e-Claire

Just Say No "I do"

Marriage, the concept and the actuality, is very important to the Right. All well and good -- they should only have wonderful, happy marriages. But now they are determining to spread the meme. Our President proposes to spend $1.5 billion of our/my money on commercials nagging people to marry, and providing Religious "Counseling" to high-school students, "cohabiting couples," and "couples having children out of wedlock." What's next -- mandatory return to the original meaning of "bastard" ?!?! Included in this proposal is something called "community marriage" wherein longtime married couples "council" those not doing so well or just engaged. No pitfalls there, having untrained, people "counsel." Worked so well with the WTC survivor families. [ /sarcasm] The other group who will be "counseling" the unmarried will be the clergy who, let's face it, have rather a stake in getting people to follow their rules. Which is as it should be -- but on a voluntary basis. So here you have it. $1.5 billion of my/our money will be going to ad agencies [Here is your brain. Here is your brain married.], churches [NB: not synagogues, not [godfabid] mosques, not pagodas nor tabernacles nor any other kind of dirge factory -- "churches"], and untrained amateurs to make convince people to marry. -- Most people are unaware that counseling, and its brother activity, therapy, take a great deal of training -- about 2-3 years of grad school and 3,000 hours of supervised, usually unpaid, work to achieve the lowest level of the profession. A non-professional is completely unaware when they are inserting their own issues and biases into the process, and that's not "counseling," that's meddling. [Sure there are some morons apologists in the crowd: show me a profession that doesn't have its own muster of morons.] -- Back we go to the state/church thang: there is not one incarnation of organized religious belief with which I do not have serious differences. I object to my money being taken from me by force of law and distributed to any one or all of them. -- This is social engineering at its least subtle and most grievous. It is the moralizing finger of the "should" being shaken at the unempowered. -- I agree and acknowledge that the very best thing for any child is a stable, consistent, and reliable family. A family that has planned, prepared, and chosen to raise this child, fully aware of the depth of the commitment. There is more than one way to skin that cat. . . Oh, and

Programs that counsel gay couples would be ineligible because of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as being "between one man and one woman."

There's Xian conditional love and charity at work.

1. I’m with you all the way on this.  I tend to be conservative because I dislike the government getting involved with my life any more than it has to (i.e. fine institutions of law, defense, etc.), but this is way too much meddling for my taste (and money).  I don’t buy the holistic approach to marriage being proposed here, even if I do acknowledge that marriage hasn’t been so successful with recent generations, especially here in California.  I grew up with all friends of divorced families, considering myself lucky, until my parents promptly divorced once I got to college.  The answer to this problem is not in the money that will be spent on this new “Marriage Plan” but simply in people’s conceptions/misconceptions of love.  I don’t give a damn about tradition, I’m more concerned about a real-deal healthy relationship, so although I’m heterosexual, I don’t disparage homosexuals of finding what heterosexuals are looking for too.

   Posted by Zachariah  on  01/16/04  at  07:18 AM

2. Are you talking about the King James Version and common use of the word “bastard” or the original Biblical Hebrew, “mamzer”?  Quite different.

   There is no Biblical (Old Testament) phrase for a child born out of wedlock.  A Biblical “bastard” is a child born to an adulterous or incestuous union.  A child born out of wedlock would be the responsibility of the mother who didn’t take the pains to secure a wedding contract before engaging in intercourse.

   My experience is that most professional “counsellors” are mostly inept moral relativists who don’t see anything especially wrong with adultery or pre-marital sex, either.  To them, they simply cannot come up with a consistent argument why two consenting adult siblings shouldn’t “float their boat” by incest if that’s what pleases them.  Indeed, the more grad school, the less sensitivity to right and wrong.

   Want to spend the $1.5 billion intelligently?  Bribe families to trash their TVs which spew poisonous values.  It’s not guns that need kid-proof safeties, it’s prime-time television. 

   Society would benefit much by getting people to treat getting married like planning a business venture intended to last 60 years.  Romance and “chemistry” are no basis for a marriage that lasts.

   I agree with you about taxes being seized assets and forced distribution of wealth.

   Frankly, gov’t should get out of the school business altogether.  I’ve got 6 kids, 5 of them in private religious school (ain’t no way I’m sending them to public school in urban Los Angeles!) and while I don’t mind contributing _somewhat_ to the public welfare, I’d love to get a reasonable percentage of my taxes back in the way of vouchers so I can educate my kids the way I want to and not the way the ACLU and some amoral PhD sees fit.

   “Gay marriage” is like “kosher pork”.  Some things just aren’t possible.

   Make a legal contract for whatever you want to do between consenting adults and it’s fine.  Don’t say something fulfills the Biblical definition of “marriage” when it doesn’t.

   The gov’t should get out of the marriage business, too.  All marriage documents ought to become civil contracts.  If a separate religious ceremony is desired, have it at the church/synagogue/whatever of your choosing.

   Back in Jesus’ time, wedding contracts were contracts, not state documents. 

   And not all “shoulds” are bad.

   Posted by Aaron's Rantblog  on  01/20/04  at  03:59 PM

3. My experience is that most professional “counsellors” are mostly inept moral relativists...
   I’m sorry you’ve had such bad experiences with counselors.  It doesn’t require a lack of morals to withhold judgment, or keep from imposing the therapist’s views on the client without allowing the client the time and place to get back in touch with their own.  But then we arrive back at the difference between “counselors” and “therapists.”

   Bribe families to trash their TVs ...
   heh.  good point.  Movies too?  Howz about raappp muzakk ?!?  I’ve used a few of those CDs for skeet practice.

   treat getting married like planning a business venture intended to last 60 years.
   Agreed. That is what it is—with the end product being useful, contributing, responsible kidz.

   gov’t should get out of the school business altogether.
   Hear!  Hear!

   The gov’t should get out of the marriage business, too.  All marriage documents ought to become civil contracts.  If a separate religious ceremony is desired, have it at the church/synagogue/whatever of your choosing.
   Now *here’s* the best idea I’ve heard all week.  I think much of the *controversy* in this area is precisely the confusion of civil and religious entities.  Having a “kosher gay marriage” may well be an impossibility.  Having a way in which gay people are able to subscribe to a life-contract with one another in a legal, state defined entity would go a long way toward incorporating good decent gay people into the rest of society.  Sure—nut buckets [of all sorts] will still be, well, nut buckets.  But it’s like making drinking beer illegal.  Once someone has crossed that line, it takes a lot more vigilance to police one’s self from crossing it again.

   shoulds
   A *should * is someone else’s idea.  *I want to/ I will / I think it is right to* demonstrates that it is one’s own idea and is, therefore, less likely to be controverted. Wherever you go, there *you* are—always looking at you.  *Someone else* is easily avoided.  To my mind, that makes a *should* a far less useful or reliable thing.  Sort of a stop-gap measure.

   Posted by Claire  on  01/21/04  at  09:52 AM

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