everyone else -- to make it the law -- is the stuff of extremist mullahs.

I suppose I could have left the meeting exulting in our democracy in action. Everyone said their piece. Nobody got arrested for speaking out.

Afterward, however, I was thinking one thing: I hope this isn’t what everyone’s sacrifice in Iraq produces.

Correction: I goofed in a column last week in relating a Biblical reference. A former minister told me the story of Peter refusing to renounce his faith in the face of governmental authority. I inadvertently wrote that it was Paul who was defiant.

Dana Parsons’ column

appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.