The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 11

1 The Sun A11 0 0 The Sun pA. '111 Von Hoffman THURSDAY, July 10, 1986 399 Street, San Bernardino. Calif. 92401. 714889-9666 GERALD A.

BEAN Publisher ROBERT W. RITTER Executive Editor TONNIE L. KATZ Managing Editor RICHARD 8. KIMBALL Editorial Page Editor Message 'ismiuuiKuniaiiinnw, i- 7 I FINP 0U GUILTY OF MURDERED SEKTBCE YOUR VICTIMS OHESTOENWREYXIR STWCFECUT1QM KNH' Who will be an 'outsider' next? Water transfer idea makes sense Few decisions would make more sense than devising a way to take water from San Bernardino, which has too much, and getting it to Loma Linda, which has too little. The San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District is performing a worthy service in trying to strike exactly such an arrangement.

In recent months, five of Loma Linda's six water wells have been shut down or damaged. Four wells were removed from service because of high nitrate levels. The fifth was damaged when part of it collapsed. That leaves the city in a precarious position as far as supplying drinking water for its 3,000 customers, particularly if a heat wave should send demand up. Meanwhile, for years, the valley water district has been seeking ways to relieve high groundwater in San Bernardino's Bunker Hill basin.

The groundwater has risen close to the surface throughout downtown San Bernardino, raising fears that waterlogged soil may be weakening roads, other public works and the foundations of buildings. This week officials of the valley water district agreed to explore ways to get the water from an area of surplus to an area of need. The idea reflects good judgment. The district's board members deserve admiration for supporting it. Protect electronic mail Keeping up with the times, Congress is moving toward passing a bill In which electronic mail, paging devices, cellular mobile telephones and data transmission would be given the same privacy protection as first-class mail.

A bill to that effect has been passed by the House. An identical measure is pending in the Senate. The bill, which would create the first major change of the privacy laws since 1968, has widespread backing from the Reagan administration, civil liberties groups and the businesses involved in electronic communications. The legislation sets forth procedural boundaries for federal access to private electronic records. Such communications would have the same protection as first-class mail.

A prosecutor would have to show probable cause to suspect that a crime has been committed and get a court order to rummage through electronic files. The need for this kind of law that keeps abreast of technology is plain. "Mail" nowadays often takes electronic form. The traditional constitutional rights of citizens to communicate freely without unreasonable intrusion deserves to be protected by laws that take new communications techniques fully into account. Ellen Goodman the door and given them privacy.

This, however, is precisely what the court says homosexuals do not have: the right of privacy. Justice White insists that the people who brought the Georgia law to the Supreme Court want nothing less than "a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This, we are quite unwilling to do." The court bolsters its argument against homosexual sodomy by tracing history back to the days of Henry VIII, when sodomy was considered an offense of "greater malignity" than rape. Is it any wonder that in Georgia today, oral sex between consenting adults may still carry a greater penalty 1 to 20 years than sexual violence? I do not agree with Justice White. The court was not asked to create "a right to homosexual activity." Hardwick did not request the seal of government approval on his bedroom door.

He asked, rather, to be protected from government intrusion. In the words of Justice Blackmun's impassioned dissent, Hardwick wanted "the right to be left alone." What is chilling in the court's ruling is not just its limp reliance on tradition. It's the vigor with which it closed down the borders on the "zone of privacy." Over the past decades, in one This man, after receiving thousands of letters asking im to vote against giving the Panama Canal away, had the gall to vote to the contrary and said that he felt more qualified to vote the way he did, in spite of the way his constituents felt about this particular issue. If this man feels the same way about all of the issues he must vote on as our senator, then I for one, need him like a hole in the head. CHARLES F.

HEIM Crestline High-handed treatment If, when filing your income tax on April 15, there is a balance due, the state franchise tax people will compute the penalty, plus Interest at 10 percent, and bill you for the corrected amount. lies in sanctions Used too long and for too little effect political catch words begin to pick up a strong, fishy stink. "Constructive engagement," the administration's name for whatever it thinks it's up to in South Africa, is giving off the sweet smell of dead flesh. Constructive engagement was supposed to be the name for what the American government has been doing these past six years to get South Africa to do right by its black population. It has irritated the South African government and won us first the contempt and now the anger of the black revolutionary leaders there.

It's not easy to come up with a policy which displeases every force and faction in a situation but then President Reagan and the white men he relies on are nothing if not ingenious. Nevertheless, the administration sticks to what it calls its "quiet diplomacy." Quiet diplomacy translates into something close to non-diplomacy for when Ronald Reagan and his circle really want something, they bellow their heads off while the Great Communicator puts on his sincere look and communicates. When they're not talking out loud it means they're not interested. Those talking loud are the ones in favor of economic sanctions, but there is a panoply of arguments against the economic strictures voted against South Africa by the House of Representatives the other day. The most patronizing, and certainly the most annoying to a black South African, is the one which asserts divestment of investment and other sanctions will only hurt the people they are meant to help.

It would be less demeaning to the blacks and less pompously fat headed of us to come out and say, we're not going to invoke sanctions because it would cost us too much money or because we are afraid that any black government which has a prayer of coming to power in Johannesburg will be communist. Of course, well it may. Desmond Tutu, black Anglican Bishop who has been a ubiquitous presence on our television, warns us repeatedly that the day blacks do seize power in South Africa they will remember who their friends and allies were. That remains to be seen. It wasn't so many years after the American Revolution that a sizeable party of opinion here was advocating that we make nicey-nicey with the Brits, but perhaps the South African government which is yet to be born will cut off its nose to spite its face and go communist.

The other argument used against the government imposing sactions is that they "don't work." It's true, they don't. Cutting off trade and pulling investments out has seldom if ever brought a government to its knees. Even naval blockades of commerce, which are the most severe form of economic sanctions, have rarely had the intended result unless supported by other more direct military action. Nevertheless governments do lots of things which "don't work." That's their specialty, but as unworkable governmental programs go imposing sanctions on South Africa is easy, small and cheap. Compare it to Star Wars which is so expensive in terms of talent as well as money.

It won't work either and that doesn't bother anybody but an impotent and ignored minority. Governments often do things that don't work because they want to make a statement or "send a message," as the Washington cliche goes. Star Wars is the most costly and elaborate message one government has ever sent another. By comparison the message we'd be sending the South African government by imposing economic sanctions would be cost free. It would also be sending a message to black Americans; it would telling them that our concern for individual liberty extends beyond oppressed whites in Russia and Poland and embraces all the people of the world.

Nicholas Von Hoffman Is a King Features columnist. case after another, the court marked out a certain territory of personal decision-making, a turf were individuals could lead their lives without interference from the government. The choice of a marriage partner, of birth control, of abortion. "We protect those rights explained Justice Blackmun, "because they form so central a part of an individual life." What is more private than the sexual act itself? "The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution's protection of privacy," writes Blackmun. Yet, this centerpiece has been declared out-of-bounds by the majority of justices.

Would the court have drawn the same bold line around the zone of privacy if Michael Hardwick had been arrested with a wife? Maybe not. It is homosexuals who the court, and much of society, want to keep beyond the pale. But if a state has the right to tell man and man how to behave sexually with each other, it has the right to tell man and woman. If homosexuals have no privacy in bed, then neither do heterosexuals. If a legislature can criminalize oral sex, it can criminalize any other practice considered "deviant" by any political majority.

Never on Sunday? When we limit rights, it is easiest to start with a minority. It's easiest to draw the line that defines "them" as outsiders. But it rarely stops there. Check the footnotes. Goodman is a Boston Globe columnist.

about professional athletes, and more on the talent of high school players. CHAD DUNN Highland Schools' job I'm writing to express my opinion of the San Bernardino school district. I feel it is are not doing its job or just not trying hard enough to do what is right for the parents, students and schools. It doesn't try to do anything about overcrowded schools or the unqualified teachers. And it doesn't even have reasonable boundaries.

I just hope next school year it improves and gets more qualified people for the Job. COURTNEY WHITTALL Highland San Bernardino County has the reputation as being a county more enthusiastic about cows and brawls than culture and books. Ca-blevision, which provides CATV service for a good deal of the foothill areas, helped that reputation along this week. After a long absence, it restored to its subscribers a signal which permits them to pick up FM radio stations if the listener is in a shadow area. For this, the company deserves our thanks.

However, among the 18 stations it chose to provide us, not a single one presents classical music. At least that is what company employees said was the reason for my inability to get KUSC (91.5) or KFAC (92.3) which transmit from Mount Wilson. Public broadcasting stations in San Bernardino and San Diego seem to be absent also. This is despite the fact that there are popular music stations available In quantity ad nauseum-without the need for cable assistance. U.

E. BAUERS Alta Loma There are times when you can only get to the heart of the matter the long way around. You have to begin with the footnotes and work your way up. Last week, a slim majority of Supreme Court justices upheld, 5-4, a Georgia law against any sexual act "involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another." The court declared that the state can criminalize sodomy between homosexuals even in their own home. This week, it's time to read the footnotes.

At the bottom of Justice White's opinion, in the offhand way you might brush something under the rug, there is a notice. The court, he writes, is expressing "no opinion" on the constitutionality of heterosexual acts of sodomy. The Georgia law itself contains no such neat distinctions. It makes the act of oral or anal sex illegal, no matter what the sex of the actors. The Legislature there and in 17 other states has no qualms about telling husbands and wives what they cannot do with each other.

Not to worry, though, if we believe the footnote. The court has "no opinion" on whether the law applies to heterosexuals. Not yet. Homosexuals are the targets of the court's attention this time because Michael Hardwick, the man arrested by police, is homosexual. They entered his bedroom to deliver a warrant for a fine and found him engaged in oral sex with another man.

If they had found him with a wife, I assume they would not have arrested Hardwick for sodomy. They might have just closed medical aids, convenience and recreational equipment of all kinds, farming, etc. While we play, are we going to let the rest of our industry go to foreign countries? Sen. Cranston's bill is another example of how our congressmen sneak passage of laws that the majority of the public knows nothing about until it is too late. These are some of the reasons we are against passage of Bill No.

S2061. RALPH and RAMONA HEVENER Trona Insurance greed How long we will permit the insurance industry to continue to rob us, and then blame others for their greed. Ralph Nader has accused the insurance industry of price gouging and lying about their profits. First they claim that they had lost $5 billion in 1985, then later revised their figures to show a $1.7 billion profit. What can we we believe, since they keep charging exorbitant prices, and want to pay nothing in return? It's time we ask Congress to find some answers, since we certainly can no longer trust the insurance industry to so so.

BETTY ZOLLER Highland Appreciate work The families on Arrowhead Avenue appreciate the wonderful work that was completed recently: New curbs, new sidewalks, old trees and roots removed. The new mayor and city workers are doing a beautiful job. Thank you for a job well done. H.M. SPENCE San Bernardino Cranston critic Anyone who would vote for Alan Cranston should be committed to an insane asylum.

PEOPLE About the middle of May, I received my notice of tax due, and I mailed the full payment on June 0 classics 12. When I checked by phone, I TH time and faith in the people who they see as responsible, the National Orange Show. Once again the Orange Show is not getting a fair deal. MARK CAMBELL Director of Facilities, National Orange Show San Bernardino Doesn't want park The Sierra Club and Sen. Cranston have cooked up a scheme to sew up permanently about one-third or more of the southern half of California, from north of Bishop to the Mexican border, into a national park and wilderness area.

An area is designated a "park" and advertised as a "peaceful, quiet place to get away from it all," but it is anything but as people flock to it by the thousands. In 1985 there were 8.6 million visitors to the California deserts. Good examples of what happens to parks are Yosemite, Yellowstone and Grand National Parks. The Bureau of Land Management, with 10 years of work and huge expenditures of time and money, have pretty well provided for the protection and multiple uses of our deserts and public lands. Congress has already approved or rejected their recommendations.

All aspects probably will not suit everyone. Passage of the Cranston Wilderness-Park Bill No. 2061 will mean millions of more taxpayers' dollars spent to re-study and finalize all plans, a huge personnel to police the area, money to buy out condemned property and patented mines, no grazing rights issued after present leases expire, no mining, rock hunting or hunting, limited access for a few rugged individuals, etc. The Park Service has long been a notorious lamenter for not having enough money to run the parks already in existence. This desert country was "discovered" by prospectors and miners.

There is practically nothing in our homes or in use that is not the result of a prospector or miner, from beauty aids through foods, Canceled concerts As the box office manager for the Orange Pavillion, I would like to reply to Evans Millhouse's letter regarding canceled concerts at the Orange Show. Neither the National Orange Show nor the box office has any control over a promoter canceling a concert. That decision remains with the promoter or the act itself. The National Orange Show and the box office do not place advertising or promote acts that have been booked. That is the responsibility of the promoter.

However, we do have a set policy regarding refunding tickets for any canceled show. Purchasers may get a complete refund for their tickets by returning them to the place of purchase. This should be done as soon as possible since most shows are now computerized and can remain on the computer system for a limited time. There is nothing that can be done regarding tickets "won" because they are complimentary. SUSAN MARSHALL San Bernardino I'm also tired of seeing concerts being canceled at the National Orange Show.

Several times in 1986 alone, groups have been scheduled to perform In San Bernardino but for one reason or another, failed to follow through with their committment. There are many reasons why a concert cancelation occurs. Lack of ticket sales in San Bernardino or throughout their tour, health of the group members and the promoters, or groups' failure to meet contractual obligations are but a few. These are not problems which the National Orange Show or other venues have control over. The Orange Show also loses each time a scheduled concert does not happen.

It loses the public's faith. Members of the public who buy tickets for concerts or shows that are eventually cancelled may receive a refund of their money at the place of purchase. The loss to the public is was told that the computer credited this payment on June 13. Four days later, simultaneously, a final notice was sent to me and a notice to my employer that I was in default on my state tax. While on the phone, I asked for the name of the office suprvisor but was told that this was confidential information, but, if I had any complaint, I could write to "Pattie" no last name.

I assume this is their acronym for "Put Aside Till Turkey Is Exhausted." This is the second time that some high-handed Franchise Tax Board employee has exceeded the bounds of legality and civility. Enough is enough. BILL BALLAS Mentone Sports recognition I am writing to ask for more recognition in your sports section for high school athletes. Every day I read your sports section and find the same reports all the time. I feel there should be less.