Trump Card

They say that any man's lunacy grows from a single, deeply buried seed of sanity. And if you think that one must be crazy to be a birther, then you'll be dismayed to learn that one might be running for president. Our friend TSO reminds us that some of such type wonder if Obama was born at all, or at least on this planet. As I said to him:

To renew my driver's license the other day, I had to show my social security card, two proofs of residency, and my birth certificate (in addition to those, my wife had to show her marriage license). Like Obama, I couldn't find my birth certificate, so I had to send off to Lassen County, Cal. to get a certified copy. Not a photo copy of the short form, but a certified copy with that official stamp on it. All told, the b.c. and license renewal cost me about a hundred bucks, just to prove I'm a citizen, which they already knew anyway. And unlike Obama, I have an all-American pedigree, descending from a father and grandfather who fought in a bunch of our nation's wars. All this just to be allowed to drive a car. But to be president of the entire country, I wouldn't have to show any of that. It's the arrogance that annoys, and the free pass issued by the legal authorities. Since Obie's on a spending binge, I'll stop complaining if he'll just reimburse me for the hundred bucks.

I don't know how many birthers are really out there, people who believe, or did believe, that Obama was not a citizen. I never could because it would have amounted to an act of imposture unheard of since The Manchurian Candidate. I haven't even taken the trouble to research what the constitution means by a 'natural born citizen.' But I do know that when people who have lived in the same place most of their lives are being asked to prove that they are who the Keepers of Records already know they are, resentment tends to build toward those who are exempted from the trouble.

From all appearances, it seems that Donald Trump got Obama to take the trouble. He got done what no establishment Republican could, mostly because they wouldn't touch the issue with a ten foot soundbite. This same establishment is now telling us that Trump is not a serious candidate. I think they ought to be more cautious in their claims, coming as they do from a rambunctious phalanx of new congressmen and women who charged into Washington all gung-ho to cut spending, balance the budget, and repeal ObieCare, and who then proceeded to cave to Obama's budget offer in terror of being blamed for shutting down the government and wanting to kill old people by restructuring Medicare. I bet they'll cave on the debt ceiling issue as well.

I think we're living in a time when people are sick and tired of bravado backed by cowardice. Maybe they're not sure what to make of Trump, but one thing they don't see (yet) is cowardice. And I think they're sick and tired of being told whom they must take seriously. Why shouldn't they be, when the people they elect don't take them seriously?

Fair is fair, sometimes (a post in which I already know the answers to all my questions)

Found a couple of articles, one at the Orlando Sentinel, the other at WDBO, both so brief that the issue could hardly be of any importance. Their substance was to inform us that "Orange County leaders voted 6-0 this morning to extend health and other workplace benefits to the partners and children of gay county employees."

As a result, we get to pretend one more time that homosexual partners actually have children.

Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs (who got my vote in November but won't get another) said that "All people deserve to be treated compassionately. Those values of compassion, sensitivity and fairness are things we need to value."

Mayor Jacobs also said that she had to "wrestle through her own beliefs as a Roman Catholic on the sanctity of marriage." And, as invariably happens when politicians go to the mat with their faith, the Faith lost again. Just to be a pain in the ass, I'd like to ask a question: how is it compassionate to treat two homosexuals as though they were married when they're not and never can be? Isn't it cruel to encourage people to live in an unreality, and to puposely delude them? How is it "sensitive?" Or is that the same thing as compassionate? How is it "fair" to extend benefits to the partner of a homosexual employee when the two are not married, never can be, and such benefits have always been reserved to married people, that is, a man and a woman; and, furthermore, which partner had nothing to do with bringing the aforementioned children into the world, which could only have been accomplished via our employee sleeping at some point with a human female, or via some technological tinkering that made use of that female's egg? The partner had nothing to do with it. The child is not "theirs."

Am I being too picky? The questions seem to me to proceed from common sense, but common sense doesn't always pay benefits.

I know that said benefits have heretofore been reserved to married couples (that is, to repeat, a couple comprised of a man and a woman) because the WDBO article points out that "the county decided not to allow opposite-sex unwed couples to receive health insurance coverage because they have the option of getting married."

But why? Is there something disreputable about living together while not married? There must be. But then why would you extend benefits to unmarried homosexuals? If there is something morally questionable about living, and having sex, together while unmarried, isn't it still questionable whether or not one has the option to marry? If at a later time homosexuals acquire the "option to marry", will you then in hindsight admit that their previous arrangement was wrong? Or is it only wrong when the option is absent, because without that option one is, so to speak, forced to live in a state of sin, whereas with the option the sin is not sin? Sorry to sound suspicious but... is there an agenda here, some kind of subtle pressure being exerted upon the state to move it, and public sympathy, in the direction of same-sex marriage? How else to explain the urgency of extending compassion, sensitivity and fairness to homosexuals while denying it to heteros? At least the latter can "have" children, and extending benefits to them might confer a stabilizing influence on the union leading toward marriage. A real one.

Lest anyone think it's all been made too easy for the homosexual "partners" (such a vague word), it should be known that "starting January 1st, domestic partners of county employees and their dependents will be able to receive health, dental, vision, and life insurance, along with bereavement leave, if they meet certain requirements":

1. They "are in a long-term, committed relationship."

[Common sense question: how long is long-term. How committed is committed?]

2. They "live together for at least six months."

[Oh, that long.]

3. They "are jointly responsible for each other's financial welfare and basic living expenses."

[But can't heterosexual couples be also thus responsible? Sorry, I forgot. They have the option of getting married and therefore should be punished for not doing so, while the homosexuals do not have the option and therefore should be rewarded for not doing what they cannot do under Florida law and what does not even exist under God's.]

TCR

The newest issue of The Christendom Review is now up. Poetry, essays, fiction, art and music (you read that right).

Arguments encountered...

...in a student's research paper supporting same-sex marriage.

Thesis: Same sex marriage should be legally recognized under the law because it is a basic human right that should be granted to everyone despite their (sic) sexual orientation.

Opposition (as characterized by said student): Homosexuality is an unnatural perversion. "If we allow it, where do we draw the line on other perversions, such as copulating with and marrying animals, children, and etc?" ["etc." is a favorite of students; it implies a list of absurdities virtually without end, but really means they can't think of anything else to add to it] "Legalising same-sex relationships will also have an adverse effect on the traditional American family structure."

Refutation: [against the charge of perversion of a natural faculty] "Although it's natural for a heterosexual to have sex with the opposite sex," [not all at the same time, I hope] "it is unnatural for a homosexual to do the same. Also, just because something is unnatural doesn't mean that it is bad or wrong. Having an extra copy of the 21st chromosome (Down Syndrome) could be considered unnatural, but we would never call individuals with the condition immoral because they were born a certain way." Furthermore, "morality is a construct of the human psyche, decided upon by the majority of a population and does not adequately place behaviors in the category of right or wrong. Our morals are constantly evolving, as are we as humans." For example, (I paraphrase now) we once thought it moral to slaughter native Americans, hold human slaves as property, and later embraced Jim Crow with racist relish. Which just goes to show "how immoral some of our morals were."

[against Biblical morality] "The sins and teachings of the Bible are irrelevant to the governing of the United States because there is a separation of church and state." But if (back to paraphrasing) you must drag the Bible in, just remember that it also condemns many other sins that are not illegal and which occur more frequently than homosexuality, and are committed by Christians, and more accepted by them than homosexuality, such sins as fornication, adultery, lying and coveting they neighbor's goods. Oh, and don't forget, the Bible says to "judge not and you will not be judged; condemn not and you will not be condemned." It's "hypocritical" to single out only the passages that "support your opinion."

[against the charge that SSM will undermine the traditional family] "If marriage is the foundation of society, then we should encourage everyone, including homosexuals to marry and discourage them from divorcing," since "half of all hetero couples eventually divorce" without any help from SSM. "The real threat to society is not two people of the same sex coming together in love; it is intolerance for beliefs and lifestyles that are not our own."