06/27/2015
When Earth sends confusing signals ... trust the Dude who made Earth, Wind, and Fire.
Equality ???
There are many things I learned as a writer over the years, but the top three are: 1) Write not to be understood, but to avoid being misunderstood, 2) Don’t write about me – actually, no one cares, and 3) Avoid Shouldism’s – the attempt to shape the world to fit my singular world view of what I think it should be.
I’m guilty of breaking all of these once in a while and am likely to do so again in this Blog about Same-Sex Marriage, but I’ll try to stay on target.
Once I learned someone is gay after I share a joke and they laugh with me, because number one, it is funny, even to g**s, and number two, they know I am laughing with them not at them. When I worked at the TV Station in Florida two of my best friends kept a very good secret – first, that they were gay, and two, that they were lovers. All I knew was that they were room-mates. These were not the stereotypical feminine lispy-voiced confused gender types that society has painted as the picture of the American gay man – one was convincing as something between an NFL player and a lumberjack, and the other looked like a rodeo star. I think I found out they were gay when one pointed to the other and said, “you have to tell that to my husband when he comes back over here.” And, by the way, the 2nd in the couple laughed even harder.
But something has changed just in those few years since 2010. In today’s corporate world, there is no saying what would happen to me or anyone else who told a gay joke – even to a gay who thought it was funny. We’ve become a victim mentality society, where to be offended is a ticket to advancement. We’ve all heard people say, “I have Black friends, I have gay friends, I have Jewish friends,” and the goes on and on. I actually have all of these even in my close family. In fact there is only one group I voluntarily want absolutely zero to do with, and that is the Muslim who is a voluntary and willing participant. In Florida I had a lot of harmless lovable droid friends who happened to be Scientologists, but I only had pity for them. But they aren’t dangerous. Muslims are, and I will freely admit I want nothing at all whatsoever to do with any of them. That is the attitude some of my fellow Christian Conservatives have towards other races or even homos*xuals, and that is sad, because the people they want nothing to do with are who they are. To be Muslim is a choice – a very poor inexcusable one. To be gay is as unavoidable as being Arabic or Persian – it is not a religion it is a DNA Strand.
So put to bed any notion I am here to speak out against g**s. They are who they are. God does not make mistakes – people do. And so if g**s are not a mistake by God who created them, then how could I argue that gay marriage is a mistake?
Before I answer that I want to go on a short sidebar to say that bar none my favorite college courses were my Law courses. I would have been an outstanding lawyer had I gone that route because I am actually a really great debater, but I couldn’t stand the thought of spending my life surrounded by lawyers. Only criminals and judges deserve that fate. But in Law courses they talked about some basic principles behind Common Law, Criminal Law, and Civil Law. My Professor liked Criminal Law the most because of the high stakes involved, and we learned about all of the Landmark Cases that seem insane such as criminalizing the dude who rigged a shotgun in his barn to kill intruders. The point of that case was that Law is not meant to make sense. It is meant to serve justice, I suppose. In short, Law is not about common sense. For instance, Appellate, Circuit, and even the Supreme Court aren’t supposed to really argue or retry cases. They are supposed to review what happened in a lower, local setting. The one thing I learned about the Supreme Court in my 1990’s Law Courses was that they really don’t have all of that power people think they have. They pick and choose the cases, and then they pick and choose the winners and losers. And in that regard, yes the Supreme Court is political, as they were perhaps intended to be, but they aren’t powerful. The Supreme Court is only powerful when the outside world attribute to it powers it doesn’t have. For instance, in Roe v. Wade, a so-called Landmark Decision that made the pathetic practice of infanticide legal, was not intended to mandate liberties in all 50 States, nor was it intended to write new laws giving every woman a “right to choose,” but outside of the Supreme Court that’s how it was interpreted. So the bottom line is that we say the power of legal interpretation resides in the Supreme Court, but in fact it resides in the bigger political and social circles that once in a while, with enough money and influence, get translated into social movements that have resulted in “Planned Parenthood” (an oxymoron, I admit) Clinics and some national acceptance of Abortion on Demand. The plaintiff in Roe v. Wade has since realized the errors of her ways and is now a solid pro-life advocate, but of course you’ll never hear that in the story of Roe v. Wade.
A troubling recent trend is the politicization of the Federal Judge who has began to emerge as the all-powerful legislator outside the Legislature. That is another topic for another day but please pay close attention to Mark Levin on that one because he is solid in his arguments against allowing this to continue.
The way our Society is set up, State Circuit Judges still have the most local control. For instance, if you’re in Kansas, you could have to explain to a Judge why you sold alcohol to a 32-year old adult on Sunday. In Arizona the case would never happen and you would only see a judge if you sold alcohol to someone who was under 21. Even within some States like Florida, such laws are based on what a County decides. That is because from State to State, County to County, local Legislators respond to what the Legislators have passed into law and what the Executives have signed into law. At a local level, residents develop laws that serve the voters and residents in that State, and if you don’t like the law, change it or move. I must admit that because our State and County legislators are so distracted by the lure of lobbyists the “will of the people” is entirely lost in the County Commission and State Legislature.
But what would people think if suddenly, the Supreme Court ordered that selling alcohol on Sundays must be banned in all 50 States, or must be mandated? Isn’t it a little unfair to the alcoholic that he has to drive 200 miles across State lines to get drunk on Sunday? What kind of equal protection under the 14th Amendment is that?
So by now, I hope you realize the absurdity in the Opinion today by the Supreme Court that gay marriage is suddenly the “law of the land” in all 50 States.
Now to my second sidebar. 10 years ago Terri Schiavo was on her deathbed and I was there with Bobby Schindler as the family pleaded for the mercy (and elusive common sense understanding) from the Courts. Jeb Bush had screwed up everything, citing his (soon to be Liberal Democrat) Attorney General as the point-man for his decision not to really help Terri out much. But Jeb’s brother George W. saw how insane it was that an out of control local Circuit Judge in Clearwater was depriving Terri of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to every American under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and so he talked the House and Senate into flying into Washington in emergency session during the Easter Holidays to debate legislation designed to save her.
There was only one problem. The resulting law, called “Terri’s Law,” violated every principle of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It said, in essence, “this law has no precedent or value towards preserving the liberties of any other living American in Terri’s position. In fact, it is only designed to protect and preserve one American, named Terri Schiavo.” The law was so entirely offensive to the Scales of Lady Justice that it was dead on arrival, as Terri soon would be. It was just political showmanship and I will never forgive the Republican Senate or the Bush family for thinking we’d be so stupid they ever really wanted to save Terri.
And so now, 10 years later, society has become to realize that someone’s “quality of life” depends entirely on what outsiders collectively decide that means, and so it is no surprise that Death Panels so easily passed into law through Obamacare. If a majority of the locals decide to vote you off the island, then so be it. That sort of sounds like it was back in the Deep South when the rich and powerful Whites lynched and disposed of poor Blacks by hanging to “serve the greater good,” by disposing distractions from their own world of “shouldism’s.”
Now off the sidebars and onto my grand finale. One of my very favorite actors on Earth, Meredith Eaton, posted this shortly after the Supreme Court Majority Opinion was read: “Love wins, as it should. Marriage Equality.”
I absolutely love her and would be hitting on her if she weren’t already married, but there’s something you need to know about marriage, and she is married so should know that. Marriage isn’t love. It’s a box. It’s a pain. It’s a prison sentence. It’s a set of rules only action heroes with superhuman powers should really be expected to endure.
The general traditional wedding vows go like this: “I, (state your name), take (insert victim here) to be my lawfully wedded (whatever), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part.”
Well, given the divorce rate, it’s perfectly clear that all of these Americans think that getting married gives people in love someone to hold them, to be rich, to be healthy, to be loved and cherished, and to live forever. Marriage does not give anyone any of this. It has to already exist beforehand, and if it doesn’t, the sandbox of marriage won’t last very long for either.
So given the downside of Marriage, why would anyone ever want to even go there?
Because there are benefits. The upside (besides what comes in the form of government giveaways- another subject for another day) is a status of perceived adulthood and trustworthiness. It makes a pair valued as a perceived head of household over children, with the presumption that parents will feed, educate, nurture, and enlighten the next generation, no matter what neighbors or even the government will throw at them.
Marriage is a legal contract. Civil Law, unlike my Professor at Law School Courses at St. Leo College, was my favorite, and among these is Contract Law. In modern times, Contract Law is how to screw over the other guy with riders, exclusions, exceptions, and the fine print no one reads any more quickly than legislators either read or understand whatever law their lobbyists pay them to pass. In America’s early days, a handshake between two men of high moral character was good enough, and a wedding ring between a man and a woman of high moral character was good enough to make a marriage last so long that on their wedding day one might as well cut the stone for the jointly shared cemetery space. And this meant, of course, that abuses went unreported, and marriage was truly happy nothing less than the last rest stop from hell, but a promise is a promise.
When Christians and Jews speak of Marriage as a Covenant, people roll their eyes and say, “oh, there go those weird holy rollers again.” But the very concept of marriage came about naturally. In the early days humans were like animals, screwing around as biology suggested, until one day came a new concept called love, mind over matter, and being better than the animals. Ironically, even as I say this, I am reminded many in the animal species are committed to their mate for life. This does occasionally happen to my great amusement with animals of the same s*x, but as you might expect, they don’t adopt orphans well nor produce offspring.
Sometimes, it so happened, when someone really did fall so deeply in love with a father or mother involved in the biology of producing offspring that to be without them for even a second was to be incomplete and lonely, no matter how many of the neighborhood females went into heat in the phase of the moon matching the eternally productive biology of the male. Humans rose above nature, and realized that they would rather die together than live apart. This sort of explains how Romeo and Juliet came to be. The “covenant of marriage” came about because of human relations, and for those who believe in and understand how God works, that is really the greatest love story of all. No preaching today on that but the whole mission of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the ultimate love story.
And so Marriage for thousands of years became a mindset of setting boundaries between a subset of humans – the family within, and the commitments made within, and the wall to separate, for the rest of their lives, the bed from outsiders. Somewhere along the line Elizabeth Taylor became the expert on marriages only because she had failed at so many. And Marriage had become a myth. It was no longer the thing that was supposed to dry a cement of liquid love that already existed, it was somehow supposed to make the love happen. It simply doesn’t work that way.
And somewhere along the line, my gay friends came to mistakenly believe that marriage is some sort of springboard to as they hashtag. In the shallow world of gay activism, marriage is a social status, a mandated social acceptance, and an expected appreciation by others. In fact, as I said before, marriage does nothing to amplify a love that isn’t already there. When God established the Covenant between heaven and Abraham, it wasn’t to give a new love between heaven and Earth, but only to formalize what was already there. When Jesus Christ died on a Cross, it was not because we had done all of these great things to deserve God’s sacrifice for us. Rather, it was because God already loved us, and God wanted imperfect people to be, in God’s words, the “bridegroom,” to complete God’s covenant between the Creator and Creation. In fact, the Crucifixion was perhaps the most apt and honest view of marriage – an ugly scene, a sacrifice, and a sacred bond that would overcome all else that would ever be faced by God or humans.
Today’s world views the reality of God as a political theory, and views human political power as the new god. And today, in their interpretation of things, the government just ordered the 50 States and all of the people of the United States to accept, honor, love, and revere the gay American with equal dignity we would render with the respect of the heteros*xual. The most offensive part of all of this is that it presumes that we normal straight Conservative Christians will have any more love for any of them than we had yesterday, or any less because suddenly the government has ordered us to have suddenly explosive new respect for g**s.
No, no, no. We true Conservative Christians have always loved the segment of God’s Creation God created with that genetic mutation to become attracted s*xually to the man or woman in the mirror. We have always said God does not make mistakes, and making them as g**s is no mistake, either. Early in the New Testament the Apostle Philip meets the unmanly men the Ethopian Eunuchs in Egypt and they talk about the salvation of God through Jesus Christ, not the crazy stuff such unmanly men must experience behind closed doors after the sun goes down. Nor did Phillip seem to care much to notice they were Black. It didn't matter so much then as it does to today's society-that assignment of the worth of a person's value based on skin color.
Paul opens his letter to the Romans with a scathing rip towards the homos*xuals who lack judgment and morality completely irrelevant to their s*xual orientation, but rather the point was to point out that they were sinners, not homos*xual. And that was just the beginning bridge towards an even worse criticism of the heteros*xuals who had sinned. That part is often lost upon the Mega-Church pastors who don’t want to offend anyone there to contribute to the collection plate that they, too, have sinned in the eyes of God.
And so my bottom line in all of this is that I feel great pity for the Liberals who think that suddenly by a great decree by the power of government that all who hate – and that’s not us – will suddenly love g**s. I know that was the intended purpose of the Liberal movement of professional victims, that by court order, everyone must suddenly love g**s, by force and severe punishment to come to those who won’t.
Love is love. Marriage is just the Contract Law that solidifies what is already there in the eyes of men (and women) and in the eyes of God. For many reasons, no matter how powerful the Federal Government ever becomes, gay marriage will never, ever be blessed in the eyes of God. The evidence of that is not found in the Bible, but in Creation itself and how generations are passed from one generation to another through a man and a woman. This is not to say that God does not approve of love a human might have for a special somebody or even for God -– always far short of God’s love for us. God loves love. Everything in Creation and even in the Bible is all about love as the highest and most sophisticated expression of our love by God. Anything short of love completely separates us from God. Since it is uncomfortable for me to say that g**s have truly gained nothing of acceptance from God or humans today, let me leave you with this: God loves you, and I do too. I’m so sorry to hear about your divorce that will soon happen when you falsely believed that marriage would bring love that wasn’t already there, that the Supreme Court would suddenly make haters love you by force, or that Christians or God would suddenly love you more than we already do. We feel pity, actually, on our gay friends who think that they are going to be any better off than they were yesterday. Sure, they can shape the American workforce to make life a living hell for those like me who used to get my gay friends to laugh at my jokes, but my advice to g**s and straight alike is to not worry so much about what the Supreme Court thinks, but rather what God thinks.
We’re in a new age where my gay friends will say they love me and respect my integrity and fairness, but if I don’t bless what God won’t, then I’m a homophobe. And, that is not only completely untrue, it’s sad. No homophobe would write this blog. If you love that special someone, love them more tomorrow. But don’t be a hater. That’s what liberals do when we disagree with them. They become the haters. Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate hate ... shake it off.
