Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 8): 21st Century Civil Rights

My generation ran it's civil rights race, and with a few exceptions, managed to clear all of the hurdles placed before us. The civil rights issue we had to deal with was racism. When I was young, I remember racism being rampant. Neighbors would congregate and talk about African Americans in unflattering terms. It didn't help that we were living in public housing at the time, and racists in the neighborhood had little fear about antagonizing their neighbors of color. When we left the projects, and we moved into a modest apartment, I remember mom and her friends evaluating wether a neighborhood was "too dark" to move in to.

Was mom a racist? Not really. She didn't HATE African-Americans (which I believe is the requirement to be considered a racist). She was what I would call civil-rights challenged. She didn't have any African-American friends, therefore she did not understand African-Americans, and like many people of narrow horizons and minds, she didn't want to expose herself or her children to things she did not understand or appreciate. In other words, she did not have the needed knowledge to overcome the stereotypes she learned from society.

My generation was the last generation born during the civil rights era, and therefore it was left to us, thrust together by the courts to learn to get along. And guess what? We did! The numbers of interracial marriages and biracial children are on the rise ... a testament to the fact that we figured it out.

So what is the great civil rights issue of the 21st century? Homophobia. I see it every day, and it is an issue that simmers under the surface of every public and private organization in America. It is in our schools, universities, workplaces, professional sports teams churches and the military.

Homophobia, as an issue will also be tougher than racism to deal with. At least with racism, there was no explicit biblical statements for racists to hang their hat on. The Bible directly condemns homosexuality, which then places homophobia in a different class altogether than racism. Sure, there are those who claim that the mark of Cain was black skin, but the Bible doesn't say that. However the Bible does say that for a man to have sex with a man is an "abomination" (Lev 20:13). So now, instead of being just a legal and political issue, Homophobia has a religious and moral dimension which cannot be ignored.

Rather than address the religious and moral issues around homosexuality, however, I will limit myself to the social and political issues, because that is the focus of this blog. I will leave it to the philosophers and theologians to have the other argument. Sure there are those who cling to the second part of that verse in Leviticus and say that homosexuals should be put to death, and there are plenty of examples of personal attacks on homosexuals, enough to fill an entire blog, much less a single post.

So the first task: defining what it is we are against. Sure, we can say that we are against homophobia, but the definition of homophobia would be fear of homosexuals, not hatred of homosexuals. We need to establish that there is nothing wrong with fear. Fear is a natural response to the different. The task is to either better define the word, or replace it with a better term.

Now regardless of wether you believe homosexuality is a sin or not, you have to admit that there has to be some national consensus as to the status of same-sex couples in the United States. Non-married heterosexual couples have some standing before the law. You can sue for palimony, with varying degrees of success at the end of a long-term live-in relationship. And if there are children involved, the legal status of the relationship becomes all the more definite.

So what should we do with same-sex couples in America? Put them in a rocket and fire it at the moon and pretend they never existed? Or better yet, how about we simply acknowledge that these relationships exist. Create a civil union law, and allow people to register their civil unions, and allow for the dissolution of civil unions under the divorce laws. Civil Unions would allow the same hospital, and legal rights as a marriage, so obviously, a dissolution process would be necessary. And, to avoid the stigmatization of same-sex couples, all unions of heterosexual couples not performed by an ordained member of the clergy (read: judge/justice of the peace) would also be classified as a civil union. Reserve the word marriage for a ceremony that takes place in a church, and leave the rest be. John Barrowman, the very talented British actor who just happens to be gay says he doesn't want a "marriage" from a belief system that "hates" him (read the article and interview here, if you like).

Surely this will not destroy the human race, although it does stand to make divorce lawyers richer with the infusion of a whole new marketplace of civil union dissolutions ...

Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 7): A Little Civility Please!

There is a local talk radio host who thinks that conservatives are wusses. We hold ourselves to a high ethical standard, and when liberals constantly take advantage of our high ethical standards and reap a political benefit, it is because we weren't willing to get down into the trenches and get dirty fighting back. He said that conservatives will never truly have political power until we are willing to play out of the same relaxed rule book as liberals, employing the same dirty tricks and taking advantage of every chink in their armor the way they do to conservatives.

Consider how the left set out to absolutely destroy Sarah Palin. They attacked her character, the character of her family (especially Bristol, with good reason), her intelligence and her ethics. When none of that worked, they attacked her for her clothes.

Now I am not a huge Sarah fan as readers of this blog may know. I don't have anything against her really, I just don't think she is the end-all be-all that some people believe she is. That being said however, I have a problem with people who can't leave well enough alone.

Recently, comedienne Kathy Griffin declared that her new target for the new year would be Willow Palin (read the article here if you like). She said that after having gone after Sarah, Todd and Bristol it is "Willow's year to go down" and that she wants "to offend a whole new Palin."

Can anyone say overkill? Why go after a 16 year old because you hate the politics of her mother? For that matter, what sane, rational person hates someone so much that they feel the need to attack their family? I mean, seriously, this isn't the mafia here. It is politics! And a couple years ago, when she "dated" Levi Johnston ... what was that all about? How hateful do you have to be in order to want to hurt the daughter of the person you hate by appearing in public with, and then vehemently denying you are dating, the father of that daughter's child?

I am not saying that only liberals have a problem with civility. It was conservatives after all, specifically Jerry Fallwell and his Moral Majority who fired the first shot in this war of incivility when they made politics a battle not of competing ideologies, but a battle between good and evil. I remember how riled up some conservatives got during this time in our political history. Nothing gets the blood of a religious person boiling like the belief that someone is acting against God.

So I make a plea here. Civility. Is it too much to ask for? Is it too much to ask that conservatives and liberals alike say "enough is enough, lets get back to the real issues here and stop this over the top incivility?"

Sadly, it may be.

Sometimes being forgetful pays off

I admit it ... I tend to be forgetful. I really do. I forget birthdays (that reminds me, mom's birthday is coming up), I forget to visit mom (I really, really need to do that tomorrow), I forget to return phone calls, emails and ... well, you get the idea.

So during the summer, I forgot to send in my registration renewal for my car. I kept meaning to do it, and I kept forgetting. Eventually, I ended up getting pulled over and issued a $175 citation. I put the citation in the visor of the car. I planned to send in a check for the fine, but I kept forgetting, kept forgetting ...

So finally, I realized that I needed to go into the courthouse and make the appearance since I ran out of time to mail it in. I got up early, drove down to the next county where I got pulled over, and made my appearance. I showed them my renewed registration, and they dismissed the ticket. Sweet!

Now, I am not saying that we should all go around forgetting things. I mean, honestly, I am sure that I should have remembered, but in the end it worked out ... this time. Next time, I might not be so lucky, so perhaps I should make sure that there is no next time.

A Super Dude!

In Lynnwood, Washington, Phoenix Jones is on patrol. He has his eyes open for evil, and he is prepared to fight it. Only Phoenix Jones is not a cop, he is a real-life "superhero." He and some friends have formed a group called the "Rain City Superhero crimefighting movement."

He doesn't have any extraordinary powers other than his courage and willingness to put himself in harm's way for his fellow citizens.

His most recent exploit was chasing away a would-be car thief, caught in the act of breaking in to a car. You can read about the story and see the video here.

In our society, we have a serious lack of herores, super or otherwise. Celebrities and atheletes eschew the positions as role models that their successes thrust upon them, living lives that seem more to be cautionary tales rather than as people that parents would want their children to emulate. Sadly it takes a guy dressed up like a comic book character to make us realize there are still hereoes among us. We just can't see them, because they blend in with the rest of us.

The police officer who keeps us safe, the fire fighter who rescues people with no regard for their own safety, the doctor who saves lives of strangers. They are all heroes in my book, and now we can add Phoenix Jones.

Next Time, Blame the Tabasco!

I think I am going to make Tabasco my excuse for everything from now on. Seriously. Or at least if it works for this guy. It seems this 50-year old guy was on a flight, seated next to a 17 year old high school cheerleader. Mid-flight, she glances at the guy, and he has one hand on his laptop which is on top of the tray table, and his other hand is under the tray table and he is apparently masturbating. When he was arrested, he claimed that he wasn't masturbating, but rather trying to quell an itch brought on by him spilling Tabasco sauce on his penis. He told police that he didn't have his junk out, but rather that his hand was inside his pants trying to deal with his discomfort.

All I can say is PUH-LEASE! First of all, how could he have spilled hot sauce on his nether regions if it weren't out? In her statement to police, she said that she could "clearly see the mans penis going side to side under the tray table that was down." Wait, maybe it was a Tabasco incident gone wrong. He wasn't masturbating, he was waving it in the air ... fanning it, if you will, to quell the burn.

While we are on the subject of disgusting things, I will never complain about my house being a mess any more. Especialy after reading this article about the Playboy Mansion. Past playmates who have left the Playboy Mansion have spoken out about the conditions they have to live under. The house dog never goes outside. It pees on the curtains and poops on the floor in Hef's room. In his "girlfriend's" rooms, the furniture doesn't match and looks like it was bought at a thrift store. The mattressess in their rooms were stained and worn, and the sheets and blankets were threadbare.

When going out with Hef, they would drink champaine and take qualludes to get them in the mood for sex, not because they wanted to, but because Hef would tell them to. Hef would have sex parties in the master bedroom twice weekly for which he would need to take large doses of viagra.

The girls had to be there for this (though they did not have to participate every time, they still had to be in the room), and they had a 9pm curfiew, except for when Hef would take them out. In exchange for this, the girlfriends recieve a $1000 per week allowance.

I don't live in a mansion, I don't have a harem, but somehow, I think I am far happier than Hugh Hefner right now.

There's glitter on the floor ...

OK, so maybe using a Ke$ha lyric as a title is a little odd, but go with it for a moment. To me, this post is kind of important. I had talked about Meghan McCain in a previous post, and now I am going to take on Sarah and Bristol Palin.

I think that the Palins are trying too hard to show America that they are a typical family and that Republicans and conservatives are normal people. They honestly didn't need to do this. At work there is a guy who is socialist in his ideas and is a vehement supporter of the Democratic Party because they are closest to his ideas as a socialist. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, this guy was running scared because she was so "genuine" it terrified him. He admitted that Sarah Palin scared the heck out of liberals because she was Conservative and middle class. The thing they don't want is middle class Americans identifying with a conservative Republican. If too many Americans look at her and think "gee, she is more like me than either of those two guys on the Democratic ticket, the Democrats lose the middle class, and like "Reagan Democrats", many will never return to the fold.

So the hunt was on. The media dispatched a legion of reporters to Alaska to dig up dirt on her, which failed. They tried to attack her on Bristol's pregnancy, but that didn't work, because so many middle class families go through the same exact thing. Then they started to focus on her inexperience, pointing out her lack of understanding of current events in Djibouti, but that didn't work either because most of Americans don't even know Djibouti exists, much less what their current diplomatic standing with the United States is and whether or not they offer safe haven to terrorists. Finally they focused on the cost of her wardrobe. "How much like you can someone wearing five hundred dollar shoes be?" was the unspoken question they were offering.

The election is over. Sarah Palin is not in the Vice President's residence on the Naval Observatory grounds. Rather than face into the background, Sarah and Bristol instead used the campaign to leapfrog into the world of celebrity status. Sarah got a gig on Fox News, which in itself is fine, but then she does her reality show "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Not the action of someone with Presidential aspirations. If getting on reality TV is a prerequisite for being President these days, we are in trouble. Does anyone else cringe at the thought of President Snooki?

Bristol goes on Dancing with the Stars and goes all the way to the finals. Good for her. Apparently, the stars don't have to glitter all that much to get on DWTS. What exactly qualified her as a star? Her inability to keep her knees together when Levi came calling? Somehow I don't think that is enough. I mean sure, she is cute. But should she, someone who displayed some problems with living up to the moral standards that the family claimed to stand for be on national TV shaking what her momma gave her? There were people saying she dressed, acted and danced like a whore. Thankfully my exposure was limited, but that didn't stop the liberals at school from throwing it in my face.

I choose not to defend them. I choose to defend ideas rather than people. Sadly, liberals will use the flaws of individuals to discredit ideas. The idea could date back to Adam Smith or Alexis deTocqueville, but if it is held by Sarah Palin, the fact that she believes it renders the idea as something that is not worthy of consideration.

This is the way the left operates. Destroy the people, because they are easier to destroy than ideas. I bought into Sarah Palin during the election. I wasn't a booster, but I thought she was just what McCain's anemic campaign needed. It was just what an anemic Republican Party needed. now, the Palins are just wannabe celebrities. Enjoy the glitter girls.

Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 6): A "recovered" liberal ...

NOTE: This is the final pre-written post on this string of posts. As I mentioned before, I will, from time to time revisit this topic thread. Hopefully, 2011 is a year of productive and happy blogging.

I sometimes describe myself as a recovered liberal. I first became politically aware back in the seventh grade. I remember the election of 1980 quite well. I remember going to the library on the bus after school and hearing people talking about the election. I said to one of the gentlemen, a Reagan supporter, something to the effect of 'Ronnie ray-gun will only get us into a war.'. The gentleman, an older gent by my recollection (of course when you are 12 anyone above their teens is "old"), said to me, "we have had four years of the clown, it is time for the cowboy."

I started attending church and going to youth group a few years later, and I remember listening to talk shows on the Christian radio station. As I listened, I heard a show featuring an interview with a guy by the name of Lindsey Williams who was exposing what he called "the energy non-crisis". He talked at length about "one world governments" and "the illuminati". He also referenced the then-current president of the United States, Ronald Reagan as being swayed by these secret groups. I made the assumption that Republicans were bad, and democrats were good. After all, people were starving around the world, and Republicans were in charge, didn't that make the fame in Ethiopia Reagan's fault? Working off of partial information and wild assumptions, I became a liberal. This lasted until my senior year in high school and that is when things began to change.

My senior year in high school, I had an amazing experience. I had the opportunity to go on a trip with a group of students to Washington DC as part of a program put on by the Close Up foundation. While we were there, we saw all of the sites and had educational programs. During our evening group discussion sessions, there were two liberals in the room, myself, and a young lady from Iowa. We argued our convictions with courage and passion, but by the end of the week, I was starting to question my beliefs.

Because I believed I lacked opportunities, I left to join the Navy right after high school ended. No one in my family had ever gone to college, and because we were barely making ends meet and couldn't afford the fees, I never took the SAT or ACT test. We couldn't afford college anyways, so why even try?

While I was in the Navy, I discovered many things. They say that boot camp makes or breaks you, well in my case it made me. I came out of boot camp far more confident than I went in. After boot camp, I went to Naval Air Station Memphis to attend my training school. While I was there, I spent a lot of time in a place called the Armed Forces Center, which was run by missionaries who were reaching out to military personnel on the base. In my time spent there, I came under the tutelage of two older military members who volunteered at the center. They taught me many things about constitutional government, patriotism and the founding of the United States. The more I learned, the more I realized that my previous beliefs were wrong, and by the end of my time in Memphis, I had abandoned them, but I didn't quite embrace conservatism yet.

As I had opportunity to travel the world and learn about the world and our own nation, I grew more and more conservative in my ideas. I came to realize that freedom from oppression and tyranny made all the difference in people's lives and lifestyles. I also learned that freedom from oppression and tyranny is more than being free from outside nations, but it encompasses being free within the borders of your own nation from excessive government intervention and interference in your life.

By the time I left the navy, I was a rock sold conservative. I based my convictions on my Christian beliefs, my observations of the world, and the writings of philosophers who believed in freedom and basic human rights. In the end, isn't that all you need?