Election 2014: Marijuana Laws

Recreational Marijuana:  Alaska, the District of Columbia, and Oregon on November 4th became the latest US jurisdictions to legalize recreational marijuana.  The vote in DC, however, must be approved by Congress so it may not go through.

Medical Marijuana:  The US territory of Guam also approved medical marijuana.  The majority of Florida voters did vote to approve medical marijuana in the Sunshine State, but the vote narrowly missed the 60% of votes cast needed to approve medical marijuana in Florida.

New Civil Marriage Map

Between travels and moving, I've not had access to my mapping software.  Here finally is a quick update to my marriage map.  Let me know if you see any updates or changes I've not captured for the months I was away.

While I was overseas it appears Oregon and Pennsylvania added civil marriage for same-sex couples.  The Freedom to Marry folks who closely follow all the litigation report that since the Supreme Court's Windsor decision, 24 courts have ruled in favor of same-sex marriage with 0 ruling against.

What If: The Missouri and Crittenden Compromises

One of the more fascinating theories in modern physics is the concept of the multiverse where each decision made creates multiple universes. So, in one universe you chose strawberry ice cream today. In another you chose chocolate. In another you chose vanilla. It opens the door to wondering what if such-and-such has happened differently in another universe.


My partner is taking an American history class this semester and on a long car trip we read American history to each other. Of interest to me was the Missouri Compromise. For the past 15 years I have lived two blocks from the former home of Henry Clay, the early 19th century Kentucky master politician who guided the passage of the Missouri Compromise through Congress. I was intrigued about the geopolitical implications of this law if it had continued into later American history.


For those of you -like myself- a little hazy about the Missouri Compromise, it was a law passed in 1820 to keep the peace between the Southern and Northern states. Forty-four years after the Declaration of Independence, the North and South were quickly becoming very different Americas. Both regions economies were primarily based on agriculture, but the North was rapidly industrializing and desired a stronger Federal government that would invest tax dollars in industrial and transportation infrastructure and place higher tariffs on foreign imports. Slavery was also largely illegal in the North. The South on the other hand was politically ran by the plantation-based, export-oriented planters making up 1% of the South's population. While most Southerners were small farmers of modest means, racism, pride, and political manipulation by the very wealthy still led the white male Southern voter to support the slave economies pushed by the wealthy planters. In the South industrialization was far less advanced. Instead the Southern planters exported much of their cotton, indigo, sugar, and tobacco crops overseas to Great Britain and other European buyers. They then bought manufactured goods -and tea- from the British and other Europeans. Thus, Southerners developed a taste for sweet tea and a distaste for tariffs on foreign imports which raised their costs. Southern planters and their local allies opposed a strong Federal government which was suspected of wanting to abolish slavery.


The number of Southern Slave states and Northern Free states were about even by the early 1800s. A crisis ensued when Missouri and Maine applied for statehood. Slavery already existed in Missouri but there was a move to ban slavery in the Louisiana Purchase. After various political tussling, Henry Clay was able to broker and pass the Missouri Compromise that banned slavery in the former Louisiana Purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes of latitude (Missouri's southern boundary) except for Missouri. So, Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state. By 1837 there were an even 13 free states in the North and 13 slave states in the South. This uneasy peace lasted until 1854 when the Nebraska-Kansas Act replaced the Missouri Compromise with a system to let Nebraska and Kansas vote individually on whether to be a slave or free state.


When Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 precipitated South Carolina and other Southern states to secede, another Kentucky politician, John Crittenden, offered a new compromise: extend the 36° 30′ Missouri Compromise line all the way to the Pacific. The so-called Crittenden Compromise failed to pass, and the Civil War ensued.


This map asks what could have happened if the Crittenden Compromise had passed and the South then not seceded. Instead, what if the same uneasy peace of the 1820-1854 had become an entrenched system. Without the South's secession to provoke Federal military action, would the horror of slavery been abolished by 2014? Would the system of admitting two states -one slave and one free- to keep the balance have continued? This map explores this scenario and is based on historical facts:


a. In the US of the Missouri and Critten Compromises, slavery is abolished largely north of the 36° 30′ parallel.


b. Without the Civil War to initiate its breakaway from Virginia, the counties that now constitute West Virginia remain part of the Virginia.


c. To even the free and slave state balance, the Dakota Territory and the Oregon Territory are admitted as single states rather than as North Dakota, South Dakota, Oregon, and Washington. And the once larger Deseret dreamed of by Mormon settlers has come into existence as the state of Deseret, the combination of Utah and Nevada. Keep in mind that some of the first white settlers of Nevada were Mormon farmers who established towns such as Las Vegas.


d. California on the other hand has been split into the free North California and slave South California roughly along 36° 30′ but actually along the Kern-Tulare County boundary.


e. Alaska has been admitted as a free state, but Hawaii and its sugar plantations have legalized human bondage.


f. Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma have been admitted as slave states.


g. When the US annexed the former Mexican province of Texas (by then the independent Republic of Texas), the terms of annexation allow Texas to split into 5 states. This has happened to create North, South, East, West, and Central Texas.


h. Finally, even with 5 mini-Texases and other states, the South is still shy 3 states to have parity with the North. History, however, shows that Southern planters advocated annexing or buying Cuba and other Caribbean islands with a long history of slavery and plantation agriculture. In this scenario Cuba is now a state along with Puerto Rico and the combined US and British Virgin Islands.


The result is a nation of 54 states: 27 free states and 27 where the abomination of slavery still remains legal.

Religious Freedom Statutes

This week Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) vetoed a bill passed by the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature.  Dubbed a "religious freedom" statute, the law would have exempted both individuals and companies from legal penalties if they violated the civil rights of customers, patients, etc. because of the perpetrator's sincerely held religious beliefs.  The backlash from major employers, citizens, and potential tourist events to Arizona led to various initial supporters and even the state's two Republican US Senators to oppose the bill.

Similar bills are not new.  A study by Wayne State law professor Christopher Lund identifies 16 states that added such laws between 1993 and 2009:

Interestingly, it appears Arizona has a law very similar to the one Gov. Brewer vetoed already on the books. Lund's article finds very few cases have arisen involving these laws.  Most also do not appear to have successfully exempted the defendant from legal consequences.

The recent rise of conservatives filing bills around religious freedoms comes largely as a backlash to the rapid expansion of same-sex marriage legalization.  Here is a brief primer on the issue:

First, dear readers, you must understand that existing civil rights on the national Federal level cover very specific classes of people (race, religion, ethnicity, disability, etc.)  Age is covered but only for people 40 and above.  In turn, not all classes of people are covered equally in the areas of employment, housing, and public accommodations.  For instance, sex discrimination is illegal in employment and housing.  Sex discrimination is also illegal in terms of some public accommodations (hotels, etc.) but generally not restaurants and many other venues.  So, you can offer special Ladies Night deals not offered equally to men, have gay male leather bars that exclude women, women-only music festivals, and women-only gyms.  Similarly, discrimination because of one's familial status is illegal in housing but not employment or public accommodations.

And when it comes to sexual orientation, there simply is no existing Federal law banning discrimination based on a person's homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual orientation.  For years supporters have been trying to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to ban such discrimination nationally.

21 states and DC, however, have state laws banning sexual orientation discrimination.  11 other states ban sexual orientation discrimination involving public (state) employees.  Additionally, scores of cities, universities, and businesses have ordinances and policies banning sexual orientation bias.

So, now we have a number of states legalizing same-sex marriages.  In fact, all of the states where same-sex marriages are currently performed have civil rights statutes banning sexual orientation.  In New Mexico, a gay couple planned their wedding and contacted a public photography business to photograph their ceremony.  The business' owner, a devout conservative Christian, refused claiming performing this service for this couple would violate his religious beliefs.  The couple filed a civil rights complaint against the business and ultimately won.  Conservatives howled this application of existing civil rights laws against this business violated the owner's personal religion.

In Oregon, there was a similar case involving a lesbian couple planning a ceremony to bless their union. Again, a public business -in this case a bakery- refused to serve them.  The couple again filed a complaint against Sweet Cakes by Melissa.  Writers for the Portland Willamette Weekly wrote an interesting article exploring just how devout the Christian owners of this business were.  They write that the bakery was willing to make cakes celebrating a divorce party, a pagan solstice party, an out-of-wedlock baby shower, a non-kosher BBQ, and a party celebrating a researcher who had just received a grant to clone human cells.

This selective application of 'sincerely held religious beliefs' is also what led to a Lexington, KY, t-shirt printing company's loss over a complaint filed when it refused to print an innocuous Pride festival t-shirt but showed a history of printing a variety of sexually suggestive and crude t-shirts for other customers.

Yet, -and this point is key- the Oregon and New Mexico couples and the Kentucky gay organization would have been out-of-luck legally if they had lived in other jurisdictions.  Kentucky for instance has no civil rights law banning sexual orientation.  GLSO, the gay organization, and the offending printer both happened to be in Lexington, a city that passed a non-discrimination ordinance covering sexual orientation in 1999.

So, a gay couple that marries in Iowa and then goes home to rural Kansas and is refused a wedding cake by a local bakery has no civil rights protection and no way to legally fight the refusal.  So on the legal front, it is not marriage that is the driving force behind the civil rights cases but the enforcement of existing civil rights laws.  On the political front, however, religious freedom bills appear to be more about making a political statement against gay people and same-sex marriage.

UPDATE: Civil Marriage Laws Map

The new lawsuits and court rulings are making this map increasingly complex.  I've added a new category for states such as Oregon and Kentucky that currently do not allow same-sex marriages but which recognize them -or may.  At the time of this update there still is not official word from KY state government regarding how they will enact or respond to this week's ruling.

Map: Where You Are Most Likely to Be Stuck in a Part-time Job

This map looks at the percentage of workers who want a full-time job but can only find part-time work.  In technical terms, this map shows the highest rates of underemployment in the United States.

The Western states of Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington have considerably higher underemployment.  North Dakota and South Dakota have low overall unemployment and relatively few part-time workers unable to find full-time work.