And it isn't even my own words.
Showing posts with label Election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Election. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Same Sex 'Marriage' And The Trouble With Words
Here's the thing about redefining marriage to suit cultural trends; it's never going to stop.
What I mean by that is not necessarily that in the year 2045 people will be wedding their golden retrievers, (though they may be, in Boulder) but that in seeking to redefine a traditional (aka long-held) understanding of what something is, we unhinge our little corner of existence from the rest of human history and push off for some unknown shore, secure in our chronological snobbery that we have at last 'gotten it right' where thousands of years and millions of minds of human history have failed.
Because that's realistic, right? To believe that here, today, we are somehow smarter/faster/stronger/more moral/more enlightened than the entire mass of humanity upon whose bones we stand.
I beg to differ.
Redefining marriage as something other than 'one man, one woman, one lifetime' is to attempt fundamentally alter the very thing which we collectively understand and recognize marriage to be.
Proponents of gay 'marriage' and the like will argue that it is precisely a poverty of understanding which prevents people from being 'open minded' enough to recognize marriages between two members of the same sex. But they fail to recognize that fundamental truths are not arrived at by unanimous consensus. Rather, the consensus follows the recognition of reality.
It's like this. Even if some state or country or local municipality unanimously votes to change the tiresome name of the color 'red' to the more pleasing moniker 'dusty granola shimmer,' that doesn't mean folks pulling up at stoplights will begin to see 'dusty granola shimmer' and hit the brakes. It may over time start to be called another thing, but its essential redness remains intact. It is red in its essence, and we can re-name it and re-title it a thousand times, but it won't change the way light hits the retina and reflects a message of fiery brightness to the brain.
Maybe that analogy was terrible, but so is the logic behind the effort to 'redefine' marriage as some kind of lifelong slumber party with health benefits.
I don't mean to be flippant here. I know there are people who struggle with same sex attraction, who don't struggle with same sex attraction and believe with every fiber of their being that they are gay and were made to be in relationship with a person of their same sex. But that individual belief, that personal experience should not - does not - have the power to alter reality.
For decades, the culture at large has been desperately trying to alter and ignore this reality. The reality that men and women are made to be in relation with one another, to bring forth life together, and to parent and educate that life into adulthood. Enter contraception, abortion, broken and abandoned families and no fault divorce, and is it any wonder that the very mention of the 'sanctity' of marriage in a culture such as ours is greeted with guffaws and incredulous laughter.
Are all these things linked? Maybe it isn't apparent. But it seems to me that when the majority of a culture rejects the divinely inspired and ordained order and meaning of a thing, namely, marriage, then those who would defend it from subsequent attacks have little left to stand on.
Why shouldn't gay people have the right to sign a contract, throw a party, and pledge their lives to another person and call it marriage? Will their union ever be capable of producing love so incarnate it needs to be named 9 months later?
Well, no.
But there are so many sterilized 'straight' marriages out there now that the argument falls on deaf ears.
Why wouldn't a person vote to allow two people who love each other to call one another 'spouse' on legal documents and hospital paperwork? If spousal love is no longer understood to be a reflection of the life-giving, self-immolating and re-creating fire of the Trinity, then why not let everyone with the inclination claim it as such?
They're just words, aren't they?
Or are we defending something more than words here...are we defending reality itself from the decline and decay of a language - and with it, a civilization?
Just some food for thought on this Election Day.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make myself a big plate of nachos dripping in cheese and call it a salad. Because that feels right to me, and very true. No matter what the scale tells me tomorrow morning.
What I mean by that is not necessarily that in the year 2045 people will be wedding their golden retrievers, (though they may be, in Boulder) but that in seeking to redefine a traditional (aka long-held) understanding of what something is, we unhinge our little corner of existence from the rest of human history and push off for some unknown shore, secure in our chronological snobbery that we have at last 'gotten it right' where thousands of years and millions of minds of human history have failed.
Because that's realistic, right? To believe that here, today, we are somehow smarter/faster/stronger/more moral/more enlightened than the entire mass of humanity upon whose bones we stand.
I beg to differ.
Redefining marriage as something other than 'one man, one woman, one lifetime' is to attempt fundamentally alter the very thing which we collectively understand and recognize marriage to be.
Proponents of gay 'marriage' and the like will argue that it is precisely a poverty of understanding which prevents people from being 'open minded' enough to recognize marriages between two members of the same sex. But they fail to recognize that fundamental truths are not arrived at by unanimous consensus. Rather, the consensus follows the recognition of reality.
It's like this. Even if some state or country or local municipality unanimously votes to change the tiresome name of the color 'red' to the more pleasing moniker 'dusty granola shimmer,' that doesn't mean folks pulling up at stoplights will begin to see 'dusty granola shimmer' and hit the brakes. It may over time start to be called another thing, but its essential redness remains intact. It is red in its essence, and we can re-name it and re-title it a thousand times, but it won't change the way light hits the retina and reflects a message of fiery brightness to the brain.
Maybe that analogy was terrible, but so is the logic behind the effort to 'redefine' marriage as some kind of lifelong slumber party with health benefits.
I don't mean to be flippant here. I know there are people who struggle with same sex attraction, who don't struggle with same sex attraction and believe with every fiber of their being that they are gay and were made to be in relationship with a person of their same sex. But that individual belief, that personal experience should not - does not - have the power to alter reality.
For decades, the culture at large has been desperately trying to alter and ignore this reality. The reality that men and women are made to be in relation with one another, to bring forth life together, and to parent and educate that life into adulthood. Enter contraception, abortion, broken and abandoned families and no fault divorce, and is it any wonder that the very mention of the 'sanctity' of marriage in a culture such as ours is greeted with guffaws and incredulous laughter.
Are all these things linked? Maybe it isn't apparent. But it seems to me that when the majority of a culture rejects the divinely inspired and ordained order and meaning of a thing, namely, marriage, then those who would defend it from subsequent attacks have little left to stand on.
Why shouldn't gay people have the right to sign a contract, throw a party, and pledge their lives to another person and call it marriage? Will their union ever be capable of producing love so incarnate it needs to be named 9 months later?
Well, no.
But there are so many sterilized 'straight' marriages out there now that the argument falls on deaf ears.
Why wouldn't a person vote to allow two people who love each other to call one another 'spouse' on legal documents and hospital paperwork? If spousal love is no longer understood to be a reflection of the life-giving, self-immolating and re-creating fire of the Trinity, then why not let everyone with the inclination claim it as such?
They're just words, aren't they?
Or are we defending something more than words here...are we defending reality itself from the decline and decay of a language - and with it, a civilization?
Just some food for thought on this Election Day.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make myself a big plate of nachos dripping in cheese and call it a salad. Because that feels right to me, and very true. No matter what the scale tells me tomorrow morning.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Top Ten Reasons to Dislike Mitt Romney
Don't hate, participate.
At the voting booth, that is. Read on, friends.
A
lot is being said in the media about Mitt Romney not being "likable" or
that he doesn't "relate well" to people. Frankly, we struggled to
understand why.
So after much research, we have come up with a Top Ten List to explain
this "unlikablility."
Top Ten Reasons To Dislike Mitt Romney:
1.
Drop-dead, collar-ad handsome with gracious, statesmanlike aura. Looks
like every central casting's #1 choice for Commander-in-Chief.
2.
Been married to ONE woman his entire life, and has been faithful to
her, including through her bouts with breast cancer and MS.
3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)
3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)
4. Can't speak in a fake, southern, "black preacher voice" when necessary.
5.
Highly intelligent. Graduated cum laude from both Harvard Law School
and Harvard Business School...and by the way, his academic records are
NOT sealed.
6.
Doesn't smoke or drink alcohol, and has never done drugs, not even in
the counter-culture age when he went to college. Too square for today's
America?
7. Represents an America of "yesterday", where people believed in God, went to Church, didn't screw around, worked hard, and became a SUCCESS!
8.
Has a family of five great sons....and none of them have police records
or are in drug rehab. But of course, they were raised by a
stay-at-home mom, and
that "choice" deserves America's scorn.
9.
Oh yes.....he's a MORMON. We need to be very afraid of that very
strange religion that teaches its members to be clean-living, patriotic,
fiscally conservative,
charitable, self-reliant, and honest.
10.
And one more point.....pundits say because of his wealth, he can't
relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that's because he made that money
HIMSELF.....as
opposed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad.
Apparently, he didn't understand that actually working at a job and earning your own money made you unrelatable to Americans. My goodness, it's a strange world, isn't it?
Apparently, he didn't understand that actually working at a job and earning your own money made you unrelatable to Americans. My goodness, it's a strange world, isn't it?
******************************
|
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Why Contraception Doesn't Prevent Abortions
Hear me out.
Possibly thanks to Obamacare and probably thanks to willful ignorance and most likely due to Planned Parenthood's eternal campaign of misleading statistics and empty promises, there's a funny little 'notion going round the world today that contraception helps to prevent - or to somehow reduce the number of - abortions. And as even some of the most battle hardened, vaginally-preoccupied womyn's rights crusaders will agree: that's a good thing.
Fewer abortions good, less birth control bad. Because one is dependent upon the other, right?
Wrong.
Abortion and birth control are two sides of the same coin. The currency of which is the prevention and/or the destruction of nascent human life. While some forms of contraception, such as the condom or the diaphragm, are not themselves capable of destroying human life, (as are many chemical contraceptives, including forms of the Pill, the patch, and IUDs) they are a kind of 'gateway drug' into the abortion mentality.
For a woman - or a couple - who are seeking to avoid pregnancy by means of contraception, they have already set themselves up as being 'against the beginning' of life. (From the Latin: contra: against, ception: beginning) As such, when the 'unthinkable' occurs, be it breakthrough ovulation, or a broken condom, the new parents panic. They weren't planning on getting pregnant; they were planning on having sterile, questionably unitive sex divorced from procreative sex. When their attempts to thwart nature and the moral law fail, they seek the next logical solution: abortion.
I'm not saying that any couple using contraception would be open to considering abortion, should their birth control method fail them. What I am saying is that the very act of using 'birth control' (an oxymoron if ever there was one) pits prospective parents against prospective offspring.
In other words: they have made their children their enemies.
This is the fundamental reasoning behind the Jewish theological understanding of abortion as an act of justifiable violence against the fetus as 'intruder' in a woman's body. Without denying the humanity - or at least the nascent humanity - of the unborn, the Torah makes exception for abortion when the mother's life is 'threatened' by her unborn child or the pregnancy sustaining that child.
But I digress. The issue here is the ridiculous claim that widely available contraception, whether 'free*' or low cost, is a fantastic safeguard against abortion.
"Look," the argument goes, "People are going to have sex - lots of it. They need to have access to substances or contraptions which prevent pregnancies from resulting from all that sex. Otherwise, the world will be overrun with unwanted adult fetuses. Can you imagine?!"
Contraception, in other words, is a solution to the problem of people. Too many, too closely-spaced in age, too much medical baggage, wrong chromosomal or genetic makeup...you name it.
The thing is, abortion is also a solution to the problem of people. It's just a solution which acts a bit further down the line, in most cases.
I can hear the enraged sputtering from here, so before anyone self-induces carpal tunnel with a frenzied comment session, let me be clear: I do not believe most people who contracept would choose to intentionally abort their child. At least not in the stereotypical, 'visibly-pregnant and hurrying furtively into a dirty corner 'clinic' with a pocket full of twenties' way.
What I do believe, however, is that people who choose to contracept are damaging their consciences and hardening their hearts in a very real way, whether or not they acknowledge or comprehend the sinful nature of their actions.
Sin, you see, has consequences. Whether or not we acknowledge our actions as sinful...heck, whether or not we even believe in sin, reality stands. And the reality is, contraception and abortion are about as intrinsically linked as are sugar and cavities. One doesn't always cause the other, but it sure as heck predisposes the midnight snacker to more frequent trips to the dentist's chair.
So please, when you hear politicians - or your Pilates classmates - tossing around the 'birth control prevents abortion' stat, set the record straight: birth control does not prevent abortion.
Self-control prevents abortion.
A properly formed conscience informing the owner of the wrongness of murder prevents abortion.
Abstinence prevents abortion.
Education prevents abortion.
But a little pink pill? I don't think so.
There's a reason, after all, that Planned Parenthood is fighting so hard to keep Obamacare and its promises of subsidized hormones alive.
Their bottom line depends upon it.
*There's no such thing as a free lunch, people. And you'd better believe those costs will be passed onto the taxpayer...aka you. And me.
Possibly thanks to Obamacare and probably thanks to willful ignorance and most likely due to Planned Parenthood's eternal campaign of misleading statistics and empty promises, there's a funny little 'notion going round the world today that contraception helps to prevent - or to somehow reduce the number of - abortions. And as even some of the most battle hardened, vaginally-preoccupied womyn's rights crusaders will agree: that's a good thing.
Fewer abortions good, less birth control bad. Because one is dependent upon the other, right?
Wrong.
Abortion and birth control are two sides of the same coin. The currency of which is the prevention and/or the destruction of nascent human life. While some forms of contraception, such as the condom or the diaphragm, are not themselves capable of destroying human life, (as are many chemical contraceptives, including forms of the Pill, the patch, and IUDs) they are a kind of 'gateway drug' into the abortion mentality.
For a woman - or a couple - who are seeking to avoid pregnancy by means of contraception, they have already set themselves up as being 'against the beginning' of life. (From the Latin: contra: against, ception: beginning) As such, when the 'unthinkable' occurs, be it breakthrough ovulation, or a broken condom, the new parents panic. They weren't planning on getting pregnant; they were planning on having sterile, questionably unitive sex divorced from procreative sex. When their attempts to thwart nature and the moral law fail, they seek the next logical solution: abortion.
I'm not saying that any couple using contraception would be open to considering abortion, should their birth control method fail them. What I am saying is that the very act of using 'birth control' (an oxymoron if ever there was one) pits prospective parents against prospective offspring.
In other words: they have made their children their enemies.
This is the fundamental reasoning behind the Jewish theological understanding of abortion as an act of justifiable violence against the fetus as 'intruder' in a woman's body. Without denying the humanity - or at least the nascent humanity - of the unborn, the Torah makes exception for abortion when the mother's life is 'threatened' by her unborn child or the pregnancy sustaining that child.
But I digress. The issue here is the ridiculous claim that widely available contraception, whether 'free*' or low cost, is a fantastic safeguard against abortion.
"Look," the argument goes, "People are going to have sex - lots of it. They need to have access to substances or contraptions which prevent pregnancies from resulting from all that sex. Otherwise, the world will be overrun with unwanted adult fetuses. Can you imagine?!"
Contraception, in other words, is a solution to the problem of people. Too many, too closely-spaced in age, too much medical baggage, wrong chromosomal or genetic makeup...you name it.
The thing is, abortion is also a solution to the problem of people. It's just a solution which acts a bit further down the line, in most cases.
I can hear the enraged sputtering from here, so before anyone self-induces carpal tunnel with a frenzied comment session, let me be clear: I do not believe most people who contracept would choose to intentionally abort their child. At least not in the stereotypical, 'visibly-pregnant and hurrying furtively into a dirty corner 'clinic' with a pocket full of twenties' way.
What I do believe, however, is that people who choose to contracept are damaging their consciences and hardening their hearts in a very real way, whether or not they acknowledge or comprehend the sinful nature of their actions.
Sin, you see, has consequences. Whether or not we acknowledge our actions as sinful...heck, whether or not we even believe in sin, reality stands. And the reality is, contraception and abortion are about as intrinsically linked as are sugar and cavities. One doesn't always cause the other, but it sure as heck predisposes the midnight snacker to more frequent trips to the dentist's chair.
So please, when you hear politicians - or your Pilates classmates - tossing around the 'birth control prevents abortion' stat, set the record straight: birth control does not prevent abortion.
Self-control prevents abortion.
A properly formed conscience informing the owner of the wrongness of murder prevents abortion.
Abstinence prevents abortion.
Education prevents abortion.
But a little pink pill? I don't think so.
There's a reason, after all, that Planned Parenthood is fighting so hard to keep Obamacare and its promises of subsidized hormones alive.
Their bottom line depends upon it.
*There's no such thing as a free lunch, people. And you'd better believe those costs will be passed onto the taxpayer...aka you. And me.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
E-cards from a sitting President
Dear women of the United States of America,
(particularly those of the Democratic persuasion)
You are being had. Your Commander in Chief sees a sea of vaginas when he looks out at a predominantly female crowd, and if that doesn't turn your stomach, I don't know what will.
Some lovely tidbits from the White House's corner of the internets this morning:
Oh, vote with my lady parts? Or just for them? Wait, did you actually want me to have my vagina drive me to the polls and let it do all the box-checking for me?
Oh, okay.
Or how about this one:
(particularly those of the Democratic persuasion)
You are being had. Your Commander in Chief sees a sea of vaginas when he looks out at a predominantly female crowd, and if that doesn't turn your stomach, I don't know what will.
Some lovely tidbits from the White House's corner of the internets this morning:
Oh, vote with my lady parts? Or just for them? Wait, did you actually want me to have my vagina drive me to the polls and let it do all the box-checking for me?
Oh, okay.
Or how about this one:
Kind of inspires mother/daughter warm fuzzies, huh?
My dear sisters, whatever your political affiliation in the past - or even at present - do you really believe that this man has your best interests at heart when he is clearly so preoccupied with your reproductive organs that he cannot see past a pair of breasts to the brain above them or the heart behind them?
I am sick.to.death. of the lies that women are being fed about being 'empowered' and 'heard' and equipped with 'choices' by the Democratic party; it's bullshit. The only thing these people care about is staying in power, and the only reason you're getting any of their attention is because you (allegedly) comprise a coveted voting bloc.
If the man sitting in the Oval Office right now (or on a golf course in Vegas, let's be real) really gave a damn about you and your family, he would be working to secure the financial and physical safety of our great nation, not flooding social networks with smutty e-cards trying to play the cheeky frat boy-come-Cosmo girl.
He is a disgrace. The campaign for the 'woman's vote' via her vagina is a disgrace. And if you allow yourself to be taken in by this kind of patronizing chauvinism disguised as 'progressive' equality ... then my dear sister, so too are you.
We have come further than this as a nation, as a civilization, as a sex.
Don't let your person be reduced to the sum of your parts - lady or otherwise.
(update: the Obama campaign has pulled e-card numero uno without explanation. Funny.)
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Women for Obama?
I think not.
Lately I've been seeing more and more evidence that election season is indeed upon us, and on our cute little block of suburbia, a curious phenomenon is occurring. In every 5th window or so up and down our block, a little blue placard proclaiming 'Women for Obama' has popped up, and I'm just a leeetle bit confused and a lot concerned.
You see, I find the whole idea of being labelled a constituent of that oh-so-desirable demographic 'the women's vote' a bit offensive. Yes, I'm a woman. But I'm also a unique and complex human person, and my chromosomal makeup sure doesn't determine the way my politics swing. As if having breasts confines me to membership in a voting block that will or won't cast a ballot dependent upon receiving freebies from Uncle Sam in the shape of little pink pill packs?
Hardly.
I find it deeply offensive that 1. the entire spectrum of women's 'health' has been reduced down to two fundamental issues: abortion and contraception, and 2. that women are somehow perceived as being primarily concerned with their vaginas and related areas over, say, the economy, foreign policy, school quality, the poverty level, excruciating tax rates and other such worrisome issues of the day.
Are we to assume that those stuffy old issues are best dealt with by the menfolk, and we ought not to worry our pretty little heads about such big, serious matters, but just keep filling our prescriptions for birth control and the federal government will foot the bill? (Pat, pat, there, there, little lady.)
Hi, I'm a 21st century woman and I am offended.
And my sexual behavior? That's my own responsibility, not the government's, thank God. (For now, at least.) I don't need the contraceptive equivalent of food stamps every month to help me 'get by,' and it sure as hell isn't going to sway my vote this November if I can count on a federal kickback for toxic chemical ingestion.
Even for women who lean leftward in their politics and ideals, I cannot fathom how such an approach can be anything but deeply offensive to them on a primal level. Can't they see the ironic, blatant anti-feminism behind such tired rhetoric?
Can't they see that keeping women carefully, consistently sterilized and thereby 'freed' for economic contribution is so much of the same tired old system of repression and degradation that we are supposedly evolved beyond?
And don't they expect more from a president than the condescending promise of free pills and continued government-funded access to the woman-hating mega-business Planned Parenthood?
I suppose if they are indeed members of that mythic 'women's vote,' whose only apparent common thread is an ugly, rose-colored shade of apparent self-loathing, they don't mind much at all.
I, for one, prefer to be seen as more than a sexually-active baby-maker. Because those are things that I do, they don't solely define who I am.
Think I'm totally crazy? Remember this excerpt from Obama's Planned Parenthood promo tour last time around. How's that for a vote of confidence for the fairer sex?
I'm totally making a new sign for our front window this weekend:
Grown Ups for Romney.
Lately I've been seeing more and more evidence that election season is indeed upon us, and on our cute little block of suburbia, a curious phenomenon is occurring. In every 5th window or so up and down our block, a little blue placard proclaiming 'Women for Obama' has popped up, and I'm just a leeetle bit confused and a lot concerned.
You see, I find the whole idea of being labelled a constituent of that oh-so-desirable demographic 'the women's vote' a bit offensive. Yes, I'm a woman. But I'm also a unique and complex human person, and my chromosomal makeup sure doesn't determine the way my politics swing. As if having breasts confines me to membership in a voting block that will or won't cast a ballot dependent upon receiving freebies from Uncle Sam in the shape of little pink pill packs?
Hardly.
I find it deeply offensive that 1. the entire spectrum of women's 'health' has been reduced down to two fundamental issues: abortion and contraception, and 2. that women are somehow perceived as being primarily concerned with their vaginas and related areas over, say, the economy, foreign policy, school quality, the poverty level, excruciating tax rates and other such worrisome issues of the day.
Are we to assume that those stuffy old issues are best dealt with by the menfolk, and we ought not to worry our pretty little heads about such big, serious matters, but just keep filling our prescriptions for birth control and the federal government will foot the bill? (Pat, pat, there, there, little lady.)
Hi, I'm a 21st century woman and I am offended.
And my sexual behavior? That's my own responsibility, not the government's, thank God. (For now, at least.) I don't need the contraceptive equivalent of food stamps every month to help me 'get by,' and it sure as hell isn't going to sway my vote this November if I can count on a federal kickback for toxic chemical ingestion.
Even for women who lean leftward in their politics and ideals, I cannot fathom how such an approach can be anything but deeply offensive to them on a primal level. Can't they see the ironic, blatant anti-feminism behind such tired rhetoric?
Can't they see that keeping women carefully, consistently sterilized and thereby 'freed' for economic contribution is so much of the same tired old system of repression and degradation that we are supposedly evolved beyond?
And don't they expect more from a president than the condescending promise of free pills and continued government-funded access to the woman-hating mega-business Planned Parenthood?
I suppose if they are indeed members of that mythic 'women's vote,' whose only apparent common thread is an ugly, rose-colored shade of apparent self-loathing, they don't mind much at all.
I, for one, prefer to be seen as more than a sexually-active baby-maker. Because those are things that I do, they don't solely define who I am.
Think I'm totally crazy? Remember this excerpt from Obama's Planned Parenthood promo tour last time around. How's that for a vote of confidence for the fairer sex?
I'm totally making a new sign for our front window this weekend:
Grown Ups for Romney.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
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