Category: current events

In church yesterday, we had a lesson about strengthening the family. It was all going fine until it was derailed by a comment about gay marriage and an upcoming “assault on the family” waged by legislation and the courts. Being a good little Mormon, afraid of outing myself as a liberal to this room full of men, I kept my mouth shut until I could come up with a diplomatic way of expressing my utter shock at the suggestion of two folks that our families were somehow impacted by gay couples having the same rights we do as straight couples.

I ended up saying something like (paraphrasing, because I’m not sure exactly what I said – my face was red), “I’m going to try to say this very carefully. I would think that as members of a Church that has been legislated against in the past to the point that it was once legal and encouraged to kill Mormons, we would be suspect of government intervention in the name of ‘morality’. We are Christians. And as Christians, we’re not about judging people. I would think that if we want to bring more people into the Church, and to Christ, we would want to embrace them as people, and not try to further marginalize our brothers and sisters who happen to be gay. I think we should be very careful about supporting these proposed laws, because they are often viewed as a license to hate, and that’s not what being a Christian is about.”

What I didn’t say during the lesson, but wanted to, was that I don’t see how allowing a gay couple to have the same legal rights as a straight couples when it comes to survivor benefits, power of attorney and the rest of the legal rights that come with a marriage (to the state, really a “civil union” anyway), threatens our families. Homosexuals are easy targets because they’re “different” and “not like us”. If we really wanted to strengthen the “family”, we should look at the problems that already afflict families. We should look at ways to decrease the divorce rate, which is currently well over fifty percent (meaning your marriage is more likely to fail than to succeed), provide more help for single parents, and look at ways to promote marriage over co-habitation (since a couple is 33% more likely to divorce if they live together before marriage than not). We need to look at ways to strengthen family bonds, and create healthy and stable home lives for children. We need to break the chain of poverty, which causes so much stress on family life. I don’t see any of that happening through legislation. I don’t see what allowing homosexuals couples equal protection under the law has to do with my family. I’m not going to be forced to marry a man, and my wife doesn’t have to go marry a woman. It will most likely not have anything to do with my family or marriage.

We already have enough hate in our country. We have enough Fred Phelps to go around. Being Christian means hating the sin, not the sinner. By marginalizing those who choose different lifestyles than our own, we show them, and ourselves, that we lack charity. Since Christ himself said that we should love our neighbors has ourselves, and said it was the second of all commandments (Mark 12 30-32). Shouldn’t that pretty much trump anything you find in the Old Testament. Mark 12 is pretty much a refutation of the Ten Commandments, yet, those who proclaim their hatred for homosexuals constantly use the Old Testament in their attacks. Charity is the pure love of Christ. If we constantly attack those who are different from us, threaten to make illegal the love they can’t help but feel, and judge them ceaselessly, where is our charity?

This is way too much time to spend on a piece of legislation that is nothing more than a sop to the President’s religious conservative base. If he was truly interested in saving the institution of marriage, he would make it harder to get divorced, outlaw co-habitation and force everyone to be nice, happy, well-balanced people. But, of course, we know that no law will ever do that. By legislating something, it doesn’t make it go away. Homosexuals won’t just “see the light” and become straight because they can’t have the same rights we do as straight people. If we allow this law to pass, or the amendment to be added to the Constitution, they will know that we do not have charity, that we do not love our neighbors, that we are not Christians.

No, not that doctor, Doc. A great post on why Bush has to go. And coming later today, a big long post on this whole gay marriage/constitutional amendment stuff and how silly it all is. You can get ready for it by reading this excellent analysis of the debate from the BBC.

I love it that the President wants some ribs. I’m not one to deny a man his ribs, but could the President answer one question? What’s the point of posting it to the White House website when he says absolutely nothing of substance? Was it that Karl wasn’t there to give him the answers? One of the most disconcerting things about the President is his inability to answer a question off the top of his head without sounding like a chronic stutterer. Some of his biggest gaffes have come when he’s not reading froma script. If I were to vote for anyone in his Administration, it would be his speechwriter, who apparently is quite eloquent. The President? Not so much.

“Don’t feel bad about hootin’ and hollerin’. If I’d spent the amount of money you did in Iowa and only got 18%, I’d still be hootin’ and hollerin’ too. Don’t feel bad, Howard” — Al Sharpton to Howard Dean in tonight’s debate.

Sharpton, Kucinich and Lieberman should drop out of the race after this week, but Sharpton sure is entertaining to have in a debate. And yes, that statement had absolutely nothing to do with the question he was asked (and when he did get to the answer, it didn’t really relate to the question asked either).

Remember that little story about some secret DNC memos being leaked to the press because a Republican Senate Judiciary staffer go access to a Democratic staffer’s account? Well, apparently, it didn’t happen just once.

Yeah, I watched the State of the Union speech last night. It was… ummm… unimpressive. Nothing stuck out as revolutionary, cool, important or significant about it. It was actually really boring. Bush, again, smirks WAY too much for a President delivering a very important speech. He said so little, that the <a href=”fact check is pretty boring as well. Unfortunately, the Democrats looked like plastic dolls delivering the rebuttle. Holy crap. Someone tell Nancy Pelosi to blink! Tom Daschle was OK, but man, show some fire, people! They should have let Ted Kennedy offer the rebuttle. The rebuttle shored up my problem with the Democratic party – no freakin’ charisma. You don’t show up Mr. Cowboy with Ken and Barbie’s boring plastic parents. You beat him with fire, with determination – not wussified scolding. Grow some stones, you Jackasses.

Doc Searls has an absolutely beautiful eulogy for the Dean campaign. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean it that way, but that’s what it feels like. Through that post, I made my way over to The Cluetrain Manifesto, and was blown away. I get it now. I get why I was so enamored with the Dean organization. It wasn’t the candidate. It was the power of the people contributing to the organization. It was the way the campaign worked as a hub for ordinary people to make a difference. I was floored by the relatively small size of the average donation when compared to Bush’s enormous money-making machine. The campaign, and the internet side of it is a tiny glimpse of what’s possible. It is possible to take the monied corporations and special interests out of the game and win with ordinary people. I’m just not sure it’s possible for Howard Dean. If Dean doesn’t win, we should all thank him, Joe Trippi, and everyone who worked on the campaign for giving us a vision of the possibility that one day, it really will be a government of, for and by the people.

The Dean campaign, and to some extent the Clark campaign, have shown that you can express your opinions honestly in politics without wrapping it in plausible deniability and empty rhetoric. The shock to the system has been administered, and the things the press calls “gaffes” are actually a candidate speaking his mind, not the specious platitudes of some faceless collection of writers and spin merchants. I think Dean’s gotten away from that somewhat, and it’s hurting him. Like Cluetrain says about conversation “Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice. “. Dean and Clark have both brought the human voice back to politics. Kerry and Edwards, to their credit, both realized this, and their campaigns have benefitted from it. Edwards, especially, has leaped on it, and done an outstanding job of jettisoning the politician’s vocabulary and speaking as himself. I watched a rally of his the other day, and was amazed at how natural he seemed compared to seeing him in the studio on The Daily Show last year.

Whatever happens with the Democratic nomination, I hope that the glimpses we’ve seen will be embraced. We should demand more honesty, more straight talk, more genuine opinion, from our candidates. Let’s not let them off with their prepared remarks. Make them squirm. If that had happened in 2000, I doubt we’d have the president we have today. I hope that the presidential debates this time don’t give the candidates the questions beforehand. The answers should be longer, and allow for a rebuttal. I really want to know what a candidate thinks, and in 2000, we didn’t get that. Hopefully, in 2004, we will.

I don’t suppose this means Gephardt will drop out soon? Kucinich? I’m about ready to winnow down the candidates and pick somebody. Of the top four (Kerry, Edwards, Dean and Clark), I’d honestly be OK with any of them. Here’s my fearless prediction: Gephardt drops out tomorrow, Lieberman and Kucinich both after New Hampshire. Like I know what I’m talking about…

nonDependant isn’t dead… yet. I’ve come back from the holidays now, and am posting over there again. If you visited before and stop, please go visit again. If you haven’t, please go check it out and see what we’re trying to do.

With the state of the debate (or lack thereof), I think creating a space where people can discuss issues, ask questions and help create answers without the furious name-calling of some of the other political communities is important. So, as we move into the heat of the 2004 campaign season, come on over and talk about the issues!

“What really teaches man is not experiences, but observation. It is observation that enables him to make use of the vastly greater experience of other men, of men taken in the mass. He learns by noting what happens to them. Confined to what happens to himself, he labors eternally under an insufficiency of data.” -\
H. L. Mencken

Found on Reid‘s very lovely quote bar.