editorial roundup

From the Long Beach Press-Telegram, on the beginning of Baseball season:

Ignore the calendar; spring has started. Yes, there is much to groan about. The league is investigating Barry Bonds and others accused of using performance-enhancing drugs. Baseball is now testing for amphetamines. The United States did poorly in the World Baseball Classic.

But the druggies, the juicers, the cheaters and the complainers cannot rob the hope that goes with the first of 162 games. It's the autographs obtained during batting practice, rather than on eBay. It's the chalk poured on the greenest grass. And, most importantly, it's children and families with their butts in affordable seats.

These are reasons why baseball has survived season-ending strikes, inflated salaries, congressional hearings and a silly lawsuit filed by the city of Anaheim against the Angels over a name change that did nothing more than enhance the team's marketability.

The Buffalo News, on the evolution of marriage:

The refrain echoes from pulpit to parishioner, from megaphone to protester, from blogger to reader: Marriage is a bond between a man and a woman, and only that. In most cases, perhaps 90 percent, it is. But as New York prepares for a Court of Appeals decision this summer that could legalize or pave the way for gay marriage, people might want to try getting their heads around the idea that marriage is and has been many things. Marriage only recently, say in the last 150 years, focused on two people in love. Before that, it was more often than not -- at all income levels -- a forced or coerced arrangement about status, property or power.

So wheâ?¬n supporters talk about gays and lesbians marrying -- and thereby gaining an estimated 1,500 rights that accrue to married people but are routinely denied to gays -- it's more evolution. You may not agree; you may believe that only men and women should marry. But as more states approve gay marriage, it might help to understand marriage's history and its dynamic place in our lives by examining its fluid reality. --From wire reports