If I were in charge, what I’d do with
“The Sacred Institution Upon Which This Country Is Based”
I started out with a different title : Hypocritical Sanctimony meets Sanctimonious Hypocrisy.
Thinking that citizens are better served by an insistence that
gay marriage deserves more concern right now than any other national concern, The Republican Re-Election Complex insults us.
In a naively sober sanctimony, that gang – pretending to deep and profound thoughts – declares that we absolutely
must defend that “sacred institution upon which this country is based.”
Really?
Today I stumbled across a powerful writing from Cheryl Seal at Democrats.com:
The Real Assault on American Marriage: 10 Top Ways Bush Republicans
Have Undermined Marriage
Thank you Cheryl. Let me agree in writing:
1. I’d worry more about those couples already married than about
those who want to get married. I’d be concerned and working toward seeing that they kept their jobs or, if unemployed,
found good ones upon which they could economically stabilize their marriage.
2. I’d work intensely to stabilize marriage by doing everything
in my and my administration’s power to achieve – not “work toward” – health coverage for every
member of every family and every member-to-be of every family-to-be.
3. I’d work for increasing family incomes with minimum wage increases
and expanding worker benefits. I wouldn’t stand there like a dope and call McDonald’s jobs “manufacturing
jobs” and pretend that corporate tax cuts have created meaningful long term income opportunities for that sector of
society where the largest number of marriages already exists.
4. I’d understand that the sacred institution of marriage is
placed more at risk when it attempts to survive with inadequate housing, bottom-line cheapskate and/or corporate slumlords,
and home ownership as an impossible dream.
5. I’d strengthen marriage by dropping the swagger and the “bring
it on” rhetoric that sounds like it spilled from the urinal in a junior high boys’ locker room. I’d tell
all those macho image-makers and self-serving patriarchal philosophers that marriage is incomplete without intellectual, spiritual
and moral equality. I’d insist that earned income is a function of ability and has absolutely nothing to do with gender.
6. I’d take a long look and seek answers from those who truly
know about failed marriages among our minority populations and stop thinking that unfettered capitalism includes within its
framework some sort of naturally-occurring equal opportunity for every citizen to succeed in some idealized cookie-cutter
manner.
7. I’d tell the neocons to shut the f*** up and give priority
to our married soldiers and their spouses. I would not see world politics and economy as a giant game of RISK with our quite
human single and married military population as mere wooden markers on a map. I would certainly not let the neocons write
out political and military checks that the children in our families – built on our sacred insititution of marriage –
will have to cash.
8. I’d focus on those military families and single soldiers in
another significant way – I’d care about what happens when they come home and are no longer wooden markers on
a map. I’d make sure that the VA is truly an effective and functioning VA – a boon to our society of veterans
and something for which we as a nation can all be proud and not suspicious. I’d see to it that families and the marriages
that build them are not hampered by a need for food stamps and other welfare.
9. I’d sustain our sacred institution by getting out of the business
of trying to control one gender’s right to chose. If I were a truly moral and ethical president, I would trust our processes
of education and scientific study and encourage responsibility around human sexuality as a national concern and effort rather
than a divisive argument based on polarized personal moralities.
10. I’d sustain and advocate for the sacredness of our marriage
institution by educating and protecting our precious national resource of youth. Rather than prance around sounding pious
and sober about gay couples, I’d march around obsessed with doing something about the factors that do greater harm to
our families and their young members. I’d work to encourage the nation to turn on its domestic abusers and family abandoners
in a major way.
In short, as president, if I ever started defining marriage as “the
sacred institution upon which this country is based,” I’d be ready to start encouraging an intervention in all
those things that form the framework for failed marriages, failed families and ruined lives.
I’d stop pretending that the American people believe that banning
gay marriages is the answer to solving the problem.
© Arthur Ruger 2004