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A SINGLE JOB!
THIS IS LONG BUT VERY WORTH READING NO MATTER WHAT 'PARTY' YOU BELONG TO--DISAGREE WITH DAVID? WHY?
Bigotry Watch: Gay marriage and abortion aren’t the problem.
(I highlighted the bold and italics to emphasis some points--GM)
Throughout
the year in the United States, an estimated two million children will
be homeless, over three million will be living without either of their
parents. 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. At least half a million U.S.
children live in foster homes. States that offer marriage equality also have the lowest rates of child homelessness.
Republicans and social conservatives — including the Tea Party — spent
the better part of the past year railing against President Obama’s
fiscal and social policies, and crowing about “jobs, jobs jobs!” Perhaps
rightly so, as the Congress last year did little directly to create
jobs programs. But at least they didn’t pretend they were.
In the run up to the 2010 election, the Republican mantra was “jobs,
jobs jobs!,” and Republican and Tea Party candidates and incumbents all
promised the American people once they were in charge they would focus
solely on ”jobs, jobs jobs!” They used the term “jobs-killing” as an
adjective attached to anything-Obama more times than Sarah Palin has
Facebook friends.
Yet, here we are, almost one-quarter of the way through 2011, and the
GOP has passed not a single bill that will create a single job.
Not one.
Instead, Republicans at the local, state, and federal level have
spent their time focused on making it as difficult as possible for a
woman to get an abortion or any reproductive health services, they have
focused on union-busting, making creationism the law of the land in
schools, ending federal coverage for low-income child immunizations, taking families who go on strike off food stamps, defunding “Obamacare,”
defunding NPR, defunding Planned Parenthood, supporting DOMA in court,
voting to take away rights of LGBT public employees and their spouses, voting to ban same-sex marriages, and killing the EPA.
The past seven days must have held considerable angst for social
conservatives, religious leaders, and the politicians who pander to
these extremists. Polls and studies have rolled in, finding great majorities and pluralities supporting
marriage equality and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), even among conservatives.
Even among Catholics and Christians and Protestants.
Even among almost every single demographic group in the country.
Old, young, white, non-white, college-educated, high school educated,
men, women, northern, eastern, southern, western, you name it – the
American people have spoken and they have said not only do they want the
government to repeal DOMA, but they want the government to allow
same-sex marriage, and to stop addressing social issues and focus on
jobs. And they want their religious leaders out of their bedrooms,
doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and classrooms.
(What is also staggering is the vast disparity between what the American people in general actually want, and what their political representatives and religious leaders are actually doing.)
On my site, The New Civil Rights Movement, we posted the news about the Vatican’s speech to the United Nations this week,
during which the Holy See bemoaned what it classifies as the
“vilification” of people who speak out against same-sex marriage.
Interestingly, this prompted a rather curious debate in the comments
section, fueled by one conservative and several regular readers.
Some of the comments from the anti-marriage equality conservative
were about “traditional marriage” creating “socially licensed
male/female homes,” and another curious one about marriage: “A marriage
license equates children like a fishing license equates fish. The
requirements for a fishing license doesn’t require you to catch fish,
but people who apply for one hope to catch fish. Most people who get
married hope to have children.”
You can imagine what followed.
When I started to jump in to defend my position, it dawned on me,
much as it dawned on me earlier in the week when I decried our bombing
Libya, in a tweet, “Great. Shock and awe in #Libya. America again steps in. Where are the jobs, Mr. Gaddafi?,” what the hell are we doing?
My point is simply this.
Much like the overwhelmed employee who is so far in over his head he
doesn’t know what part of his job to do first, America is playing
whack-a-mole – and losing, badly, I might add – in her job of caring for
her people, and making their lives, and the world, better.
And so, the time has come to say this: Don’t talk to me about the
“evils” of what conservatives call “gay marriage,” or the “evils” of
abortion, until you have solved the problems of child homelessness,
child hunger, education, and jobs.
Republicans are now doing everything they can to constrict a woman’s
right to abortion and reproductive services. What do they think will
happen to all those unwanted children? They’re not thinking, but you and
I know many of these children will end up unwanted, and become wards of
the state, at an increased cost to taxpayers.
How is it that the same people in Congress who want to end abortion
are the same people who want to take away food stamps, education, and
health care from children? Does the so-called “sanctity of life” only
exist in the womb? Could there be anything less responsible that this?
Call it GOP logic. Make it your sole goal to cut taxes and end abortion and see what you get.
Never mind the increased costs of human suffering that goes along with all this. Never mind that it’s just plain wrong.
Add to this lunacy the conservative’s desire to end the teaching of
evolution, and substitute “creationism,” as well as reduce spending, by
the billions, on children’s education, and what will we have in a
decade? In two decades?
A lot more unwanted children, poor, sick, and ignorant.
Who is forced to care for unwanted poor, sick, and ignorant children?
The taxpayers.
And what do Republicans want to do? Cut taxes.
Do you see where we’re going here?
Now, on top of all this illogical, inhumane stupidity, the GOP, the
Tea Party, and social conservatives want to stop same-sex couples from
marrying, and adopting children.
Why?
Because homosexuality, according to them, is “evil,” unnatural,” and
against the will of God. (Bull, but this is their “thinking.”)
I’m pretty certain those same Bible-thumpers who are against same-sex
couples marrying and raising children are the same ones who are all for
cutting taxes, reducing the amount of money spent on schools,
education, unionized teaching professionals, healthcare, and so on, and
so on, and so on.
(Now, back to all those polls. Just a reminder: The majority of Americans, no matter how you slice it, want DOMA dead and same-sex couples to be able to marry. Sadly, no one’s been able to
get politicians to understand what the American people want.)
So, let me recap.
There’s a group of people in America who’s life’s mission is to:
- Cut taxes
- Cut government spending on healthcare
- Cut government spending on education
- Cut government spending on the arts
- Cut government spending on news and information services
- Stop the government from regulating pollution-causing industries
- Stop the government from reacting to climate change
- Stop the government from regulating food, toys, business in general
- Teach creationism
- Teach abstinence-only sex education
- End abortion
- End teenagers’ access to contraception
- Stop same-sex couples from marrying
- Stop same-sex couples from adopting
And I’m sure a great many more things.
What will we get from all this?
Sadly, many unwanted children, who will not be immunized, who will
not receive proper health care, who will not be properly fed, who will
not be properly educated, who will end up having more sick, un-educated,
and unwanted children of their own, all of whom will not be cared for
at all because the state won’t pay for them because Republicans want to
cut taxes.
And yet, we have loving, willing, desperately-wanting same-sex
couples ready and able to raise children, create families, and get
married.
See my point?
Conservatives talk about the “fact” that children must be raised in a
family headed by a mother and a father. Well, first of all that’s not
necessarily true.
Two long-term studies recently published found just the opposite. In
fact, one of them, a twenty-five year-long and vigorously peer-reviewed
study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that adopted children raised by lesbian parents are better-adjusted and do better in school than their opposite-parented peers. Add to this the fact that we now have, “a
study of gay dads that finds they are more likely than straight ones to
focus on parenting over career, at least when their children are young.”
Children deserve to to be raised in a loving home by adults who can
teach and raise them well, provide for their material, social,
educational, and emotional needs and development. Whatever that looks
like, I know that as a stipulation it far exceeds what possibly a
majority of children face today.
Now, look at these clips from recent news stories:
“Four
years ago, 1 in 10 Americans struggled with hunger. A year later, it
rose to 1 in 8. Today, it’s 1 in 6. That’s 50 million Americans,
including 17 million children — and contrary to popular opinion, only 10
percent of these people are homeless.”
“Families with children make up 47 percent of the homeless population in the Dallas metropolitan area.”
“Almost
50 million Americans are without health insurance– 3 million more than a
year ago, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. The report finds one in five people were uninsured
during some portion of the last 12 months.”
“Nearly
two-thirds of all the inmates interviewed on Feb. 25 said they dropped
out of high school before they graduated, and fewer than half of those
dropouts have a diploma or a GED.”
“Evangelicals
are the only major religious group where a majority opposes the federal
government’s efforts to reduce childhood obesity, a Pew Research Center
survey shows.”
“Over
20 percent of children live in poverty, and over 36 percent of the
extremely poor are children. Also, over half of the children in this
country under age 6 who live in a household where there’s a single mom
are poor.”
“Air Pollution as an Emerging Global Risk Factor for Stroke”
“Air Pollution Called Health Peril. Linked To Cancer, Other Diseases.”
(Oh that last one? It’s from 1962, the year I was born. I guess we haven’t learned much in 49 years.)
Even if conservatives succeed at denying same-sex couples the right
to marry (don’t worry, they won’t!) same-sex couples are still going to
be raising children, forming families, and living our lives. And there’s
nothing those anti-marriage equality social conservatives can do about
it.
But the fact remains. There’s a new war in America. I don’t mean
Libya. Right here at home, the Republican war on women and children, on
gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people, on minorities, on
Muslims… the list goes on. So does the evil of the GOP. Until we vote
them out of office and make damn sure, in the mean time, they know they
can’t get away with their social agenda of hate any longer.
Republicans are waging war on the wrong targets. The LGBTQ community,
women, and children aren’t the enemy, they’re the solution.