80/20

Homosexuality is not normal.

But then again neither is being a professional athlete, a Medal of Honor winner or a Fundamentalist Christian.

Our population, as it relates to sexuality, can be represented on a bell curve. The 10% on the left side are the homosexuals. The 10% on the right are the Fundamentalist Christians represented by Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty. (Actually there are twice as many Fundamentalist as Homosexuals in the US, but let's just go with the 10 and 10) In the middle is the 80% “norm.” We are a loving, accepting society that tries to accommodate everybody, so we have the 80% trying to negotiate a peace in the conflict between the two outliers. A truly herculean task.

To quote Rodney King, “Why can't we all just get along?” Because we can't, that's why. We're humans and basically good and as such we will make an effort to reconcile the differences, to let others see the error of their ways. We will very often be unsuccessful because there will always be those folks out of the norm, (otherwise the term normal would have no meaning).

The first step in reconciliation is understanding, and maybe that's also the last step. Our ability to change others basic beliefs through the brilliance and persuasiveness of our arguments is optimistic at best, delusional at worst. Understanding may be the best we can hope for. While the homosexual population seems to demand the majority understand and accept their life style, they seem have a limited desire to try to understand the beliefs of the Fundamentalist Christians. The Fundamentalist Christians just know the gays and Lesbians are going to hell and are just as passionate, but much less vocal about their beliefs.

Boy George, the singer, once said, “Any love is good love,” which seems to be the anthem of the LGBA community. (Love, in this case, is a euphemism.) The Fundamentalist Christians believe in a strict interpretation of the Bible and you go to hell if you perform that particular euphemism. Who is right? How do you reconcile those two distinctly different beliefs? You don't. You just live and let live. If the Fundamentalist Christians miss out on love they could have had, too bad for them. If the homosexuals have a very hot afterlife, sorry for them.

Phil Robertson answered a question from a GQ magazine writer. He truthfully said how he feels about homosexuality; he did not organize his fellow duck hunters to rally against ABC for putting on Glee or NBC for >Modern Family, or MSNBC on general principles, he just said what he believed and shut up. The gay community can't seem to let it go at that. They seem hell bent (no pun intended) to make anyone not believing as they believe be punished in some way.

FLASH: Life isn't easy, and the more aspects of it in which you are minority, the harder it gets. Work with it, and don't expect the majority, who have enough problems of their own, to take on yours also because they don't have to—the benefit of being the majority.

JUST BECAUSE….

I am a retiree from AT&T.  I took an early retirement in ’82, with a vested pension to be collected when I turned 65. I turned 65 and am collecting my monthly pension (for quite awhile now). I have now decided my pension isn’t enough for stuff I want, but don’t choose to afford. Somebody needs to give me extra money so I can do what I want. Maybe I can use extra money to take a cruise or buy Metamucil in bulk at Costco. So, I’m going to carry a handmade sign stating AT&T estafadores (and any other Hispanic words I can fit on the sign) and strut around the local AT&T office protesting for $400 more per month.

That $400 number is arbitrary, there is nothing I have done, or will do, to deserve the increase, but I feel I need it to live a more comfortable retirement than I am living and, after all, AT&T recorded  $3.8 billion in earnings last quarter. The CEO makes $22 million, what could they care about giving me an extra $400? Also, they should understand that it’s not fair that they earn so much more than they are giving me.  They got it, and I want it.

When telling friends about my plan, they were skeptical about the potential success of the protest.  They wanted to know why I picked $400, why not $1000?   What was I going to do for AT&T more than I’m doing now to warrant any increase?  Those were good questions and ones for which I didn’t have any reasonable answer. 

I was beginning to have doubts about my strategy until I turned on the TV to see my fellow 99%ers protesting the fast food restaurants for an arbitrary $15.00 minimum wage. That number, like mine, has nothing to with any financial reality or any promised increase in productivity. Their reason was also like mine, they wanted it and somebody else has it. We protesters believe our income should be based upon fairness and equality. Our income should be determined by what we need to live the “American Dream” to its fullest. After all other people are living the dream, why not us?  Now, those righties believe wages should be determined according to the worker’s value, productivity, skill, and importance to the organization. How does a person even address such antiquated thinking?

I’m going to keep a close watch on how the folks, with little or no demonstrated skills and in their positions less than six months on average, are doing getting double their salary simply because they want it. Of course, they have the union. It will help these trainees to have a union that’s interested in their welfare (and maybe coincidentally increasing union membership/dues significantly).

 If entry level workers can put their scam across on the public I feel I have a good chance to improve my retirement life style. Wish me luck.

ABORTION: To Be or Not To Be

I fine it interesting how things become political which have no reason to be political.  Shouldn’t climate change be a scientific issue, and minimum wage the parlance of the economist?  I feel the same way about abortion.

I have no ducks in this tub; what I am putting forth is an intellectual exercise. This is definitely a discussion we must have as a society because we, in the US, perform approximately 1,300,000 abortions each year. Are those 1.3 million murders, or 1.3 million medical procedures?

If you’re a pro abortion Liberal, I’m going to ask you to suspend that belief and put yourself in the place of some one who passionately believes human life begins at conception. Then any abortion is infanticide. I’m sure you would do what ever you could do to prevent the murder of the most vulnerable of children.

If you are a pro life Conservative, I would also ask you to suspend that belief. If human life does not exist until it is viable outside of the womb, then an abortion performed before that time would be merely a medical procedure, no more worth discussing than a buttocks enhancement.

Now the problem: Science really can’t, at least to both side’s satisfaction, answer the complex question, “When does life start?” Is a “potential” life, a life? Does a fetus have to be able to clog dance for it to be life?  I sure don’t know the answer to when the fetus is “alive” and I’m not sure anyone really does, and yet we sure put a lot of effort into defending our positions, as tenuous as they may be.

As with most things in our lives, we tend to politicize everything we can get our mind around. Liberals generally go with the several weeks’ belief and Conservatives generally go with the belief that it’s a baby before the potential mom and dad have had time to take a shower.

Like so many things in politics, there is a dichotomy here. Liberals as a rule believe in pro choice (abortion), but do not believe in capital punishment.  They are OK with terminating a fetus, but not terminating a convicted murderer.

Conservatives normally believe in pro life (no abortion) but do believe in capital punishment. They are not OK with terminating a fetus, but are OK with terminating a convicted murderer.

Since we are not 100% sure when a life is a life, or if a convicted murderer is really guilty, and neither side wants to kill an innocent baby or innocent convict, what do we do? If society terminates a fetus or a convicted murderer, we stand a chance of being wrong, which puts both the left and right in a box. Maybe no one, no fetus nor convicted murderer, should die “unnaturally” That would put us in a pro-life, anti-capital punishment society. Pardon the pun, but could we all live with that?

If we easily terminated fetuses and easily hung murderers from the nearest oak, we would then be a society of pro-choice, pro-capital punishment folks. Would that be something you would just die for? (Again that pun thing.)

Since I’m out on a limb already, let me scoot out a bit further. What I’m about to say is extremely general. I’m doing it to make a point, so please stick with me. (The “delete” key will always be there.) Here I go. I believe there are two kinds of abortions: those of necessity and those of convenience.  Necessity would be loosely defined as the potential death of the mother, rape, incest, etc.  Abortions of convenience would be a one night hook up followed by “I love my body too much to be pregnant.” Left and right always tend to focus on one or the other. Left sees abortions as primarily those of necessity, the right, those of convenience.

So, when the two sides “discuss” abortion, the left sees the poor woman who faces death or a life of severe emotional pain, and the right sees someone who, wrapped up in her own pleasure, snuffs out a potential life because she doesn’t want stretch marks and refuses to take responsibility for her own actions. (“I certainly supported a woman's right to choose, but to my mind the time to choose was before, not after the fact.” 
― Ann B. Ross, Miss Julia Throws a Wedding) Do both the necessity and convenience  conditions exist? Of course. Is the federal government up close and personal enough to tell the difference? Of course not.

If I were King, the government, federal or state, would have no part in abortion. Abortion, from the government standpoint, would be treated as any other medical procedure. From a religious point of view the acceptance of abortion would be between the couple, their doctor and their religion. A person could choose, or not, to buy an insurance policy that paid for abortions and if she chose to have an abortion, she could (woman’s right to choose). What is happening now is that people who believe abortion is child killing are made by the federal government to pay for it.  Obamacare’s one size fits all just makes that whole complicated mess worse.

Any time a Republican expresses uneasiness with abortion, either because he or she is very uncertain about what’s being killed, or can’t reconcile our constitution with the government’s involvement in procreation, the “war against women” signs pop up.  I believe we ought to be waging wars, but the wars we ought to be waging are wars against ignorance, (a quest for scientific knowledge regarding the beginning of life), a war to establish and market alternatives to abortions, if desired, like the establishment of adoption centers. Above all we should all, men and women, pick up metaphorical pitch forks and torches against the government insatiable quest for control and power over every aspect of our lives. 

WHO IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF ME?

 In one of the first couple of debates between President Obama and John McCain the question was asked if health care was a right or a responsibility. The answer to that question was all I needed to see the difference between Liberal and Conservative, Obama said, “right,” McCain, “responsibility.”

President Obama stated prior to his election in 2008, true to his belief, that he wanted single payer health care for the country, because he believes that is the only way to insure the human “right” of health care.  A right, commensurate with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and he would get it for the peeps in his first term. 

This Liberal belief that health care is a right, obligates the government to insure that health care happens for all of its citizens --enter Obamacare.    Liberals come to the “health care as a right” belief from the original Bill Of Rights entry, Pursuit of Happiness. Their conclusion, as stated by a prominent Liberal talk show host, is how can people be happy if they are in bad health? So, in order for the government to fulfill the Pursuit of Happiness right they must provide health care.  Of course, how can the sheeples be happy and healthy if they are hungry? “Government “free” food? It’s hard to be healthy and happy without an adequate home –“free” housing?  How can a person be happy without an education (they will need the required knowledge to fill out the paperwork for all the other free stuff that will make them happy)—“free” education? Those rights, of course, could be obtained by the folks themselves if they had jobs, but requiring work for the “happiness” stuff is, I realize, a last ditch option.

One political view is for the government to get out of the way and let the folks PURSUE happiness. The other view is for the government to step in and PROVIDE happiness. I will let you determine which political philosophy is which.

As a Conservative I guess I can feel good that I’m not going to be around for this Liberal philosophy’s logical conclusion which is redistribution to the point where half the population is paying for the free stuff of the other half. Wait, I just heard that today more people are receiving government assistance than are working. Guess I am around for it.

This fight over Obamacare is very important for both political sides because it addresses what philosophy will define the United States for the next few generations. Not to be overly dramatic, but it’s a fight for the soul, the essence of who we are as a country.   How much government is too much? At what point are the citizens of the US officially declared incompetent to care for themselves? That competence/incompetence line is the line between left and right. It is a Liberal/Conservative tug-o-war.

 The current discussion over Obamacare is important because it is representative of the core difference between Liberals and Conservatives.  After three years of  being told individuals would not lose their plans (while the Federal Register from 2010 show this not to be true), this administration  finally admitted that many people are going to lose their current healthcare plans because, in the minds of the government, the insurance plans of a great many of the unwashed masses were not good enough. I heard a panelist on MSNBC completely befuddled at why people would be upset at having the government replace their “substandard” plan with one that covered more issues (like pregnancy for 70 year old men and Viagra for 70 year old women). She didn’t get it. Since she is of the political ilk that holds the belief that the government, as a whole, knows better than any individual, she never will get it. These people who are being forced out of their plan were satisfied with what they had! They bought their policy using their own brains, they were willing to live and die by their decision and it satisfied them, but apparently these personal choices didn’t satisfy the government.

I thought the stated objective of Obamacare was to provide insurance for those folks who did not currently have insurance, whether they wanted insurance or not. I didn’t think the objective was to take away insurance people had and replace it with plans the dull population didn’t know they needed. I was naive. I forgot the single payer end game.

I’m sure Obamacare will overcome all of its many start-up problems and because its concept is to take from the few and give to the many, the many will be happy with it, so within maybe five years it will rank up there with other Liberal successful yet unsustainable programs like Medicare and Social Security and the ‘fundamental transformation” of the country will be almost complete.

THE CAR DOESN’T WORK, IT MUST BE THE COLOR

As a result of my last Blog post, Common Sense, I entered into a discussion with an intelligent liberal (no, this is not, according to some Conservative thinking, an oxymoron) family member. During this discussion the concept of Conservatives not wanting the President to succeed because the President is black, reared its ugly head.  When ever I hear this racist canard from Liberals, I am left pretty much speechless. It would appear that anyone not liking the spectacularly successful policies this President has proposed (not implemented, but proposed), and not wanting the President of the other party (opposite philosophy) to succeed, could only feel like this because he is black, completely ignoring the fact that every other President, all white, have also had their very vocal detractors, and I don’t remember ever hearing the word racist used. When the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton took off after President Bush, did I miss the racist claims? Or, can only whites be racist? If, God forbid, Hillary Clinton becomes President, will she have the built in excuse of sexism, waiting to bail her out of any lack of success? As a white man am I ever going to be able to blame a President again?

As much as I despise using racism as an excuse for a lack of success, in the case of President Obama I do, in some small way, understand it. We have a President who has a certain personality, and I’ll leave it up to the reader to fill in what you think the scientific term for this personality might be. President Obama’s speech after the death of Bin Laden was crammed to capacity with the word “I”.  When things don’t go quite as well, the “I” seems to be replaced with, “ Republicans” “Tea Party”, “the generic Washington establishment ” (as if he lives in Bigbutt, Montana and watches all of this unfold on Twitter). This is not the type of personality whose underlings (and when you are President, that’s pretty much everybody) wish to convey the bad news that something he wishes to have happen, is not happening.  So, it’s time to open up the blame bag and see who’s ripe for attack this time. How could the Republicans, Tea Party and the generic Washington establishment be against a plan so skillfully and brilliantly thought out, it must be because they are—here it comes—Racist.

The reason this bothers me so was brought out in my Blog post entailed, background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Profiling: The New Dirty Word. The African-American race has been kept where it is on the American social strata because the likes of the aforementioned Jackson and Sharpton. They, and those like them, have succeeded in making victims of the entire race. When you are a victim, you have no control over your circumstances, you are in the control of “the Man,” and until the man lets you up you have little chance of success.  In the plantation days the man was actually a man, today the “man” who cares for all needs is the government.

In a classic newspaper article written by Charles Reese, he made the observation that all the good and bad in this country is the result of the actions of 545 men and women (100 senators, 435 congressman, 1 president, 9 Supreme Court judges) If they want something to happen it will happen, if they don’t it won’t.  In order for racism to actually affect the policies of the land, many of the 545  (46 of which are Black) would have to be voting against a policy which they feel would benefit the country, but they would not support it because the President is black. Sorry, I maybe naive, but I just can’t buy that.

I really don’t believe crying racism and treating the most powerful African-American in the world as a common victim is the way we want to go. It is indeed racism if we do not treat President Obama like every other President before him. 

COMMON SENSE by Thomas Payne

As I have said in a previous Blog, I really don’t know all the ins and outs of Obamacare, or the government budgeting process, or exactly how bills are passed. I have a life that fills in my time, but these issues are important, and do affect me. So, I do just like I do for things in life like computer repair, plumbing, expressing dog’s anal glands, etc. All of those issues are important in my life, but maybe a bit too complicated for me to really know enough to not to find myself in trouble.  Therefore, I get myself “people” to handle those issues for me.  The same is true for politics. I get people to do the research for me. “people” are the likes of Rush, Hannity. Beck and Levin. Why do I use those folks as my people and not Maddow, Mathews, Schultz or Toure? Because I have listened to all of the above, and the people I have chosen make common sense to me; they describe life the way I have experienced it. The others? Not so much.

I have used the words “common sense,” but sense, as we all know, is anything but “common.” We may even find in our short time here together that some of you won’t agree with what I would call Common Sense (CS), and that is probably why we have such division in this country. Let’s just try out a few things.

Obamacare--We had a health care system that had many flaws that did need to be addressed. Common Sense (CS) tells me the government should have taken each problem area and addressed each individually, but the administration decided to address about every possible issue in the medical world, short of expressing anal glands,  in a seven foot high stack of regulations that CS tells me no one person, nor gaggle of persons, could really understand.  CS tells me that when you introduce 40 million new people into the system with the same number (or less) of doctors, most people would not find that helpful. CS tells me that the way the rate structure is designed will eventually produce a single payer, socialized medical system, just as President Obama has been quoted as wanting (part of “fundamentally transforming the country”).  Once the government has total control of the health system and the money set aside (I’m sure in a lock box like Social Security) for them to distribute, CS tells me here comes the “Death Panels.”  Of course they would not be called that, and will be vehemently denied, but “something” has to say how the health care money will be spent—what criteria will they use?  CS tells me it will be some combination of age and expense. Ninety –five year olds with new pace makers will be a thing of the past, which is OK unless you happen to be a ninety-five year old who needs a pace maker..

Gun Control—CS tells me if laws are passed restricting the amount or types of guns one can have, only those people who obey laws will be affected and they are not the ones we should be worried about.

Global warming—Of course it is/will warm. Then it is/will warm again. The earth’s climate has been changing since the earth was invented. CS tells me that humans contributed to the climate changes, but I’m hard pressed to believe that humans caused climate change which has been going on before humans existed. What caused it before and why is that not the cause of it now?

President Obama— CS tells me a young man with virtually no management experience, other than managing a few members of his Senate staff, (and that was for only about 140 days most of which were spent campaigning), a man with little or no budgeting experience who has spent most of his formative years outside of mainland USA, was, surprisingly, not ready to “supervise” 300 million people with a “budget” in the trillions.  I think I hit that one right on the head.

Negations/Compromise—Republicans would sign a bill putting the government back to work if the administration will agree to delay Obamacare for one year and require Congress and the administration to abide by the same healthcare the peeps are being required to live (and die) by. The President said he would only sign the bill if it were “clean” (no Obamacare attachment). So, if either side gives in the government goes back to work. Neither side gives in. CS tells me both sides therefore are to “blame” for the government not working. Pointing fingers at the “other” side is just for the benefit of the low information voter.

There is a distinct possibility I may be wrong on some of the above issues, but for me they are just common sense conclusions arrived at through my life experiences and reinforced by my people. Since we have not all shared the same experiences, or have the same people, we tend to view things in life through the bottom of different beer mugs. Maybe we can never convince others of the error of their ways, but hopefully we can work on ourselves to better understand how anybody “could ever think that way.”

THE ELUSIVE MIDDLE GROUND

There is a good chance I’ll get myself in trouble saying what I’m about to say, but here goes. Men and women are different.

I’m not sure why this obvious statement tends to cause problems, but it does seem to. Not with the men, but with women. (This puzzles me because I know a lot of guys, and I’m not sure why women would want to be like any of them.)

Anyway, here goes. Women and men both have an emotional and rational side. So far, so good. Since people rarely have a 50/50 dose, one of the two sides tends to show itself more often. In general, women tend to be more emotional than men. From what I have experienced, emotion tends to be more of a Liberal trait. So, when you get an emotion- based woman in an emotion-based political philosophy, you have a perfect storm. 

Let me give you an example. This is a summation of a “discussion” I had with a Liberal woman on Facebook:

She entered a FB post chastising the House for proposing a bill which would cut the food stamp program by $38 million dollars while doing nothing about the cost of war (the classic “Guns and Butter” economic argument).  This is a very devoted woman who teaches at a “poor” school and experiences every day the effects of being poor in America. I understand and admire her for doing what she does, but my rational side took ove,r and I pointed out to her that $38m is only 5% of a $40B poorly managed program. If this is like most other federal spending “cuts,” it means they are agreeing to reduce the rate of food stamp spending by 5%. The food stamp program is increasing at a rate of 13% per year, so with the proposed 5% cut, the program will only be increased by 8%. (How would you like your household income to be increased by only 8%?)   Her response, minus the sarcasm, was to point out the children in her class who, every day, say they are hungry. 

She is talking about the Congress taking money from needy children and I am talking about, with a debt of over $17T, taking money from those, with means testing, who would never be eligible.  I fell into the trap I fall into every time I debate a dedicated Liberal. I try to address, with logic, an issue arrived at with emotion. I guess this is why I seem to have much more heated discussions with Liberal women than Liberal men (along with the fact that I know more Liberal women than Liberal men). Addressing emotional problems with ration answers never seems to work, and yet both left and right try it all the time, which is why compromise can be so difficult.

If Liberals can just crank up their rational side a bit, and Conservatives their emotional side, we have a chance at compromise—slim, but a chance, rationally speaking.

DOOLEY OR DIE

We’re watching our dog Dooley die. He may not die today or tomorrow, but real soon. He has an inoperable tumor on his spleen and they tell us he will bleed out and die quickly. I go through the same thing every time we loose and animal. Can I do it again? Can we watch another dog or cat die, or make the choice to actually take the life of a friend of over 13 years?

These feeling seem to contradict my last Blog posting where I loosely make a case for human euthanasia, and now I’m lamenting doing that very thing for a dog. Hopefully this will explain why I feel differently. (Those of you who have never loved an animal can save yourself some time, you will have difficulty understanding what I’m about to write. Maybe you can take the time you are saving from reading and use it to think about just how we got the politicians we have now.)

As a human we understand the quality of human life and we know the quality of life expected by those for whom we are close enough to make life ending decisions, and hopefully they know ours. That, in concept, could make human euthanasia palatable, but with an animal it’s not all that clear cut. I have been told by those who proclaim to know such things that the quality of Dooley’s life is his ability to eat, poop and move around on his own power. That makes sense, but what if they are wrong? What if at the end of life Dooley would rather be the recipient of copious pain meds and just lay over in the corner in my office where he has been for the last couple of years listening to me mumble at the computer until nature takes it course?

Obviously we can’t know for sure, so when it becomes obvious to us that Fido is having trouble we make our best judgment because we know Fido better than anyone else on earth. Humans making their best judgment at the end is only right because that’s what we do for our animals all of their lives. We bring them into our homes without their consent, feed them, vet them, pet them, play with them, all at our discretion, and with having very limited input, they trust us and love us for it. Their whole lives revolve around loving and trusting us and at the end they must trust our love for them to overcome our selfishness, and that in the final analysis is what makes it so hard for us to let them go. Our pain and unwillingness to let our pet go comes not so much from the loss we believe our animal will feel, but from the loss we will feel. We know when their pain is gone, ours begins. What do I do without my office partner?

Somehow we feel humans understand death and our part in it. The animal blindly trusts us and one day we up and take his life. It’s that morbid thinking that separates the difficult end of life decisions for humans (because it’s not our “fault”), and animals (because it’s all our “fault”).

I have told all of my animals that when this life’s pain exceeds its quality (not necessarily in those words), and they are ready to move on to what’s next, they should tell me—and they all have. Nothing just yet from Dooley, but we’re watching.

SOME GO EASY, SOME GO HARD

My mother died in 2011.

Her body died on August 7, 2013.

My wish for all of us is that our bodies and minds will go at the same time, but all too often that's not the case. It would seem that physical medical science is regrettably ahead of mental medical science. My guess is they could medicate/hook a person up to live until the Cubs win the World Series. That, to me, doesn’t meet the definition of living.

When I can’t do the things that make me, me; like using a toilet, recognizing my wife and kids and getting food directly into my mouth, maybe it’s time to move on to what ever is next.

I know most significant end of life issues are primarily religious issues so, let’s talk about that. If a person strongly believes that God put us on this earth and he’s the only one that can allow us to leave, then for a person with that belief things should stay the same. But, if you were to believe that a loving God would not want his finest creation (after Labrador Retrievers) to permanently lose all that made them humans, maybe we as a society ought to revise how we view our last days.

My mother asked for death for the last couple of years. We who loved her had to sit and watch and deny her any relief from her mental pain.  I’m sure some would say she was not in her “right mind,” and I would agree. This is just why she should have been unshackled from a non functioning body and her “wrong mind.”   My mother would have been mortified at what she looked and sounded like at the end. As “wrong minded” as she was, she knew at some primal level what she needed.

Everybody I’ve talked to about this subject agrees they don’t want the ending that society and medical science seem to have in mind for us.  It’s important for us to be sure those making end of life decisions for us (including our doctors) know what we want and are willing to carryout our wishes to the best of their ability and within the current law. Today in most of the US exiting a life with no quality when we want to exit, is not an easy option. Hopefully that will change, but probably not in our life times (pardon the pun). 

There are worse things than dying and living maybe one of them.

PROFILING: THE NEW DIRTY WORD

Let’s change the scenario a tad.

George Zimmerman pockets his pistol in the early evening and heads out on his nightly rounds to protect the citizens of his neighborhood.   Patrolling just a short while he encounters a stranger. Given that his area has been the target of recent burglaries and has one of the highest crime rates in the nation, he is super diligent. He approaches the stranger. The stranger is a blond haired, blue eyed, Nordic youth named Thor who is whistling show tunes. (Fill in what you think would happen next….)

But he didn’t, he came across a black youth in a hoodie named Trayvon who was not much interested in carrying on a conversation with a “crazy ass cracker.” We all know what happened after that.

Yes, George Zimmerman profiled, by race, Trayvon Martin.  SO WHAT? We all do it.

If you were leaving a movie theater late at night and to get to your car you had a choice of going down an alley with 5 black kids, pants at half mast, playing heavy rap music and speaking in a language you believe just may be English.

OR

An alley with 5 kids that just came out of a meeting of the sons of Norway, wearing cardigan sweaters and whistling show tunes. Which way do you choose? Either way you are racial profiling.

I would go the Norway route, and so would most people I know, both black and white. I don’t know the black kids, but I racially profiled them.   I know by reading the newspaper and listening to news broadcasts that more people are robbed; raped and murdered by black kids, pants at half mast playing heavy rap music and speaking in a language I  believe just may be English than kids that just came out of a meeting of the sons of Norway, wearing cardigan sweaters and whistling show tunes.

Why did Zimmerman think Martin posed a greater potential threat than our Norwegian friend?  Because statistically Martin did pose a greater threat.

Do people generally think of the Irish as smart, industrious?  Do they generalize Asian as lazy and not too smart? The generalization of people and their good and bad characteristics comes from something.

There were 49 people shot (11 killed) on the south side of Chicago last St’ Patrick’s day. There were no shooting/murders in Barrington Hills, Il. Which is 87% white, 1 % black (Reverse the figures of Chicago’s South side.)  There were also no shooting in Bridgeport, the old Irish section of the city.

Today, if I had to pick a group of kids to start a basketball team I would pick as many blacks as I could find. If I were asked to start a street gang I would also pick as may blacks as I could find.

We stereotype people based on their previous actions.  If blacks want to change the profile they must change the actions.

Anytime anybody writes anything about race they can get themselves in deep trouble, but this ignoring the elephant in the room has gone on long enough; somebody has to address the issue. Blacks are profiled because black crime rate is seven times higher than the white crime rate, so that’s the way to bet. When the police look for people involved in criminal activity, they are going to look for the kind of people listed in their previous crime reports.

The question that nobody is asking is “WHY?”  Why are blacks the “go to” race when looking for the bad guy. How did they get this “profile? What has happened to the African-American, and ever increasingly, the Hispanics, in America today? I have my theory. The Liberal philosophy of making the poor all wards of the state is obviously a major contributor to the decline of the minority family, but I also believe there is something more sinister at work. I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the black leaders. The Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, Charlie Rangels, NAACP, et. al.

The black leaders over the last few decades have made their living by making victims of those of color. The leaders spew the venom that blacks can never expect to make anything of themselves when they were brought over here to a strange land by white slavers (Fact: most slavers were black). Black leaders make it sound as if the black race arrived on America’s shore last Tuesday at five PM.  They pound the point that, “the man has kept you down ever since, and since he has the upper hand, you don’t stand a chance to succeed.” The truth is if the leaders would give hope to their people by helping them realize that 600,000 black people were brought over and that grew to 40 million people who are experiencing a greater level of freedom and prosperity then they could have ever experienced without the long boat ride.

As Tammy Bruce, a radio talk show host said, “When your victimhood is your empowerment, recovery is the enemy”:

Restoring black pride is essential if the once proud people ever want to get to the Norwegian level of racial profiling. That pride can only be restored if the leaders do not excuse every antisocial act as, “what can you expect from a poor uneducated person”.

The color of the skin is not the problem. It’s the way of life being adopted by all too many black families and being accepted and promoted by black leaders and financed by liberal politicians (both Democrats and Republicans). The politicians have done more damage to the black race than slavers whips could have ever done.

Let’s start at the beginning and get the family back to a two parent family. In the African-American community 72% of children are born to unmarried women (in 1964 it was 24%.) This statistic is important because 85 % of the prison population comes from fatherless homes. In the African American community only 31 % of couples are married (in 1960 it was 61%) The blacks must stop listening to their self-intentioned leaders and stop blaming everything outside of themselves for their troubles. They must take back their streets and not accept the limits their leaders put on them.

As you can see, back in the ’60s, when we were going through our major civil rights struggles here in the US, the black family was better off than they are now, and they were not profiled in the way they are today. In the ‘60s blacks were afraid of whites, today whites are afraid of blacks. Is that progress? Blacks who are angry at being profiled might do best to target that anger at those people and those conditions creating those profiles and stop the almost insane practice of tearing up their own neighborhood because somebody reacted to the profile created by those very rioters.

Every race has earned the profile they are living under.. It’s not up to society to view a race differently, it’s up to that race to act differently.

 (NOTE: While this discussion was about profiling and blacks, here in New Mexico I see the Hispanics falling down the same rabbit hole for the same reasons. It’s a shame

UNCLE BEN KNEW IT THEN

Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

 Later he said:

 “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

 Those two quotes about sum it up.

 Happy 237th birthday America. Ben would never recognize you, but he would have a certain perverse satisfaction in knowing just how right he was.

 Those on the left condemn corporations because of “corporate greed,” and yet that very greed of the populace, encouraged by all politicians and uber-encouraged by the left, that is altering our country forever.

 President Obama said he was going to “fundamentally transform this country.” He is not alone in transforming the country, he is just the first one to say it out loud and the one who, from what little he has let us know of his past, had profound transformation (Capitalism to… well… not capitalism) as a plan from the beginning. I believe the previous administrations took us blindly down the path of transformation to enhance their personal power with minimal concern over the desires and counsel of the founding fathers.

 The US is a very extraordinary Nation. It evolved out of the mistakes made in other societies. It evolved from those societies who suppressed individual freedoms and encouraged the power of the state. Human nature dictated the state suppressing an individual’s quest for freedom would not work in the long run. Our founding fathers knew that basic truth and wrote a document designed to insure a country where individual freedom had priority over the state, but they, at least Benjamin Franklin, also understood the dark, greedy side of human nature would eventually have its day, and that day is now, when we would slither back to that from which we came.

 The country our grandchildren will be celebrating on future July 4ths will be different. If you’re a conservative it will be bad different; if you’re a liberal it will be good different, but it will be different.

BLOODY AXES AND BUGGED PHONES

A typical Saturday night in Albuquerque, a gang drive by shooting highlights the evening.

I’m pretty sure our police gang unit knows who was involved, but since our laws lean so heavily in favor of the bad guys, the police may never be able to send them to the slammer unless one of them confesses, and only then after being read his rights, lefts and everything else that get in the way of speedy law enforcement.   Let me just dream a bit. What if, since the police are 90% sure who pulled the trigger, they grabbed this goober from his mother’s basement took him to the town square and chopped off his gun hand with a dull axe.  Do you believe random shootings would go down?  Try the same technique in the South Side of Chicago.

Of course we wouldn’t do that because our societal sense of decency and fairness outweighs our desire to reduce gun violence.  Bringing what we really want up to a conscious level is important because we always get what we want. We shout from the highest roof tops that what we want is to reduce gun violence, but what we really want is to enact laws that make it more difficult for the good guys to get guns, laws that make our lawmakers more reelectable, more feel good laws for the low information voters, and that’s just what we got while all the time saying we’re trying to reduce gun violence.  You really want to reduce gun violence get the axe ready.

How does this thinking fit in with one of the current administration’s “misunderstandings.”

"You can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a society." -President Obama on NSA surveillance controversy.

I agree with President Obama. (Like they say, “Even a blind pig roots up an acorn every once in awhile.”)   The war we are fighting now (or the philosophical difference we are having with radical Muslims, as the administration prefers to consider it) is different than any other conflict we have a ever had, and so out of the vision of our founding fathers we may have to, in this instance, stretch the limits of the Constitution.  We are no longer fighting a country, a geography or even a race of people. We are fighting a religious ideology.  We are all familiar with the weapons of past wars, and they were the best in the world at bringing an enemy country to its knees, rearranging geography and wiping out people. We had the most effective weapons when they were effective, but today’s major weapon for fighting today’s war is--Intelligence. With the right intelligence we can wipe out the enemy with a musket. 

We have the ability to profile the individual enemy, (if we can get by the ACLU), but even profiling is getting more and more difficult with the home grown variety terrorist. Bombs with the power of mega WW 2 bombs are crossing our borders in suitcases and crossing gullible minds on the Internet. I believe, as does my buddy Barack, that we are going to have to give up some of our freedom for safety. The debate, and it will be a heated one, will be on where is the line.  I believe at the end of the debate the line will have to be moved.  What will make moving the line so difficult will be the recent actions of the administration has created a real trust issue as to the ultimate use of the acquired information. Can we trust our government to use the information to help us or hurt us?  It’s a shame we have to consider that question, but we do.

We say we want an end to gun violence. We can get it with the hand chopping thing. We say we want safety. We can get it with a peeping Tom government.  Remember, we always get what we want.

CONFESSION OF A CONSERVATIVE

I really don’t know very much about Obamacare, but I know I don’t like it because my “people” don’t like it.

I have found that it makes life simpler if you don’t have to know everything about everything. I don’t know everything about how the human body works, or the inner workings of the stock exchange or how electricity comes out of nowhere and into my Victrola, so we surround ourselves with people who know what we don’t know. If what they say seems to make sense, or even if it doesn’t make sense, for some reason we trust them. We will hand over that portion of our lives to them. We then have “people.” We have our medical people, our financial people, electrical people, etc.

When it comes to politics, most of us also have our “people.” There is no way we can really understand the financial workings of the government and, unless we are certified climate scientists we cannot (should not) intelligently comment on global warming. A 7 foot high stack of health care regulations I’m betting is also beyond our intellectual reach and yet we all have opinions. Where did we get those opinions?

If someone doesn’t tell me the ins and outs, the details, of political stuff, how would I know what to think? The problem is since there is a left and right in politics, and they both have an opposite view with supporting facts on almost everything, who do I read or listen to? It seems every talking head on TV/radio today is an ideologue. Any article or book I would choose to read was written by somebody with an agenda. Unless I know that agenda, how do I know I’m not being led down the garden path?

Since going outside of ourselves and relying solely on others is a risky way to evaluate what we think and why we think it, let’s go inside. I wrote a paragraph that summed up my life. This was an interesting experience, and would suggest you try it.  It made me take a look at the major influences in my life, they were: Religion, Sports, Military, Police, Corporations and Family. Putting them all together they equal-- me. I got something positive and ingrained out of each aspect of my life which today makes up my politics, my “world view.”

Given these “pillars” of my life when a political subject comes up, I run it through my experiences, my map, the way I’ve seen the world work, and what makes sense to me and immediately arrive at a visceral level conclusion which may or may not, in the long run, be accurate. My initial beliefs are:

Religion trumps atheism

Winning trumps everybody getting a trophy

Military trumps suspected terrorist

Police trumps demonstrators

Corporations trump government

Family trumps a random passel of people doing what ever makes them feel good.

As an example when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was stopped and questioned by Cambridge, Massachusetts police in 2009, President  Obama immediately came out at a press conference questioning the police motives. I immediately came to the conclusion that Gates was stubborn and obnoxious. Neither the President nor I really had any “facts,” but we come to a conclusion based on gut feelings, on what our experiences have shown  life to be for us.  When you hear that the police and the Occupy movement have clashed, whose side do you instinctively line up on? My father and role model was a policeman for over 30 years; facts were not immediately important to me in either example.

I believe our life experiences generate our conservative or liberal views, those views then direct us to the people we feel we can trust to tell us the “truth.” So, when it comes to whom we select as our “people,” those folks who can best give us the skinny on what’s really going on, we tend to go to those “experts” who best represent our world view. As a Conservative I go to Rush, Hannity, Beck, and I watch Fox news. They explain the world as I know it. When I listen to Matthews, Maddow, Reverend Al and watch MSNBC, I believe I have intercepted a broadcast from Mars. I’m sure a Liberal would reverse that.

As a life-created Conservative I have my views on Obamacare, Abortion, Gun Control, Energy, Immigration, Minimum Wage, Trickle Up/Down Economics, Global Warming, etc. I know what I know based on my experiences and I use selected members of the media to provide me with factual and emotional backup. Liberals do exactly the same thing. We all run around talking as if we really know what’s going on, but we really just parrot the people we trust. 

If the other side drives you nuts, shoot for understanding rather than convincing, and with understanding, maybe it’s best, as Pogo said, to start with ourselves. Why, with minimal facts to back us up, do we feel so strongly in the way we feel and believe so strongly in what we believe? Write that autobiographical paragraph. I think it will explain a lot.

ABSTINENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER

                                                   

God said to Adam and Eve, “You guys have it pretty good, the whole world is at your disposal (except for that apple thing), you are free to come and go, sleep as long as you want, dress or not dress as you wish, but that is not really why I made you. I have a master plan and here it is. I didn’t spend seven days creating all of this to have it end with you. So, I have in mind something called children. Those will be little yous, and they will contain all of your knowledge plus what ever knowledge they can pick up, thus multiplying the world’s knowledge, base. They will then have children (that you can visit, spoil, and later go home) who will again add knowledge. Get the idea, pretty neat, eh?” 

Adam and Eve weren’t born yesterday (wait, actually they were) but they could see that they had a good gig going so they wondered aloud how having to watch over some untrained, undisciplined poop factories would be of any benefit to them.   God saw their point, so he said, “I realize I’m asking you to take on a tough assignment, and the best I can do to get this process going and for you to willingly create these people I call children, I will provide for you the most pleasurable act, both physically and emotionally, a human can experience. But, you must use it wisely. I have designed this act (I’ll tell you later what it is. You’re not going to believe it!) primarily to produce children to keep the human race “stocked” with new folks. But, if after a couple of appletinis you and Eve as a special couple wish to use “it” to reconfirm your love for and commitment to each other, I’m good with that.”

OK, maybe that’s not exactly how it happened, but you get the idea. Sex has a specific place in human nature.

The government’s latest policy of allowing girls age 15 and over to get the morning-after pill, providing condoms like candy and taking the parents ever so surely out of the sexual aspects of their children’s lives, all with the demented logic that “They are going to have sex anyway, let’s just accept and prepare for it.”  It may just be my age, but I’m sorry I just don’t buy it.

Every action has a consequence, and that consequence informs us if we want, or don’t want, to do that action again. That’s what moves us forward and ultimately determines who we are.  I find more and more that we, as a society, try to remove the natural consequence of an action if that consequence is unpleasant. Heaven forbid we should have any unpleasantness in our lives.  Sex is very pleasurable when done for all the right reasons (and truthfully, all the wrong reasons also), but it can produce negative consequences, e.g. unwanted pregnancies, STDs and strained or broken relationships. It seems we spend an inordinate amount of our time trying to obtain the positive and artificially eliminating the negative.

Abstinence completely eliminates the negatives of sex. It is 100% foolproof,  but that would mean in order to not bring unwanted children in to the world, to not have or give life long medical problems, or to not break the heart of another human being, a person would have to give up momentary pleasure until all the right pieces are in place. Thus the rub! Our society has declared, through its actions, that we are humanly incapable of that degree of self-control, so abstinence is completely off the table as a form of “birth control.” Any speaker going to a school today and preaching abstinence (as if they would ever be invited) is viewed as some out-of- touch religious kook worthy of the maximum dose of ridicule.

I am not naive enough to believe that many people today will practice the lost art of abstinence, but I am disappointed that society has so given up on its young. Society has given up on teaching them the realities of action and consequences, the reality that life is not fair and equal, and the truth that just because they can do something doesn’t mean they should.

Shouldn’t abstinence at least be considered an option? Should we throw our hands in the air (or our pants to the ground) and just give up?

MATH OF LIFE

It is said there are only three kinds of people in this world; those who are good at math and those who aren’t. I happen to be one of the latter, so it is a bit surprising that I have come to look at life in terms of mathematics, but I guess that’s just how it adds up, go figure. I believe in four phases of life: addition, multiplication, division and subtraction. Here is what I mean:

ADDITION

We come into life with nothing, no clothes, no name, no bowel control—nothing, blank slate. Then we meet and add our parents, brothers and sisters, Aunt Rosie and Uncle Horace and Rover the dog. Then we add clothes, a name, and the all so advantageous bowel control. During this period of addition our muscles develop strength and coordination, and our brains go into high gear allowing us to engage in life skills like eating, walking, talking. We add a personality, we add friends, teachers, classmates. We learn to deal with different types of people and, to the best any of us can, relate to the opposite sex. In the addition phase we add to that mass of living protoplasm that was us all we need to be a functioning, contributing human being. Addition takes us from nothing and provides us with the basics we require to become the person we are.

MULTIPLICATION

Now we are all ready to go, but realize we don’t wish to go it alone, so we multiply what is us by bringing in a spouse, partner, significant other, mate, etc. and if that other person is physically capable of multiplying, from one comes many.   Then comes the inevitable--house, cars and various jobs, careers and the new people associated with them. Your children now have friends who have parents you get to know and with whom you interact. Your life circle is multiplying every day. Your social life is full of weddings, birth announcements and work parties. Multiplication widens our circle and provides us with supplementary tools to fine tune a productive life.

DIVISION

God, in his wisdom, has made it that children don’t stay around forever. They go, taking their friends and the weddings and births along with them.  There may even be a divorce or separation from the partner, significant other, or mate. In this division phase you may separate from your job. The long anticipated retirement is at hand. You disconnect from your coworkers and may even disconnect from your home geography to make winters more palatable to your brittle bones. Division tweaks the necessities of what you want out of your life. You begin to circle the wagons.

SUBTRACTION

Life has given us the opportunity to live our potential in the addition and multiplication phases, and helped us scale down during the division stage. Now it appears to be “give back” time.  We lose family members and friends. (This is not as hard as it sounds because we also begin to lose memory and comprehension.) Our skin and muscle tone, reaction time, patience, eye sight and hearing are not what they used to be. Our basic skills like eating, walking, talking take a beating. Overall health heads slowly south and here it is again that damn bowel control thing!   In subtraction, we find ourselves circling one wagon.

Of course these four stages do not often appear separately. They can, and most often do, occur simultaneously. (You could add a caregiver while your health is subtracting.) We may all experience these events to one degree or another in these fascinating times between birth and death. Something we need to remember is not to wait to experience our potential or our dreams until the subtraction phase. We will be much too busy trying to remember what we had for lunch.  

UNDERSTANDING TRUMPS CONVINCING

He shot his horse right between its, big, trusting, brown eyes.

I managed to turn my head all but once while attempting to avoid seeing the video. The image of that scene was shown much too often on local TV news. The man (and I’m stretching the term) was making a point regarding some controversy over a horse slaughter house in southern New Mexico.

I eat hamburgers and I know the meat doesn’t come from chopped beef plants, but in my world there is just something inherently wrong with calling your perfectly healthy, innocent horse to you then blowing that spirit away.

 The man (whom I will non-judgmentally call Mr. Douchbag) was not prosecuted because it was his horse, he put him down “humanely,” and slaughtered him for his own consumption.  The act was not legally wrong, but to me it just ain’t right.  I can’t imagine, short of my family starving, that I could do such a thing.

What Mr. D did was not a liberal or conservative act. I have no idea what his political leanings are. Viewing life as he does just demonstrates to me how we can all think so differently about life’s basic issues. To him it was perfectly OK to kill a living creature to call attention to his cause. To me, I can think of few acts as despicable. 

The reason I bring up this gory story is to state the obvious: it is very difficult, if not impossible, given the diversity of thought in this country, for either political side to intellectually convince the other side to change their views. Yet in our political discourse that is exactly what we try to do. I know there are stated and registered Independents who can theoretically be swayed either to the left or the right, but I believe most of them actually are not “independent.” It just sounds correct to wait and examine all the fact and then vote for who will best serve the country.

Truthfully, much of our political ideology has been arrived at emotionally and will not be changed intellectually, yet we continually and frustratingly, try to get people with very different belief systems to see things our way. I can’t begin to imagine what DB would have to say to me, or what statistics he could provide, that would gain my acceptance of his cold blooded killing.

I really believe the best we can hope to gain in left/right discussions is to understand.

When conversing with the “other” side, don’t try for acceptance; shoot (pardon the pun) for understanding. While this is very easy to say, it is very difficult to do because we feel so strongly about our beliefs, and we can’t understand why others can’t see the pure logic of our position. Naturally it’s difficult for us to inactivate our conversion gene for even a little while.

Some people may be open for some mind changing. But it is a waste of valuable understanding time to, for example,  try to convince someone who believes that life begins at conception, that abortions is acceptable. It’s difficult to make someone who has owned and loved horses to understand that snuffing out the life of one of nature’s most majestic animals to make a statement, is ever justified.

I know some beliefs of others are just flat out hard to understand but shouldn’t understanding others be easier? I guess it’s like the title of an Iris DeMent song, Easy’s Gettin Harder Every Day.

THE BIG BANG BANG THEORIES

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HOW?

Our country is 236 years old, much too long for any organization to sustain viability. So we have a broken system, a system broken into two parts, conveniently labeled, left and right.

The rhetoric from both side is designed to influence the voter who is all foam and no beer. I am a conservative and this may come as a surprise after listening to some on the left, but I do not want to kill children. I do not want to drink dirty water or breathe dirty air (Where in the heck does the left think the right lives, some other planet?) I don’t want the sick to have no place to go and I don’t want the streets full of homeless families and pregnant women. It’s not what we want, WE ALL WANT THE SAME THINGS! It’s in HOW to get what we want that the left and right differ.

It’s the issues that intelligent people should be discussing, not trying to scare the snot out of the uneducated into voting on “our” side. How about discussing solutions? What will best help our country and its people. Is demand side economics or supply side economics best for job creation? What entity is best able to handle health care, public or private sector? Are our poor best served by giving a fish or teaching to fish etc.?

Our two biggest differences are divided into social and economic. Since, it would appear most voters do not understand economics, especially the government’s version of finance, (Can you believe there is actually a debate over whether $17T in debt is a good or a bad thing?). Because of the economic complexities most of our vocal differences seem to reside on the social issues.

I believe every person is made up of an emotional and a rational side. The healthy folks are those who have the appropriate amount of each. I believe our society, being made up of people, is the same; our society comprises both the emotional and rational aspects. Now, I’m about to make a statement that for some unknown reason drives the left nuts, but I’m going to do it anyway. In general, I believe the Liberals represent the emotional side of society, the conservatives, the rational side. Why do I say that?

The 2 legged stool of liberal philosophy is based upon the emotional concepts of fairness and equality. (If you don’t believe this is true listen to how often a Liberal will use those words or allude to social situations that are not fair or equal.) The problem with that is life isn’t fair and equal.  So, since the world and pesky human nature do not create fairness and equality, the left needs something to unnaturally make them happen, enter the government.

 If you want a government big enough to enforce fairness and equality, you have to pay for it. Since the government has no money, it must take it from those who do have it (redistribution just “feels” right) and give it to those who do not, therefore making things fair and equal.

As Conservatives we also believe in fairness and equality. Being more rational, we know it will not happen. If we figure some thing should have more fairness and equality about it, our first thought is not the government. We will look to the private sector, family unit, church, not for profits etc.

Again,  what left and right have in common is we want the same things, we just come at problems from different vantage points. Another thing we have in common is that we will all be disappointed. The Liberals will be disappointed because their Utopian ideas of a peaceful world,  a drastic reduction in poverty, majority and minorities treated equally, will never happen. The Conservatives will be disappointed for the same reason, except they never thought they would happen.

Since we all want the same, but are so divided over the how, we will have to experience something that is very rare in our government. We will have to compromise.  The Liberals will have to compromise by recognizing there is a reality with which they must deal. The conservatives will have to compromise by recognizing the power of working toward a world we would all like to see.

Not an easy stretch for either side.

DO YOU TAKE THIS ……PERSON

Soon we may live in a world where the only people opposed to gay marriage will be gay people who are married.  Craig Fergison

I do not support same sex marriage. The discussions I have had with proponents of SSM have attacked my position as you would attack a homophobic Neanderthal. If we were in the same room we would have had to remove all sharp objects, or I am sure they would have gone for my jugular.  This is not a group you want to mess around with.

Here is my position:   I don’t care what sex or number of  people want to come together in any kind of legal contract. That is certainly their right to pursue “happiness.” You lose me when they want to call that union “marriage.” I believe in the traditional definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman.

 If you are for same sex marriage, how would you define it? If the proponents of SSM say marriage is a union of any two people who love each other, then I would have to ask, “Can only two people love each other?” What are the limits, if any, of your definition? Is there any combination/ number of sexes, and /or ages where you would no longer feel comfortable calling it a marriage? Once we vary from the traditional definition of marriage, where, if any, is the limit? We would have to know that polygamists won’t be far behind. How about the cast of Glee? North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)? OK, now we have crossed the line, but we have to admit for each of us, there is a line over which we don’t feel comfortable crossing.

I’m sure this has to do with my age. My wife Jean and I have been married a couple of months short of 50 years. When we were young and dating, marriage meant something special. Marriage meant you found that person (of the opposite sex—anything else was never considered) with whom you wanted to spend the rest of your life. Living together was relatively unheard of, jumping in bed on the second date earned the woman a not to flattering name (the guy, on the other hand, a very flattering name). It was all saved for the institution of marriage. Marriage was what your parents did, and what their parent did, and theirs etc. etc. Marriage was for the sake of children and society as a whole. Children born of a happily married man and woman is as good as it gets. Any other combination is a distant second. Marriage is custom, it is tradition, it is an institution. To me it is something special.

As I said, I don’t care who or how many choose to form a special bond and choose to have that bond “legalized,” but I am totally against usurping the word marriage. That word, and its meaning, is already taken.

Less than 4% of the US population is currently in SS couple relationships. Only 40 % of heterosexual couples believe in marriage anymore, (which is why they don’t care what it means, and why someday SSM will become the law of the land) so we can assume that only 40% of 4% of the same sex population would even want to get married. That’s approximately 1.6% of the population, which I feel is too small of a number to redefine the entire institution and history of marriage.  Also, consider that if SSMs are as successful as heterosexual marriage, 50% of them will be able to experience one of the 1138 benefits of marriage—divorce.

If you love someone cherish, cuddle, stroke, kiss, write songs and poems, dream, and talk about him/her all the time, cry and laugh over/with,  feel lost without him/her,  commit to,  we just shouldn’t get to “marry” him/her.

I firmly believe that in my life time people of the same sex will be able to legally marry. We are a society that if somebody wants to do something, and they make enough stink about it, the majority will concede. Very little today, it seems, is worth the majority  fighting over.

If a same sex couple can have all the legal benefits of marriage, why the insistence on calling their union a marriage?  Is it because it’s a club others are in and they aren’t allowed in?  MENSA is also a “club” that, believe it or not, I can’t join even though my exclusion is unfair because they are discriminating against 98% of the population. I can’t get in because I don’t meet the criteria. If I can’t get in and I want to be in a club of others with my intellect (I’ll leave a space here for you to fill in what you’re thinking), I’ll have to call it something else because MENSA is already taken.  I’ll leave it to somebody in MENSA to come up with an acceptable name for the union of same sex folks.

 Quote from an article written by a gay man:   We should not attempt to force into an old construct something that was never meant for same sex marriage. We should welcome the opportunity to christen a new tradition, beginning a new chapter in the history of Gays and Lesbians within American society.

Amen.