The Times and Democrat from Orangeburg, South Carolina • 14

www.TheTandD.com FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 2004 6B EDITORIAL imcH nnb icmncrat SERVING SOUTH CAROLINA'S CROSSROADS SINCE 1881 CATHY C. HUGHES PUBLISHER "WERE IT LEFT TO ME TO DECIDE WHETHER WE SHOULD HAVE A GOVERNMENT WITHOUT NEWSPAPERS OR NEWSPAPERS WITHOUT A GOVERNMENT, I SHOULD NOT HESITATE TO PREFER THE LATTER." -THOMAS JEFFERSON GEORGIANNE WALTON -ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER CHARLES GARRICK-PRESSROOM FOREMAN DIRECTOR CONTROLLER LEE HARTER -EDITOR BARBARA WEST-RAVENELL -CIRCULATION DIRECTOR JERRY HARVILL-OPERATIONS MANAGER DEKLE GRIFFITH OPINION -THE ISSUE Bank robberies OUR OPINION -Common-sense policy can be deterrent Hats off to new policy to curb bank robberies COMMENTARY he stories of bank robberies from the Old West are many. So much romance surrounds the colorful accounts of Robin Hood types who enjoyed the support of citizens as they stole Let the states decide what 'marriage' is Court will concede that it is far more likely that a five-member majority, consisting of the four liberals and Sandra Day O'Wobbly, will simply declare the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. That likelihood is what drives the opponents of "gay marriage" to call for a constitutional amendment. Whether it takes the form President Bush has suggested and protecting marriage as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than or simply exempts new forms of "marriage" from the "Full faith and credit" clause, it would conclusively bar the courts from ordering that such marriages, contracted in Massachusetts or some other state, must be recognized elsewhere.

That would leave the whole issue of gay marriages where it manifestly belongs: in the hands of the individual states. The genius of our federal system is precisely that it permits different states to come to different conclusions on hotly disputed issues that don't require uniform national treatment. (Abortion would be another such issue, as it It would help if the two sides in the debate over "gay marriage" could begin by conceding that each has a point. The gay supporters of the concept are not, in most cases, out to scupper the institution of marriage; on the contrary, all they ask is to be allowed to participate in it. And its opponents are not necessarily homophobes; many people, among them not a few homosexuals, believe that marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, is one of the indispensable building blocks of a stable social order, and that expanding the definition would seriously undermine the institution.

American society as a whole seems to be moving toward a broad-minded compromise, based on the proposition that two people of the same sex ought to be entitled to proclaim their unity in some official way (perhaps by recognizing "civil that will afford them many of the rights now accorded only to married couples for example, in tax law. The real question is how to get there from here without changing more than is absolutely necessary. The problem lies in the "Full faith and credit" clause was for many years, if the Supreme Court had not rashly decided, in Roe v. Wade, to nationalize it.) Let no one say that the question is too trivial to be addressed at the constitutional level. If such a profound issue as the very structure of society doesn't deserve such attention, then nothing does.

Nor would a constitutional amendment "take away" any existing rights; on the contrary, the Bush proposal would actually encourage legal recognition of previously unrecognized forms of relationships. Above all, the above-described compromise would avoid weakening the institution of marriage. Gay marriage is not the only, or even the worst, threat to it. Marriage has been under attack ever since the sexual revolution of the 1960s. No-fault divorce and out-of-wedlock births have soared, with devastating effects.

If Massachusetts thinks gay marriage will help rather than hurt, so be it. But if other states disagree, they should have that right. William Rusher Is a Distinguished Fellow of the Clare-mont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. from the rich. So much is fiction.

Truth is, those who robbed banks then were criminals, stealing money from hard-working people. In modern times, bank robberies seemed on the decline amid advanced security measures and the severity of the punishment under federal law. For most crooks, it simply made more sense to rob places where money was easily accessible and the potential consequences of being caught were fewer. Today, there is a disturbing trend toward a reoccurrence of bank robberies. Branch banks in a number of Region towns have been victimized, as have banks right here in Orangeburg.

High-tech security measures can only do so much. The rest is up to people. That is where a new policy being implemented by South Carolina banks and credit unions comes in. It's called "No Hats, No Hoods, No Sunglasses." Its purpose is to keep people from wearing said items in bank lobbies. The reasoning being that the simple act of removing hats, hoods and sunglasses in South Carolina financial institutions will make it much easier to identify and capture anyone conrmitting a crime.

"This program is very simple," said Lloyd I. Hendricks, president and CEO of the South Carolina Bankers Association, "We have signs and posters in the banks and credit unions that politely ask people to remove hats, hoods and sunglasses." Noting the policy is just one of a number of security improvements banks and credit unions are implementing, Hendricks said the goal of the South Carolina Bankers Association and the South Carolina Credit Union League is to have all financial institutions eventually participating. The U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI, the South Carolina Sheriff's Association and local law enforcement agencies around the state endorse the program, as do the South Carolina Bankers Association and the South Carolina Credit Union League. Law enforcement officials say the "No Hats" policy is an effective deterrent to the so-called "note jobs" criminals.

These are typically unarmed individuals who want to enter and leave the institutions without being noticed. Hendricks cited the success of similar programs in Massachusetts, Missouri and Oklahoma as the inspiration for the South Carolina Bankers Association establishing the program. "We want to do everything we can to make our banks and credit unions safe for customers and employees," Hendricks said. "We also want to do everything we can to ensure that if someone enters a South Carolina bank or credit union and commits a crime, that person will be caught and will go to jail for a very long time." Hats off to a good idea. Undermining the rule of of the Constitution.

Article IV, Section 1 declares that "Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records and judicial WILLIAM RUSHER proceedings of every other state Since the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts recently ruled that two men or two women may get "married" under the constitution of that state, any couple that does so would seem entitled to demand that their "marriage" be recognized in the other 49. Congress, anticipating this problem several years ago, passed a Defense of Marriage Act declaring that no state would be required to recognize such a "marriage" contracted under the laws of another state. And there is a thin hope that this law may have the desired effect, since the federal Constitution's "Full faith and credit" clause goes on to declare that "Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof." But any student of today's Supreme California Constitution. But San Francisco's recently elected mayor conveniently ignores a 1977 statute that is part of California's Fami JOSEPH PERKINS ly Code, which defines marriage as that between a man and a woman. He also dismisses a 2000 state ballot measure, Proposition 22, overwhelmingly approved by voters, which affirmed that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized" in the state; which declared that California need not recognize same-sex marriages that might be performed elsewhere.

California higher education officials are almost as brazen as San Francisco's law-breaking mayor. In recent years, they have tricked up the admission process for the academically elite nine-campus UC system to get around Proposition 209, which forbids racial preferences in public education. The law has survived challenges before both the California Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court. Yet, UC officials continue to bestow preferences upon "un-derrepresented minorities" -Latinos and blacks at the expense of whites and Asians. aw the law In 2001, the U.S.

Supreme Court ruled that there is no medical marijuana exception to the federal Controlled Sub-' stances Act and the Food) Drug and Cosmetic Act. Yet, state and local officials in California pretend that the ruling was never issued. Indeed, San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne recently informed the City Council, "Our current procedure protects the rights of qualified patients and primary caregivers to have access to legal amounts of marijuana." If San Francisco Mayor Newsom is offended by the law limiting marriage to a man and woman, if the UC Board of Regents doesn't care much for the law forbidding racial preferences in admissions, if San Diego's police chief and City Council have a problem with federal drug laws prohibiting marijuana use for medicinal purposes, they should work to change those laws. But they should not presume to ignore those laws, to undermine the rule of law. For as Thurgood Marshall said: "Lawlessness Is lawlessness.

Anarchy is anarchy Is anarchy. Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy." Joseph Perkins Is a columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at Joseph. Indeed, 65 percent of students admitted to UC Berkeley and UCLA with below average SAT scores in 2002 were Latinos and blacks; 58 percent at UCSD and 49 percent at UC Riverside. The long and short of it is that low-scoring "underrepre-sented minorities" have a much better chance of being admitted to UC schools than whites and Asians. That clearly violates the eight-year-old California law, which unequivocally declares that the state "shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin." There are also certain exceptional cases where state law ought to be ignored.

Not because some mayor or some board of regents thinks so, but because state law conflicts with superior federal law. That is the case with the highly controversial California law that allows marijuana use for purportedly medicinal purposes. It clearly runs afoul with the Controlled Substances Act, the federal law that classifies marijuana as a Schedule I substance with a high potential for abuse. And it violates the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which requires that a dnig be scientifically proven safe and effective before it can be used for medicinal purposes. i am profoundly troubled by the gay marriages in San Francisco.

Not because I am a "homo-phobe," a label unfairly applied to anyone who does not embrace the gay agenda. Not because I am some sort of religious nut, who thinks that homosexuals ought to be burned at the stake. Not because I am a bigot, who prefers not to associate with gays. But because city officials in San Francisco have brazenly flouted both state and federal law. It is part of a recent disturbing pattern in California in which ideologically motivated elected officials, as well as activist judges, have taken it upon themselves to suspend the rule of law.

The gay marriage outrage was touched off a fortnight ago when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom unilaterally decided to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Since then, more than 3,300 gay couples from all over have flocked to the city by the bay to get unlawfully married. Many of the ceremonies have been performed by a state assemblyman, Mark Leno, a gay Democrat from San Francisco. Newsom Insists that he Is acting within the law. He maintains that he is merely upholding the equal protection rights guaranteed by the LETTERS POLICY letter is of a critical nature.

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