Actions Speak Louder than Words

REAL TITLE:  Stop the fucking whining and go do something yourself to "solve" the "problem".

It is quite clear after only about, oh, five seconds on Facebook that I really should wait another 24 hours or so before reviewing social media.

I live in a swing state.  When political commercials weren't airing, the politicians themselves, visiting nearby areas, were on the television or radio.  I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO tired of politics and all this crap.

And I pretty much left a comment on a friend's status that said Oh for God's sake, quit your whining.  Today is the same as yesterday.  It took us more than four years to develop this mess. Go volunteer for a vocational training program or do something to help the problem yourself.

Tough words from a writer.  ;)

Y'know maybe our President isn't doing everything right.  Maybe, even, he might be the source or contributing to some of the problems we have.  But you know something? He's not the first, and he's not the last.  AND - the most important piece of all - he's one person.  Let's not fricking forget that any legislation passed - any "law of the land" must go through Congress first.  If we have fricking sequestration it is going to be because CONGRESS didn't pass a budget.

So let's stop blaming OTHER people and become involved ourselves.

Seriously.

My church runs a food pantry.  I see the "entitlement" issues - believe me.  But I also see the people out there who truly are hurting and truly need help.  Hell, in the last three years, I was one of those people, too.  Much like our justice system that lets guilty people go to try and avoid imprisoning innocent people (another system that is FAR from perfect), our assistance programs help some people who don't really need help so that those people who DO need help get it.

Do you REALLY believe that people are not entitled to food? REALLY?  Do you really believe as a society we should let people starve?

But part of the reason for the lack of discipline in our adults is the failure of our society - as parents, as teachers, as fellow citizens, to help provide appropriate structure and discipline for them when they were kids and now as adults.  Now I'm not blaming EVERYONE.  I am just saying that we have created this problem by raising a generation of kids - generally speaking - who believe that when they say "give me" they will get.  We have had a generation of parents who give their children EVERYTHING - video games, cool bikes, pokemon cards, etc. - WHENEVER they ask.  Without requiring them to earn it. Parents who clean their rooms for them, and are adverse to making their kids do chores because it frankly takes longer than doing it themselves. 

So, when you're planning for Christmas this year - or Hannukah, or whatever gift-giving tradition you're doing, consider whether or not buying your kid everything they ask for isn't contributing to the problem.

Okay - that went a direction I wasn't planning - but you can't blame all of this entitlement - that has been going on for quite a few years now - on Obama.

You can't.

You can look inside yourselves and your fellow human beings in this society and consider how the things you've done and they've done, and others have done have contributed to this.  Like Bush's Leave No Child Behind that took the teeth out of the education system by removing ANY consequence for not doing your school work and failing out.  I have a fellow blogger friend write about a new substitute teaching job she has that is pure hell PARTLY because her students know that they can get a D- with 20%!! Really? REALLY??

And you all expect ONE man - whether it be Romney, Obama, Ryan, Biden, Clinton or Jesus to SOLVE that problem.  And to do so in FOUR YEARS??? FFS folks.

Going back to the original point of this blog post - is that if you see that something needs to change - be the change.  Do it yourself.  Go volunteer for a vocational training program.  Go volunteer for an after-school tutoring program so that our children can learn to learn.  Go volunteer for a soup kitchen and recognize that there are some people who are simply not able - mentally or physically - to care for themselves in the way that you are.  Go volunteer for a drug prevention program so that we limit the amount of people who abuse drugs and incapacitate themselves from being able to take care of themselves.  START a program that does any of these things or anything else that you think might be contributing to this attitude of entitlement.  HELP provide opportunities for people to take care of themselves.  BE A PART OF THE FRICKING SOLUTION AND STOP WHINING!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you truly truly believe that ONE person can make a difference and change things, then go be that one person!! Seriously.  Because I don't believe that ONE person can, I believe that ALL of us working together as a society can.  I think each of us can make a significant difference, but it is only by working together - something that Congress and the President have a hard time doing because of BS - that we can truly make a difference.  So go.  Work with someone, and MAKE A DIFFERENCE!  Quit your fricking whining. 

Today is the same as yesterday - but you can be part of making a great tomorrow!

Ollie's Barbecue or Choice

Now when I started thinking about the topic of “choice” this morning, my head was in a different space about a different topic.  And at some point, I really want to get back to my original thoughts and write a post about that.  (And yes, this is one of my infamous shower posts...)

For those of you who might not make it to the end, I'll give you a spoiler alert - our true choice in this and many matters is to choose to respect each other.  Seems like an easy choice to make. 

I tend not to be too political, and I’ve already promised you that you won’t find many political posts on here except that as they may apply to the “human condition”.  (Nice broad vague catch-all, since all politics, at some level, apply to the human condition, or could be interpreted as such).  If you look, though, over there at that my 'tags' you'll see that "politics" is quite small.  But my intent, shall we say, is to bring “political” issues in NOT because they are political hot-button issues, but because the issue has something valuable to observe.  I have written early on, although many of you have yet to read this post (since the stats show only one view as of this posting), that I am neither politically correct nor politically incorrect.  I'm bound to offend someone!  You may want to begin reading that post before you dive into this one (and, no, I'm not just shamefully trying to up my stats - that's just an added bonus! ;) )

Now, if I had titled this just “Choice” as I originally thought to, and once you realized this might be political, your first thought might be that this would be a post about abortion.  And believe me, while not my originating thoughts, it is one area where my thoughts wandered this morning in the shower about what to write and how to compose this message.

And so I’ll spend a moment – a few paragraphs – clarifying my stance on the issue of abortion, and then we can move on.  I am a pro-life pro-choicer.  I believe that woman should be able to make a choice about their own bodies, but I hope that they choose to bring the life into this world.  Although this world *is* heavily over-populated.  What I would like, though, is for there to be more choices for someone who chooses to carry to term.  I’d like there to be less stigma attached to giving up one’s baby given that there are so many wonderful people out there who would like to be parents and who are looking to adopt.  I’d like there to be more options in finding support for raising a baby they choose to raise.  I’d like the anti-abortionists, then, to really reflect on the serenity prayer and put their energy and their money towards creating positive solutions and positive choices.  While we would love every pregnancy to be wanted and the news to be received with joy, this will never happen.  Even many parents who choose to have their children, sadly, don’t necessarily look with joy upon their new arrival.  (That’s a whole other sad scenario). 

Accept the things we cannot change.  It doesn’t mean we can’t take serious preventative measures to lessen the number of those pregnancies (something, by the way, Planned Parenthood works towards), but it also means we need to accept the reality of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies (by the way, in case you were wondering, that’s what the “planned” part of Planned Parenthood refers to…).

Change the things we can.  We can’t changed unplanned, unwanted pregnancies.  And given that abortion has been around since the dawn of time, in one form or another, the reality is that we can’t change whether abortion happens,  although clearly we can make it more difficult, and we can limit them.  What we can change is the following three things: 1) provide education on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the means by which to do so, 2) provide options for women who do become pregnant to have an effective choice, and ideally a clear choice, to carry the baby to term – to know that doing so won’t affect the rest of her life, that she won’t be a pariah in society for having become an unwed mother, if that’s the circumstance, and that there will be resources out there, for example, if she is still young and in school, to finish school and be able to have a job or a career to support her and her child should she choose that, or to find a loving and caring family who would lovingly take her child into their home as their own.  3) if, nonetheless, a woman still chooses to have an abortion, make it a safe, healthy choice for her so that we don’t lose two lives in the process. 

And frankly, if you look at what Planned Parenthood does, I think it tries to do all three of those things.  And someone who supports Planned Parenthood (as an aside) is not necessarily pro-abortion.  In fact, they are likely not pro-abortion at all, but pro-healthy-woman and healthy families.  Lord knows we have a growing mental health community due to unwanted children being brought into this world and being neglected, abused, and essentially thrown away.  These are real issues that we need to face and deal with as a society.  But that’s another rant.

But abortion was NOT the topic on my mind at all.  But it was raised last night as part of a discussion regarding Chick-Fil-A.   The issue was raised because some people are trying to make the issue black and white.  And some people are trying to lump other people into neat little boxes.  Some people are trying to focus on the right of Cathy to speak and in the process gracefully ignoring what it was that he said. 

Frankly, and I may not when popularity points here, I don’t think what Cathy said was that “offensive”.  I have heard much worse.  He was expressing his views and his opinions, and not only is he entitled to have them, not only are they shared by a lot of people in the country, he is also entitled to express them, and to express them not only with his voice but with his dollars.  I find it sad that he is unable to see or understand that God made me the way that I am, and that I believe God blessed my union, and that, frankly, if the government is going to confer benefits on two people who choose to share their lives together in the form of a family, I should be able to partake in those benefits, too.  As well as the responsibilities.  (The California domestic partnership law is called the "Domestic Partners Rights and Responsibilities Act").

But some people, and understandably so, find his speech to be hate-speech.  I'll be honest, I'm not sure that it rises to that level, but I can understand in this day and age where others who are fighting so hard for equality, and who have determined that their equality will best be won through legalized marriage, how that those words can be hateful.  Essentially, Cathy is declaring that anyone whose lifelong partner is the same sex is a second-class citizen.

Notice, we don't hear a lot of people who have been divorced speaking up or taking note of Cathy's statements about being still married to their first wives.  They are cleverly and wisely hiding behind the gays' outrage at his statements and hoping no-one will notice that they are not amongst the people that Cathy supports either. 

Westboro Baptist Church, as I reminded some folks in last night's conversation, also claim Freedom of Speech when they picket military funerals.  People find it easier - because they aren't simply targeting gay funerals - to find the Westboro Baptist Church's speech as offensive and hateful.  They are actually clearly targeting America (go to their website, this isn't MY conclusion, this is their own declaration!) I guess it might depend on who the speech is used against as to whether or not we might more easily recognize the "hate" involved.

In 1967, the Supreme Court made a fairly radical decision at the time.  It decided that a ban against a man and a woman who loved each other who had actually been legally married was an unconstitutional action on the part of the Commonwealth of Virginia.   Two people had gotten married in the District of Columbia, and then returned home to Virginia.  Two policemen raided their home at night, hoping to catch them in marital relations, but only found them sleeping together.  When the couple pointed to their marriage certificate on the wall, the police found that as evidence to criminally charge them. 

Picture this.  You're in bed with your significant other (who you may or may not have married - let's face it many of us are involved in pre-marital relationships) and the police come in and arrest you for actually SLEEPING together?  WTF? Don't the cops have anything better to do?  And it was a RADICAL decision at the time for the Supreme Court to tell the Commonwealth of Virginia that what they did was wrong. 

By now, I hope, you've figured out that the case I am referring to was Loving v. Virginia, and while each had a partner of the appropriate sex, they did not fall in love with partners of what was then the appropriate race. 

So when supporters of LGBT rights liken this to the 1960s civil rights movement regarding race, this is kinda an example of why.  We fall in love with who we fall in love with.  We should be allowed to choose the people we want to share our lives with.  We were born this way.  God made me this way.  To say that I, a creature of God, is a second class citizen is considered hateful by some. 

Now, I don't think what Cathy did was illegal, nor do I hear anyone suggesting it is.  Free speech is speech free from GOVERNMENT restriction.  The public arena is free to use their own means of expression to quell speech they find offensive.  And some are. 

Someone wrote last night that supporting Chick-Fil-A is not supporting the suppression of rights.  Well, here's the logic that says that it is.  No, Chick-Fil-A, unlike Ollie's Barbecue, is willing to serve and take anyone's money who wants to purchase their chicken and other fare.  BUT, the profit they make may be used to support anti-gay organizations who ARE fighting and making strides in suppressing the rights of all people to marry whom they love, regardless of race, or gender.  And so, some hungry people are choosing not to do so.

(Is anyone still reading at this point? Because here's where some of the humor comes in.. )  So I posted on my Facebook page (yes, my Tweeps, I do still use FB) a link to a picture of a KFC sign.  Again, there, too, I try not to be too political, and I don't think food and politic necessarily belong together, but they have since before I was born, so who am I to fight it?  The sign said "Delicious Chicken Served Without Hate"

Now a friend of mine who is a vegetarian posted a quandary this morning.  She wrote that she's not a fan of homophobes, but frankly the way that KFC treats their chickens isn't particularly humane, either. 

What's a person to do?  As I wrote in the post I first referred you to at the start, I'm not politically correct or incorrect, the best a person can do is to try to be sensitive.  Even if you can't understand why someone might be upset, be respectful that there might be a valid reason, and try to be sensitive to their pain and anguish.  When someone is angry, it is because they are hurt.  Here, people are hurt because they've been told that they are inferior citizens.  Their choice - a very valid choice - is to be angry and not accept being told that.  To let the world - or the U.S. - know that they find that treatment unacceptable.  That they find that behavior to be hateful.  No-one on either side here in the chicken world is proposing or advocating violence.  But still, as I wrote in the original Sticks & Stones, words do hurt.

Even if we don't agree, then, with what someone else is saying, let's at least begin the dialog by acknowledging their right to feel that way.  This means acknowledging Cathy's right to feel that traditional marriage is defined in the Bible as between a man and a woman, even if we disagree.  And acknowledging that this speech can be found to be hateful, even if we don't agree.  Our first choice, then, is to respect each other and try to come to some middle ground.  To respectfully engage each other in a dialog to illustrate our understandings so that maybe we might help the other to understand, too. 

The movement for gay marriage as a right actually started in the late eighties, early nineties.  Most politically active people knew then it was too early to attack that issue and change people's minds.  It may still be.  In my mind, the best choice is to create a civil domestic union, and grandfather in everyone who has been married to date.  From here forward, keep the government out of "marriage" - recognize it as a religious "sacrament" -  and let the churches decide whether to marry or not.  But let everyone have equal access to the responsibilities and the rights involved in becoming life-partners- the right to pay taxes, the right to visit in the hospital, to choose funeral arrangements, to receive social security benefits, health care insurance, etc.  Separate that from "marriage" and I think most people would be more accepting of conferring this status upon same-sex partners.  Just my two cents...

24. I am neither politically correct or incorrect. I just am.

Well, after a post about church, I might as well get politics out of the way and hit two of the bigger taboos.

I have belonged to communities where political correctness is very important.  I have lived in communities where it's not.  I have known people for whom it seems being politically incorrect is a lifestyle choice. 

"Politically correct" has become quite a loaded term.  First it has such an arrogance to it that some throng can define what is "correct" and what is not "correct".  Second, what IS politically correct (surprisingly!) is often in flux.  And this is not only over time, but by block or neighborhood.  Or who you are. 

I, for example, can use the word "dyke" because I self-identify myself as one.  (See #15)  And frankly, personally, I don't care who else uses the term (although I might care HOW they use it), but I know there are many people who are politely sensitive who are afraid to use the word.  I respect their concern, but for me, personally, I am not offended if they use the term.  However, there are other "women who love women" who might be offended by the term. 

Basically, in our insular sensitivities, we have set up a minefield.  Good luck being politically correct.  It's a lot of work.  God bless you (oh, wait, that might not be politically correct, but here in the mid-West, it's a widely used expression that is acceptable...).

I was once with a woman who worked very hard to be politically correct.  I loved her dearly.  But watching her try to be politically sensitive - because, frankly, her intentions were to be sensitive, she didn't have the high-haughty motivation to need to be "correct" - was tiring.  And that was just watching her. 

I know she meant well.  And I haven't seen her in nearly twenty years.  I hope that she is not burnt out, but I can't imagine that she's not.  I love her dearly for her attempts.

But not everyone she was trying to be sensitive did.  Which was also sad to see.

I have been in actively politically correct communities.  Several of them.  And boy are the folks in them quick to judge you all while trying to be appropriate - which to me would seem to be non-judgmental.  But then, I'm a strange nut.  There was a certain hypocrisy often present in these communities.  Not everyone, but certainly many.  Being politically correct was a badge of honor - and again, given how much work goes into being that way, I guess they earned it.

But I think that for many, they lose the forest while looking at the trees. 

I accept the fact that in my life I'm going to offend someone.  It is impossible not to.  And frankly, if you get offended, it could just be you. Not me.  I accept that, too.  What I mean is not to shift the blame to you, but to recognize that I may have no control over whether I offend you.  I can spend a lot of energy trying not to, and still be unsuccessful. 

My goal, however, is to try and be sensitive and treat you as a human being.  Complete with flaws.  Someone who has similar qualities to me and different ones.  Similar experiences and different experiences.  I don't pretend that I know what it is to be you.  At least not without talking with You.  I can make certain assumptions, but I also recognize and respect that those are assumptions. 

I will make mistakes.  It will happen.

But I also try not to take myself too seriously, or let you take yourself too seriously. 

At the end of the day, either you'll like me for me - and all my flaws - or you won't. 

And frankly, if you base your whole opinion on me and whether I'm a person worthy of your companionship and friendship on whether I use, for example, the word 'dyke', or 'lesbian' or 'homsexual' or 'butch' or whatever politically correct or incorrect term, then frankly, I don't find you worthy of my companionship and friendship.

I am not out to offend you.  But I probably will.  It's life.  I'm human.  Get used to it. 

Much shorter diatribe is political party.  Each has its value.  Each has its flaws.  I do not vote simply along party lines.  Life is not that simple.  We're in the middle of a presidential election as I type this.  Republicans are thrashing each other and providing the fodder the Democrats can use later once they pick their candidate.  This does not seem like a particularly effective system, but it's the one we got.  It's a crazy world.  Well, a crazy U.S.  I'm sure the expression applies globally, but I'll stick with what I've started.

So, that's me in a political nutshell.  I'm sure more will become obvious over time.