Thursday, February 23, 2012
Family Is as Family Does
What fun Republicans have with sapping out the American people on the subject of family and its preservation.Here's ol' Chris Christie ducking gay marriage by vetoing it and urging that the question be settled via popular vote.
Anybody with a brain knows that the rights of minorities need to be protected from what John Stuart Mill referred to as "the tyranny of the majority" in his essay On Liberty. The majority often lags behind on minority issues; basic human rights shouldn't be left to a popular vote.
But there old Chris stands as the waist band of his pants steadily climbs toward his man-titties, lecturing people on civil rights and how best to handle gays' cheeky insistence on their desire to marry.
Mostly, family deserves its name by its members showing up to perform its basic tasks: to ensure basic survival, to nurture growth and development, to protect and comfort during times of decline.
My brother, who does not speak to me "because of the lifestyle thing," congratulated himself for having sired four sons to Carry On the Family Name, (Smith is in such danger of decline), decried the poor's dependence on government, and treated our mother as his own personal First National Bank through threats, intimidation, and sheer physical size.
My spouse and I cared for my mother as she entered the frightening world of Alzheimer's disease, and as she lay dying from its complications, my spouse held her hand and sang to her while I tried --unsuccessfully-- to get to her side. Without her help we could not have coordinated her care and made it possible for her to spend her last years at home, surrounded by affection and reassured by love.
Social conservatives of either party want you to think that the Gay Conspiracy exists to undermine the family. In truth, gays and lesbians simply want you to understand that they perform the functions of family, too. Since many gays and lesbians remain closeted in order to duck the hate crimes they fear on a regular basis, their participation in family assumes distorted images. The maiden aunt. The bachelor nephew who "refuses to grow up."In truth, these Republicans don't care a fig for the family. They use social issues to flog fear into the little people in order to encourage them to vote against their real interests: economic opportunity, the preservation of the planet, and
the access to the various types of care needed to keep families of all descriptions healthy, productive, fulfilled.How cruel it has been in this political season to listen to the self-righteous whine of the Republican candidates as they attempt to out-perform one another in bigotry and blindness. To note their silence on real family issues--the preservation of home in the foreclosure-pocked economic meltdown, the lack of extension of unemployment benefits in the face of eliminated jobs.
What scares me about the upcoming election is the mad proliferation of hate-ads funded by anonymous PACs to perpetuate this climate of ignorance. We can laugh at Rick Santorum's insistence that Satan is trying to overtake America, but a barrage of ads imparting this message in the fall, should the worst really occur, may cloud the minds of an increasingly frightened tyrannical majority.
# posted by Lulu Maude @ 10:01 AM 
