Bee Opinionated: Sacramento’s transgender legislator? + Van Houten goes free + Mayor asks for help
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Happy Sunday, this is Robin Epley with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board, bringing you the best of the state’s opinion journalism for the Week of July 10.
Let’s start with a story that makes me happy: Sacramento now has the chance to send the state’s first transgender legislator to the Capitol.
Evan Minton announced last week that he will run for State Assembly District 6, which encompasses most of the city of Sacramento as well as some of the surrounding unincorporated county.
He joins a field of several candidates who have already announced their candidacy to succeed Kevin McCarty, who has decided to run instead for Sacramento mayor. Minton’s platform will focus on environmental justice, affordable housing and economic security.
But also notable is that, if Minton wins, he will be the first openly transgender legislator in the state — just as he was the first openly transgender person to work in the state capitol.
The aspiring assemblymember wants to show the Sacramento region’s transgender and queer youth, and their families, that not only do they belong, they deserve to have a voice in their government.
“Our kids are being ... targeted,” Minton said. “It’s important for me to let them know that they have a future and just as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as anyone else.”
Minton is no stranger to fighting for his rights: In 2017, he was denied health care by Mercy San Juan, a part of Dignity Health, and sued the medical providers in a high-profile ACLU lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Minton also served as an expert witness to the U.S. House Oversight Committee on President Donald Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ+ Americans.
Since then, they’ve continued their advocacy for the California transgender community as co-chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Transgender Advisory Committee and co-chair of the lieutenant governor’s Transgender Advisory Council.
“Ultimately, the fight for transgender rights are, at their heart, a fight for all Americans,” I wrote in my profile of Minton. “Acceptance and inclusion for transgender, non-binary and queer people is another step forward, ensuring we can all live as our authentic selves and without fear of persecution or restriction.”
“Approximately 10% of the California Legislature identifies as LGBTQ+,” I wrote, “but Minton’s candidacy could be the first to bring transgender acceptance to the state capitol. It would also further demonstrate that transgender legislators absolutely belong in America’s representative democracy.”
Leslie Van Outin’
Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced he would not continue to fight the state’s parole board against the release of Leslie Van Houten, a member of the Manson crime family and an inmate for 53 years since the age of 19 for her part in the murders of seven people in Los Angeles over two nights in August, 1969.
Since 2016, five different parole boards have recommended her release from custody, but each time, the governor — twice Jerry Brown and three times Newsom — has overruled that decision.
“Van Houten has shown extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans, support from family and friends, favorable institutional reports and, at the time of the governor’s decision, had received four successive grants of parole,” the Court of Appeal declared.
“There is … a difficult question of whether there are some crimes that are so awful that the perpetrator should never be paroled, no matter how young they were when the crime was committed or how long they have served in prison,” wrote Edwin Chemerinsky in his own guest essay for The Bee last week. “Our legal system has made the judgment that such sentences can be imposed. The punishment is termed ‘life without the possibility of parole.’”
And, if that had been Van Houten’s sentence, parole would have been precluded. But her sentence was explicit in allowing parole, he wrote. “The Court of Appeal was right, under the facts of this case, to say that parole should have been granted. And Newsom was right in letting it go and allowing Van Houten to be paroled.”
But there are two sides to every story — often more — and very tangible vestiges remain of the life Leno and Rosemary LaBianca might have lived to see, if they had not been murdered that Aug. 10 evening by Van Houten and her friends.
“Love and logic do not always mesh together in neat, harmonious ways,” wrote Louise LaBianca, the daughter of Leno, writing her own op-ed for The Bee last week. “This idea has occurred to me more than once as I try to reach a logical conclusion and accept that the woman who participated in the brutal murders of my father and step-mother has been released from jail.”
“When my cousin, Aleta, called Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office to find out why Van Houten was released, she said she was met with impatience and a brief explanation, followed by the click of the receiver. Perhaps the person on the other end of the line did not realize just how much she loved her Uncle Leno.”
I challenge you to read both columns, and truly question what side you come down on?
Hot Potato Proposal
“Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s proposal to delegate the identification of ‘Safe Ground’ managed homeless encampments to City Manager Howard Chan is a pivotal moment for the City Council on its most vexing issue,” wrote Opinion Writer Tom Philp last week.
“It represents the best and only opportunity to make visible progress in a matter of months. But it also means a more geographically dispersed homeless population — albeit staffed and managed — that will increase anxieties in some neighborhoods and likely among some homeless people as well.”
The mayor’s proposal was recently announced in a city blog and is “a tacit admission that the city council itself is not up to the job” of finding new locations, Philp wrote.
“Identifying new shelter locations is the only way to relocate an existing encampment that is on public property. It is the only way to begin to reclaim Sacramento’s downtown and Midtown, among other neighborhoods. The idea comes with risks, but on balance, the potential benefits make this gamble worth the risk.”
The other alternative is to wait: A new partnership between the city and the county of Sacramento calls for 200 more shelter beds within the city, with the check paid for by the county. But identifying these sites and actually constructing the shelters will take time.
Meanwhile, Philp says, Sacramentans “are increasingly fed up,” especially the judges at downtown’s Sacramento Superior Court, where staff and jurors say they regularly deal with disruptive members of the homeless population.
“Safe Ground makes all the sense in the world when it comes to providing social services,” Philp wrote. “With the homeless populations in known locations, outreach is less of a logistical nightmare. Homeless people would get better access to the help that does exist, and Safe Ground sites would be safe for them and safer for neighborhoods overall.”
Op-Ed Roundup
“In the face of unjust bans, California can expand lifesaving, gender-affirming care” by Dr. Jen Hastings, genderqueer and an assistant clinical professor at the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine.
“How a rural California county is working to avoid catastrophic flooding this summer” by Gary Bradford, a Yuba County supervisor and board delegate of the Rural County Representatives of California.
Opinion of the Week
“On Tuesday, I made a bad decision. Voting against legislation targeting really bad people who traffic children was wrong.” — Assemblywoman Liz Ortega, D-Hayward, in a tweet after not a single Assembly Democrat voted for a bill that sought to elevate the crime of sex trafficking of minors to a serious felony on multiple convictions. The whole thing’s honestly become a public relations nightmare for the California Democratic Party which now looks like it supports child traffickers.
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Stay cool this hot summer night,
Robin
