San Francisco

From RationalWiki

San Francisco is an almost implausibly hilly coastal city in California, noted for its sourdough,^[1] Giants, Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco values.^TM

San Francisco has a diverse ethnic and cultural make-up, including sizeable Mexican, Latino and Japanese populations, and the largest and oldest Chinatown in the USA. Other districts in San Francisco include Haight-Ashbury, the Mission, the Castro, Twin Peaks, Fisherman's Wharf, Nob Hill, the Tenderloin, and the Tendernob.

The San Francisco bay area has a longstanding association with free thinkers and alternative lifestyles. It was home to the socialist author Jack London in the early 20th century. During the 1950s it was a hang-out for beatniks like Jack Kerouac. A decade later the city attracted a new generation of idealists and hedonists as hippies flocked to the west coast, climaxing in 1967's "Summer of Love", with psychedelic rock from the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and the Doors.

During the 1970s San Francisco became a haven for the gay rights movement, centering around the Castro district - still one of the USA's major gay neighborhoods. In 1977 Harvey Milk was elected as a city supervisor, the first openly gay man elected to public office in the USA (or probably anywhere else). In 1978 he was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by Dan White, another supervisor, after Moscone refused to reappoint White. Incredibly, White's defense lawyers claimed that he was in a state of diminished responsibility due to depression caused by eating sugary junk food (this became known as the "twinkie defense"), and White was given a lenient sentence. This provoked rioting among the gay community.

Today San Francisco remains very liberal and progressive, with a strong interest in environmentalism. for example, in 2007, it became the first US city to ban plastic shopping bags from supermarkets.

[edit] San Francisco values

"San Francisco values" is a phrase apparently coined by Bill O'Reilly,^[2] but still claimed as a Conservapedia term. Like most of the other CP terms, it is a catch-all phrase which conveniently lumps together a set of opinions and activities which conservatives just don't like.

According to Conservapedia's Foxtrot, who wrote the article on San Francisco values, it refers to the "general moral degradation" of the city, which includes "legalization of marijuana, gay rights, pro-abortion, gun control, environmentalism, anti-military, New Age spirituality, politically correctness, pro-illegal immigrants, and heavy government regulation of business". Naturally allowing businesses to harm the public without reguation isn't morally degenerate as seen by Foxtrot.^[3] What follows is a miscellaneous collection of distorted half-truths regarding gay adoption, marijuana use, and some mayoral election figures.

[edit] Footnotes