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?

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.]

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