October 17, 2003

Hey, We're Back! Yeah, the forces of Dr. Pepper TRIED to shut us down by causing problems to our blog server, but WE SHOWED THEM!  And to celebrate, I'll be making Ketchup Cake!.  And throwing out the Pineapple Parfait cake that is still in my cake holder (I should have tossed in long ago, but it scares me). Also, if you followed my instructions and checked back for updates, you get a dime.  To collect your dime, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to this blog.  Thank you. 5:47:22 PM

Marrriage Cops: To Serve and Protect Marriages As our hero and role model TBOGG reminded us (by pointing us to Marriage Protection Comic), it's Marriage Protection Week.  And so we, along with President Bush, wish to remind everyone in a marriage to use protection. No, actually we want to discuss the origins of this new national holiday and explore its rituals and customs. Marriage Protection Week began when President Bush declared that this week we would all protect marriage; marriage was defined as "a union between a man and a woman", meaning intercourse.  Several religious groups, including the National Religious Broadcasters, and the Southern Baptists' Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission are sponsoring the week ("Guests of Marriage Protection Week stay at the luxurious Focus on the Family").  The first question you're probably asking yourself is "A week to protect marriage from what?  Adultery?  Spousal abuse?  Poverty? Immaturity?  Toilet seat conflicts?"  Well, not really.  The week is for protecting marriage from homosexuals who want to get married.  Because if THEY get married, then it devalues everybody else's marriage, since marriage won't be a cool, exclusionary club anymore.  Here, listen to World Net Daily's Jane Chastain (Marriage Protection Proclamation – What's Missing) : President Bush issued a proclamation making this "Marriage Protection Week," stating that "marriage is a union between a man and a woman." That is a worthy goal. However, it is impossible to protect traditional marriage while supporting "domestic partnerships" pushed by homosexual activists. The U.S. Treasury has the responsibility for minting our coins and printing our money. What if Congress, the various federal agencies and our states suddenly decide to recognize counterfeit money as legal tender?  It would undermine the nation's monetary system and throw our economy into chaos. That is exactly what is happening with traditional marriage.  It is being undermined by domestic partnership laws created by state and local governments and has been further eroded by acts of Congress and regulations issued by various federal officials and agencies. And how do these "counterfeit marriages" undermine our REAL marriage? For many years, our federal, state and local governments recognized the obvious: It costs money to raise children. By legalizing unions between a man and a woman, the government was able to put a "hedge of protection" around traditional marriage and to give the partners in these unions certain rights that went along with their responsibilities to the family unit. Homosexual-rights activists want to change the definition of marriage from a union between one man and one woman to a union between any two or more people living together in a "committed" relationship. That could apply to almost anything from a couple of roommates to a college basketball team. Are you beginning to see the problem? If everyone is allowed inside the hedge, than the hedge, for all practical purposes, ceases to exist. If I read Jane correctly, she's saying, "It costs money to raise children, and so the government gives tax breaks to married people.  But if we let homosexuals get married, then EVERYBODY gets tax breaks, and there aren't enough people paying full taxes to subsidize MY family."  Not exactly a noble sentiment, but at least she's honest.   But let's hear from Focus on the Family's Maggie Gallagher on Why is Same-Sex 'Marriage' a Threat? Pro-family groups have declared this Marriage Protection Week. Author Maggie Gallagher shares how you can respond to those who only shrug at the thought of same-sex "marriage."  So courts are going to impose "gay marriage" on you, your family and your country?  So what?  What's "normal marriage," and how can "same-sex marriage" threaten it? Well, here's one thought: Marriage is the way every single known human society tries to create ties between mothers and fathers so firm that a child's heart can rely on them.  Marriage is the place where we encourage people to have children, because we know society needs babies to survive, and because we know those babies need and deserve mothers and fathers.  When marriage fails, children suffer, communities are plagued by different social problems and, ultimately, a whole civilization can be put at risk. Okay, I buy this.  In fact, I think it's a valid reason FOR homosexual marriages: so homosexual couples can create firm ties with their children, and have the government recognize that these children do indeed have two parents.  But apparently that wasn't Maggie's point: With "same-sex marriage," your government and your laws will be actively committed to the very opposite of the marriage idea. They will be teaching your children and your neighbors and your community that children don't need mothers and fathers after all. That it's perfectly OK for adults to deliberately create motherless or fatherless families because, 'Hey, that's what the adults want,' and what the adults want is what matters.  Government will be teaching this new unisex marriage idea to your child in a public school; in teen pregnancy prevention and abstinence education and in every public image of marriage — this new idea that children don't need mothers and fathers, after all, is going to be taught. At a time when 25 million children are fatherless, it is not kind — it is callous to the extreme — to be rewriting our most basic marriage laws to suit the desires of adults. So, Maggie is saying that if Heather legally has two mommies, then the government will be teaching my hypothetical child (I think I'll call her Becky) and my neighbors that children don't need a parent of each gender, and so Becky and my neighbors will all immediately become unwed mothers, even the homosexual ones, who COULD get married now.  I guess it could happen with the neighbors, but I think Maggie is giving me and Becky too little credit -- my child will get her basic values, including those regarding marriage and child-rearing, from me and MTV, not from her teen abstinence class.  Seeing  a different kind of family relationship sanctioned by the goverment isn't going to make her suddenly go out and have fatherless babies; especially because if I've told Becky once, I've told her a thousand times, "Just because Mary and Susan Jones are having a baby, it doesn't mean THAT you can have one."  But Maggie's argument does suggest an interesting point: what if Becky sees that Mr. and Mrs. Adams down the block don't have ANY children, and learns that the government recognizes THEIR union as legal -- won't that give her the idea that it's perfectly okay for adults to deliberately create childless families because, 'Hey, that's what the adults want,' and what the adults want is what matters?  And then Becky will never reproduce, our whole society will be at risk, and eventually cats will inherit the Earth?  So, if government is prohibiting homosexual marriages just to keep Becky from getting any ideas that might discourage her from having the babies which society needs to survive, then we have to also refuse to recognize unions which are not fruitful, for whatever reason. Maybe it would just be easier to offer Maggie Gallagher some help with her marriage, so her hypothetical children will have such strong pro-traditional marriage values that they'll quit being tempted into deviency by government regulations and that gay couple down the block. To help in this endeavor, we turn to Queer Eye for the Straight Couple, a program of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund: "Same-sex couples face all of the same challenges and joys that heterosexual couples do - but we're left navigating through them without the protections marriage provides," said Lambda Legal's Michael Adams. "We've brought together some fantastic lesbian and gay couples who are kind enough to lend their relationship experience to their heterosexual peers."  For instance, they have Carolyn Conrad and Kathleen Peterson, who have been together eight years and were the first couple to enter a civil union in Vermont.  They are here offering advice to a Jersey City, N.J., man who worried his romance was losing its spark after three years. "It is the little things that make the difference," Conrad said. "I'm a Diet Coke fiend, and if I'm working late, KP (Peterson) will often drop by with an ice cold jumbo sized one for me. It never fails to make my heart beat a little faster."  You know, if somebody would bring me by a large Diet Pepsi when I was working late, I too would feel sparks.  Good advice, Carolyn. But not everybody agrees. Genevieve Wood of the conservative Family Research Council coalition said she laughed after learning of "Queer Eye for the Straight Couple." "It's almost hard to take it seriously, considering that the majority of homosexual couples don't stay together more than a year and half," she said. "It's ludicrous that they would even suggest that two men or two women could have advice for a married man and woman."  Well, since most couples I know (defined as: a man and a woman who've been dating for a while who get to the point where the woman asks the man where their relationship is going; and he says he thinks they should just enjoy where their relationship is right now; and she says, "So, where are we?"; and he says, "We're, you know, enjoying being together"; and she says, "Then we're an exclusive couple?"; and he says, "Well, we're a COUPLE") don't stay together for more than two months (some don't even make it through the entire "couple" discussion), so I think the homosexuals are doing okay.  And anyway, isn't the main purpose of marriage to encourage people to stay together, so if Mrs. Wood is so concerned about the briefness of homosexual relationships, then maybe she should demand that the government allow them to marry.  But in any case, the advice about the Diet cola drinks is good, no matter who it came from. And personally, I'm with Gary Aldritch, who says that maybe everybody should stop devoting so much energy to trying to arrange it so that if the court rules in favor of gay unions, we can get the President to ammend the Constitution to prohibit it; and more energy on improving existing marriages (Limited Energies): But even if a person’s sole issue is the preservation of the institution of marriage, there are several areas that can be addressed that have nothing to do with gay unions.  For example, the national divorce rate is over 50%, and statistics reveal that more than 60% of all divorces filed are filed by women. If one follows the progress of the feminist movement I believe they can find the roots of injury to the institution of marriage planted deep in the politics of the gay and lesbian leadership of the various women's rights organizations, especially the National Organization of Women. As a result of broken homes, children are being raised in fatherless environments, causing a new wave of crime, and poverty. Um, I don't think I agree with THIS part of Gary's message, which seems to be that since 60% of divorces are instituted by women, it's probably because gays and lesbians have infiltrated feminist organizations and have used their leadership positions to encourage women to burn their bras and to divorce their innocent husbands, as part of some sinister plan to . . . well, break up marriages, I guess. But let's see Gary's plan for preserving the institution of marriage: If as a culture we wanted to use precious time, resources, donor dollars and finite political capitol to get a single issue before presidential candidates, would we choose homosexual activity and activism, or would we choose ways that the institution of marriage can be strengthened, such as tax advantages for those who struggle to keep their marriages together?   So, the solution is simple: pay women to stay with their husbands.  Works for me.  Well, as long as the money isn't coming FROM me -- I need all of my funds to raise little Becky.  But, in honor of Marriage Protection Week, I promise not to sleep with anyone's husband, encourage my neighbors to have children out of wedlock, or marry any college basketball teams.  I hope President Bush appreciates my efforts. 7:33:13 AM

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A Decent Lifestyle? Bill O'Reilly uses his latest Talking Points Bulletin (Whose Money is it Anyway?)  to voice his disapproval for Joe Lieberman's plan to raise taxes for those making more than $250,000 a year.  Now only two percent of us earn that kind of money. And if elected president, Senator Lieberman will get to know us very well. Whoa, sounds like a threat to me!  I volunteer the remaining 98% of us to protect President Lieberman from Bill and his gang of vicious rich people. Anyway, what I really wanted to comment on was this portion of Bill's remarks: Under Lieberman's tax plan, an American living in New York City and earning $250,000 would pay 58 percent of his income in combined taxes. That means more than $145,000 be taken out of his or her paycheck. Of course, that doesn't count property taxes, sales taxes, energy taxes, tolls and all the rest. So $250,000 suddenly will not afford you a decent lifestyle in New York City. So, you'd have $105,000 after federal taxes.  Even if you have to pay tolls and sales taxes and such, like everybody else, to me that still sounds like enough money on which to live decently.  Even in New York City.  I know people in NYC who are trying to get by on a third of that -- BEFORE federal taxes.  Of course, they don't have lifestyles, they just have lives, so that's probably how they do it. You know, for somebody who grew up in the poverty-stricken streets of the Westbury section of Levittown, Bill sure seems to be out of touch with how decent people live, and how little money they actually have to do it with.  I'm starting to wonder who he's REALLY looking out for with his "no more taxes on poverty-stricken rich people" remarks. 12:26:14 AM