LET THE GOOD GUY WIN EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE

LET THE GOOD GUY WIN EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE: The “last minute” maneuver in the state house to pass the civil-unions bill- HB 444- was still quite a shock to the system despite the fact that we’d heard that a massive push was underway by civil rights activists in Honolulu including some pretty intense one-on-one lobbying of house members by those with access.

Process geeks like us can check out Derrick DePledge’s blow by blow live twittering to find out how it came down.

It was aided by, if there’s such a thing within a legislative body, a grassroots effort by a handful of house members that greased the skids on promoting access and putting their own time and effort into convincing their colleagues to force the vote.

Next time you see Mina Morita give her a hug.

But what strikes us is the brilliant political move of the activist in letting the sleeping dog lie as the session wore suckering the bigots and religious zealots into complacency and do their work under the radar.

Now for the next six months we’re going to hear the big lie that’s becoming the popular rallying cry for many of the wing-nuts and, well, nut-case groups in general... that they are some kind of overwhelming majority even when their ranks are far outnumbered.

Whether it’s the same 18% (in a NY Times poll) of the populace that makes up the tea partiers- the same percentage that supported the war criminals by the end of the last administration- who bafflingly maintain they speak for the majority or the dog ladies on Kaua`i who claim “everybody” wants to engage their dirty smelly mutts when they go down to the ocean (and designed a push survey to prove it) it’s the latest in bogus lobbying through lies.

If you don’t have the majority on your side, just say you do over and over and get the press to report that you said it in their “he said she said” coverage.

Which is why we’ve got to make sure that if the homophobic lobby is going to try to make the November election about this we’ve gotta make sure we turn out and both support those who supported civil rights and replace those who didn’t- or keep those new candidates who don’t on the outside.

Here on Kaua`i the no votes came from the always bigoted Jimmy Tokioka and his west side cohort Roland Sagum. We can only hope good candidates will come forward to challenge them.

But assuming a Lingle veto- meaning we’d have to start from scratch in 2011- we’re going to need someone to sign the bill next year and that leaves only Neil Abercrombie.

Most know that Duke Aiona is generally one of the worst religion-addled ass-wipes around. But fewer know that the corrupt Mayor of Honolulu Mufi Hannemann opposes civil unions too.

Candidates aside our most daunting task will be to make sure that the other big lie- that civil unions are somehow related to same gender marriage- is put to rest by November... and that includes whenever some well meaning pea-brains like Jerry Burris conflates them as he did in today’s Honolulu Advertiser... just as columnist Dave Shapiro did as we mentioned last week.

Whatever Ms. Ding-a-Lingle decides to do we’ve go our work cut out for us on this one.