Well, I bit the bullet. I canceled my Target card.
I had been waffling over this decision for days. I am angry enough at Target -- for putting empty political sentiment over public safety -- that I knew I wouldn't shop there. The issue wasn't whether Target was going to get any more of my money; they weren't. So the question of the card itself remained: would Target reverse itself, thereby making it a hassle to reestablish the card? Would it hurt my credit to close it, especially if I turned around and opened it again? If I stopped spending money at Target but kept the card open, would Target even notice?
But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got at Target: for making this decision in the first place; for making me feel like a crazy person because no one else seems to see that for the vast majority of the boycotters, this isn't about bigotry but about safety, and the refusal to participate in a political agenda that is empirically bananas; for making me devote so much mental real estate to this.
I came to the conclusion that Target made their very public stand, and there's no way they will have the intestinal fortitude to reverse themselves. The LGBTQ+-whatever lobby is too loud and vindictive, and Target has a long history of pandering to it. Unless scores of little girls are sexually assaulted inside Target store bathrooms, they will stand by their bad move, even in the face of falling share value and millions of lost customers.
So I was 75% of the way to the decision to close it when something else occurred to me: elsewhere in the world, even today, Christians martyrs are being beheaded for their refusal to back down from their faith. And here I am, worrying about the inconvenience of closing this credit card.
Decision made.
While I was making dinner for my family last night, I called customer service and got a supervisor on the phone. I told her I wanted to close my account. This conversation (more or less verbatim), ensued:
CSR: I see you've been a cardholder for over three years. Can I ask you why you're closing your account now?
Me: I think your bathroom policy stinks. [SO ELOQUENT, Colleen. 🙄]
CSR: Okay. Just a second while I make a note of your concerns.
She sounded like a) she'd been hearing that a lot recently -- although possibly most people put it better? -- and b) she'd secretly like to agree.
So it's done. I am no longer a Target customer.
Goodbye, Dollar Spot. I think I'll miss you the most.
Showing posts with label current events. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current events. Show all posts
03 May 2016
20 April 2016
You guys, what are we going to do?
I live in Virginia, where it is now been determined by a federal court that rules requiring schoolchildren to use the bathroom that corresponds to their biological sex are discriminatory. This is bound to go nationwide, and fast.
Also this week, Target has released a statement that customers can now use whichever bathroom they please, as well. Because, as the statement says, "Everyone deserves to feel like they belong."
... Except for me, Target, and the millions of people like me. We get to feel uncomfortable in the bathroom because there's a dude in there. And he doesn't have to look like a lady, he just has to tell security, should anyone have the cojones to alert security, that he feels like a lady. Because as we also know, no pervert would ever take advantage of the culture of fear surrounding this issue and follow a little girl into a public restroom. Perverts have the utmost respect for the transgendered and would never appropriate their gender dysphoria for their own nefarious purposes. That's a thing that we know... Right?
I do whatever is humanly possible to avoid public restrooms already, but this is enough to make me hibernate in my own home. I don't even have a high school-aged girl (yet), but the idea that high school-aged boys would be able to use her bathroom and locker room is horrifying to me. If my plan weren't already to home-school, it would have to be now.
I have quite a bit of sympathy for the mentally ill -- and make no mistake, the "transgendered" are absolutely mentally ill -- but this is not the way to help them. When schools provide single-occupant restrooms for the use of the mentally ill, gender non-conforming student, the student inevitably throws around words like "stigmatizing" and "otherizing." (Never mind that if I had been offered a single-occupancy restroom option in high school, I'd have been thrilled.) The most helpful thing we can do for these people is to tell them that they are not above the rules that everyone has lived by since the dawn of public restrooms.
Strike that: the most helpful thing we could do is to get these people some real psychological care. A refusal to treat mental illness as something to be celebrated is a close second.
We are enabling a vanishingly small and deeply confused super-minority to dictate the safety of every little girl in this country. And I'm not sorry about my feeling that I would rather see every single transgendered individual in this country get his feelings hurt than see even one little girl get raped by a pervert who takes advantage of this madness and follows her into a restroom in full view of people who would stop him but are scared to be called a bigot.
Also this week, Target has released a statement that customers can now use whichever bathroom they please, as well. Because, as the statement says, "Everyone deserves to feel like they belong."
... Except for me, Target, and the millions of people like me. We get to feel uncomfortable in the bathroom because there's a dude in there. And he doesn't have to look like a lady, he just has to tell security, should anyone have the cojones to alert security, that he feels like a lady. Because as we also know, no pervert would ever take advantage of the culture of fear surrounding this issue and follow a little girl into a public restroom. Perverts have the utmost respect for the transgendered and would never appropriate their gender dysphoria for their own nefarious purposes. That's a thing that we know... Right?
I do whatever is humanly possible to avoid public restrooms already, but this is enough to make me hibernate in my own home. I don't even have a high school-aged girl (yet), but the idea that high school-aged boys would be able to use her bathroom and locker room is horrifying to me. If my plan weren't already to home-school, it would have to be now.
I have quite a bit of sympathy for the mentally ill -- and make no mistake, the "transgendered" are absolutely mentally ill -- but this is not the way to help them. When schools provide single-occupant restrooms for the use of the mentally ill, gender non-conforming student, the student inevitably throws around words like "stigmatizing" and "otherizing." (Never mind that if I had been offered a single-occupancy restroom option in high school, I'd have been thrilled.) The most helpful thing we can do for these people is to tell them that they are not above the rules that everyone has lived by since the dawn of public restrooms.
Strike that: the most helpful thing we could do is to get these people some real psychological care. A refusal to treat mental illness as something to be celebrated is a close second.
We are enabling a vanishingly small and deeply confused super-minority to dictate the safety of every little girl in this country. And I'm not sorry about my feeling that I would rather see every single transgendered individual in this country get his feelings hurt than see even one little girl get raped by a pervert who takes advantage of this madness and follows her into a restroom in full view of people who would stop him but are scared to be called a bigot.
12 April 2016
#NeverTrump #NeverHillary #NeverGettingOutOfThisOne
I never want to live through a presidential primary like this one ever again.
I've written before about Trump and the horror he instills in me. I think he's a moral black hole and one of the worst things ever to come out of American politics. I will never, ever vote for him. And that makes me different than many other conservatives (and Catholics) who, while opposed to Trump, will still vote for the man over Hillary.
I. Just. Can't.
But what about things like international relations?
I was less-than-impressed with Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. She laundered bribes from unfriendly countries through the Clinton Foundation, she abandoned our people in Benghazi when they were under attack and then lied to the families about what happened and why. She set up a sketchy home-brew email server in her bathroom which was vulnerable to hacking and ought to have been federally indicted long ago. She was basically a disaster.
Here's the thing, though: I'm still pretty sure that Donald Trump, Most Powerful Man in the World, has the potential to be significantly worse.
Leave aside for the moment that he insisted from the debate stage that we intended to order the military to commit war crimes by targeting the innocent family members of terrorists. Leave aside his thinnest-ever skin. He's also dangerously susceptible to flattery, as proven by his little mutual-admiration society with Vladimir Putin. He says whatever flits through his head, with a special emphasis on being insulting and gauche. Diplomacy is not likely to be his strong suit, by which I mean: I give his hypothetical presidency three months before we're teetering on the brink of WWIII.
"Nuclear armageddon" is worse than "disaster."
He continually claims that he'll make up for the areas where he is weak -- insofar as he admits that he's less than outstanding at anything -- by "hiring the best people." Have we seen any evidence that he knows what "the best people" look like? His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has been recently arrested for assault on a reporter. His campaign in Colorado was so disorganized that they failed to win a single delegate and are reduced -- "reduced" -- to trying to make hay out of voter suppression, when in fact there was none.
Let's stop trying to place the blame for Trump's ascension on the "establishment," or on the media, or anywhere else it doesn't belong. Trump voters are grown adults with agency, and moral culpability. Voting for a deeply flawed candidate (which is the kindest description I can muster) as a stand-in for waving a middle finger in the face of the GOP, writ large, is childish, morally bankrupt and dangerous.
There's nothing I can do about this but pray. If your state has already voted, there's nothing you can do about this but pray. If your state hasn't yet voted, please don't sit home and hope someone else will get us out of this. I'm not sure if a vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary (although I strongly suspect as much), but either way it is a vote for depravity.
I've written before about Trump and the horror he instills in me. I think he's a moral black hole and one of the worst things ever to come out of American politics. I will never, ever vote for him. And that makes me different than many other conservatives (and Catholics) who, while opposed to Trump, will still vote for the man over Hillary.
I. Just. Can't.
Three peas in a pod, and Melania.
Let's start with some comparisons:
- Hillary Clinton is a brazen, habitual liar. Donald Trump is also a brazen, habitual liar. {Do I need to post links for these things? 'Cause I could, but I don't really think these assertions are in question.}
- Hillary Clinton surrounds herself with thugs and bullies. Donald Trump also surrounds himself with thugs and bullies.
- Hillary Clinton is a rabid pro-abortion advocate. Trump claims to be pro-life, awfully recently and with nothing but lip service; but he still praises Planned Parenthood, says he'd appoint his radically pro-abortion sister to the Supreme Court, and did irreparable damage to the pro-life image just last week by advocating for the punishment of women who have abortions (he's since equally-ineptly walked it back, but I'm pretty sure we've all gotten a peek behind the curtain and seen that, once again, the Trump has no well-thought-out positions).
But what about things like international relations?
I was less-than-impressed with Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. She laundered bribes from unfriendly countries through the Clinton Foundation, she abandoned our people in Benghazi when they were under attack and then lied to the families about what happened and why. She set up a sketchy home-brew email server in her bathroom which was vulnerable to hacking and ought to have been federally indicted long ago. She was basically a disaster.
Here's the thing, though: I'm still pretty sure that Donald Trump, Most Powerful Man in the World, has the potential to be significantly worse.
Leave aside for the moment that he insisted from the debate stage that we intended to order the military to commit war crimes by targeting the innocent family members of terrorists. Leave aside his thinnest-ever skin. He's also dangerously susceptible to flattery, as proven by his little mutual-admiration society with Vladimir Putin. He says whatever flits through his head, with a special emphasis on being insulting and gauche. Diplomacy is not likely to be his strong suit, by which I mean: I give his hypothetical presidency three months before we're teetering on the brink of WWIII.
"Nuclear armageddon" is worse than "disaster."
He continually claims that he'll make up for the areas where he is weak -- insofar as he admits that he's less than outstanding at anything -- by "hiring the best people." Have we seen any evidence that he knows what "the best people" look like? His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has been recently arrested for assault on a reporter. His campaign in Colorado was so disorganized that they failed to win a single delegate and are reduced -- "reduced" -- to trying to make hay out of voter suppression, when in fact there was none.
Let's stop trying to place the blame for Trump's ascension on the "establishment," or on the media, or anywhere else it doesn't belong. Trump voters are grown adults with agency, and moral culpability. Voting for a deeply flawed candidate (which is the kindest description I can muster) as a stand-in for waving a middle finger in the face of the GOP, writ large, is childish, morally bankrupt and dangerous.
There's nothing I can do about this but pray. If your state has already voted, there's nothing you can do about this but pray. If your state hasn't yet voted, please don't sit home and hope someone else will get us out of this. I'm not sure if a vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary (although I strongly suspect as much), but either way it is a vote for depravity.
03 March 2016
Donald Trump: Front-Runner
I started to write a whole post about screen time and how we handle it, but then I realized that a) it was boring, b) we don't do anything revolutionary (basically we're too loose about it until we realize everyone's miserable, and then we clamp down), and c) what I really needed to get off my chest was Trump.
Actually I'd like to get his giant, lying, wannabe-dictatorial, buffoon butt off American's chest.
In case you need that translated for you: I'm not a fan.
In fact, his entire candidacy is one of those phenomena where I get to wondering if there are a bunch of mentally ill people running around. That sounds overly harsh, I know, but do you know what I mean? Sometimes you look at a set of facts, and come to what seems to you to be an unassailable conclusion; and then you talk to someone who's looked at the exact same set of facts and come to the opposite conclusion, and you can't even understand them. This isn't a common turn of events for me; I usually can see both sides of an argument, even if I think the people on the other side are wrong. There are issues on which intelligent people can disagree, obviously.
Take, for instance, abortion. I am unequivocally 100% against it. Nonetheless, I understand that there exist such justifications that people can support abortion rights and still think they're doing God's work -- people who can't bring themselves to "condemn" some poor girl to a life of parenting before she's ready, and adoption is so hard, or maybe the baby has a profound disability and so abortion is sometimes the least-bad option. They're wrong, of course. This is false compassion which leads to tragic outcomes. But I understand how someone could come to that wrong conclusion.
But I genuinely cannot see how anyone who calls himself a conservative can look at Donald Trump and think, "He's the one!"
He's a lifelong Democrat (which wouldn't be disqualifying, necessarily, if he had a plausible conversion story -- he doesn't beyond "donating tons of money to Democrats was good for business"), a serial adulterer, a misogynist, a thin-skinned bully. He brags that he would sleep with his daughter if she weren't his daughter, which is by any measure gross. He has stated that he would appoint his radically pro-abortion sister to the Supreme Court.
The main thing I can see to commend him to the electorate is his claim that he's a brilliant businessman. But he inherited his money from his father (again, not disqualifying, but it flies in the face of his implication that he's a self-made man), and went on to bankrupt his businesses over and over again through shady and irresponsible borrowing practices. You know the old adage about gambling, "The house always wins"? Well, not if the house is run by Donald Trump. He is lying for no good reason about self-funding his campaign, which he is not.
He waffled on distancing himself from David Duke and the KKK. He makes fun of the disabled.
I could go on (and on and on and on). These are literally only the objections that presented themselves to me off the top of my head. I'm sure if I thought for ten minutes more, I could write the longest blog post in the world about all the reasons that Donald Trump is unfit to be the dogcatcher in a small town, let alone the President of the United States of America.
A lot of people seem to dislike Ted Cruz for reasons I can't quite fathom. He doesn't seem like the type of guy you'd necessarily like to go drinking with, but is that what we need in a president? A lot of other people object to Marco Rubio as "too establishment" -- whatever that means -- and unreliable on immigration. But the truth is I would crawl over broken glass to vote for either man over The Donald, to say nothing of Hillary or Bernie.
If Trump gets the nomination, I will sit this one out. I have never skipped an election before, even when I wasn't happy about my options, but there is no lever I could pull on that day that wouldn't leave me feeling filthy. I won't do it.
At this point, it's looking unlikely that anyone can beat him. All we can do is pray. Please, please pray for the faithful of America, those who haven't yet had a chance to vote, to stand up and do what's right. (I did see something hopeful on that score -- "Regular, weekly church attendance...predicted a statistically significant and substantive opposition to Trump" -- but it's clearly not enough yet.)
Pray on your knees.
Actually I'd like to get his giant, lying, wannabe-dictatorial, buffoon butt off American's chest.
In case you need that translated for you: I'm not a fan.
In fact, his entire candidacy is one of those phenomena where I get to wondering if there are a bunch of mentally ill people running around. That sounds overly harsh, I know, but do you know what I mean? Sometimes you look at a set of facts, and come to what seems to you to be an unassailable conclusion; and then you talk to someone who's looked at the exact same set of facts and come to the opposite conclusion, and you can't even understand them. This isn't a common turn of events for me; I usually can see both sides of an argument, even if I think the people on the other side are wrong. There are issues on which intelligent people can disagree, obviously.
Take, for instance, abortion. I am unequivocally 100% against it. Nonetheless, I understand that there exist such justifications that people can support abortion rights and still think they're doing God's work -- people who can't bring themselves to "condemn" some poor girl to a life of parenting before she's ready, and adoption is so hard, or maybe the baby has a profound disability and so abortion is sometimes the least-bad option. They're wrong, of course. This is false compassion which leads to tragic outcomes. But I understand how someone could come to that wrong conclusion.
But I genuinely cannot see how anyone who calls himself a conservative can look at Donald Trump and think, "He's the one!"
He's a lifelong Democrat (which wouldn't be disqualifying, necessarily, if he had a plausible conversion story -- he doesn't beyond "donating tons of money to Democrats was good for business"), a serial adulterer, a misogynist, a thin-skinned bully. He brags that he would sleep with his daughter if she weren't his daughter, which is by any measure gross. He has stated that he would appoint his radically pro-abortion sister to the Supreme Court.
The main thing I can see to commend him to the electorate is his claim that he's a brilliant businessman. But he inherited his money from his father (again, not disqualifying, but it flies in the face of his implication that he's a self-made man), and went on to bankrupt his businesses over and over again through shady and irresponsible borrowing practices. You know the old adage about gambling, "The house always wins"? Well, not if the house is run by Donald Trump. He is lying for no good reason about self-funding his campaign, which he is not.
He waffled on distancing himself from David Duke and the KKK. He makes fun of the disabled.
I could go on (and on and on and on). These are literally only the objections that presented themselves to me off the top of my head. I'm sure if I thought for ten minutes more, I could write the longest blog post in the world about all the reasons that Donald Trump is unfit to be the dogcatcher in a small town, let alone the President of the United States of America.
A lot of people seem to dislike Ted Cruz for reasons I can't quite fathom. He doesn't seem like the type of guy you'd necessarily like to go drinking with, but is that what we need in a president? A lot of other people object to Marco Rubio as "too establishment" -- whatever that means -- and unreliable on immigration. But the truth is I would crawl over broken glass to vote for either man over The Donald, to say nothing of Hillary or Bernie.
If Trump gets the nomination, I will sit this one out. I have never skipped an election before, even when I wasn't happy about my options, but there is no lever I could pull on that day that wouldn't leave me feeling filthy. I won't do it.
At this point, it's looking unlikely that anyone can beat him. All we can do is pray. Please, please pray for the faithful of America, those who haven't yet had a chance to vote, to stand up and do what's right. (I did see something hopeful on that score -- "Regular, weekly church attendance...predicted a statistically significant and substantive opposition to Trump" -- but it's clearly not enough yet.)
Pray on your knees.
03 February 2016
Daleiden vs. Planned Parenthood: Who's the criminal?
I'm over on Catholic Mommy Blogs today, talking about Lenten fasting. Check it out!
This news is over a week old, but David Daleiden -- the activist behind the Center for Medical Progress videos exposing Planned Parenthood's grisly practices of selling aborted baby parts -- has been indicted by Harris County, TX on multiple charges, including a felony charge of tampering with governmental records, and a misdemeanor charge of buying human tissue.
{Note: according to this indictment, it's possible to criminally buy human tissue, while the seller on the other end of the transaction is judged to have done nothing wrong. Seems legit.}
It's long been known that some counties, even in Texas, would indict a ham sandwich, so long as said ham sandwich happened to be conservative (see: Travis County's politically-motivated indictment of Rick Perry over a veto threat). In this instance, one of the prosecutors is a Planned Parenthood board member.
Nothing about this passes the most cursory of sniff tests.
Here's the thing: David Daleiden may have done something criminal in the course of his investigation. I'm not sure one way or the other. If he did, I would bet he did so in the full knowledge that he may have to pay a price in the service of getting this information into the public consciousness.
We are not the ones occupying the "end justifies the means" side of this cultural divide, and as such I think that if there have been laws broken, then Daleiden should get his day in court. But let's be serious: it's not possible that Daleiden broke the law by buying the fetal issue if Planned Parenthood simultaneously did nothing wrong -- legally wrong, that is, because there's really no question whether Planned Parenthood's every action and instinct is morally wrong.
So! To that end, please consider signing this petition, which has over 108,000 signatures already, asking Harris County to reconsider their nakedly political witch hunt, and instead focus their investigative and prosecutorial efforts where they belong: on the ghouls of Planned Parenthood.
This news is over a week old, but David Daleiden -- the activist behind the Center for Medical Progress videos exposing Planned Parenthood's grisly practices of selling aborted baby parts -- has been indicted by Harris County, TX on multiple charges, including a felony charge of tampering with governmental records, and a misdemeanor charge of buying human tissue.
{Note: according to this indictment, it's possible to criminally buy human tissue, while the seller on the other end of the transaction is judged to have done nothing wrong. Seems legit.}
It's long been known that some counties, even in Texas, would indict a ham sandwich, so long as said ham sandwich happened to be conservative (see: Travis County's politically-motivated indictment of Rick Perry over a veto threat). In this instance, one of the prosecutors is a Planned Parenthood board member.
Nothing about this passes the most cursory of sniff tests.
Here's the thing: David Daleiden may have done something criminal in the course of his investigation. I'm not sure one way or the other. If he did, I would bet he did so in the full knowledge that he may have to pay a price in the service of getting this information into the public consciousness.
We are not the ones occupying the "end justifies the means" side of this cultural divide, and as such I think that if there have been laws broken, then Daleiden should get his day in court. But let's be serious: it's not possible that Daleiden broke the law by buying the fetal issue if Planned Parenthood simultaneously did nothing wrong -- legally wrong, that is, because there's really no question whether Planned Parenthood's every action and instinct is morally wrong.
So! To that end, please consider signing this petition, which has over 108,000 signatures already, asking Harris County to reconsider their nakedly political witch hunt, and instead focus their investigative and prosecutorial efforts where they belong: on the ghouls of Planned Parenthood.
03 December 2015
And in despair, I bowed my head.
Facebook is positively revolting right now.
Two mass shootings within the span of a week has inspired every over-emotive millennial I know (so, like, all of them) to decide that they're going to "get real" and "not worry about offending anyone" and say "what [they] really think" about guns.
And -- sorry, dudes -- what they have to say is mostly uninformed and irrelevant. And insulting.
No one talks about the breakdown of the family, or Islamist terror tactics, or actual, honest-to-God, demonic evil. There's some lip-service paid to mental illness, but strictly in the sense that We Need More Government (which we do not).
Mostly there's dishonest and/or stupid conflation of semiautomatic and automatic weapons -- news flash, basically no one thinks you should be able to buy a machine gun for home defense -- and what I can only assume is a willful refusal to admit that the overwhelming majority of legally-owned firearms in this country will never be used to shoot anything but paper targets.
So everywhere I scroll on Facebook, I'm being told that I'm "part of the problem" because I think guns are not inherently evil. I'm "part of the problem" because I think dismembering babies in the womb and selling their parts to the highest bidder is abhorrent and I'm not afraid to say so. I'm "part of the problem" because I don't think that we should enact laws that prohibit American citizens from buying guns when they have not been so much as accused of a crime. I'm being told that as a gun owner -- as someone who has exercised my Constitutional rights -- that I bear responsibility for every misuse of a gun that happens in this country.
Nope.
I reject that, outright. I am not immoral because I have purchased a firearm and learned how to use it so that in the event that I ever have to protect my children from mortal danger, I can (angels and ministers of grace, defend us!). I am not culpable for the actions of others.
Moreover, while Planned Parenthood is easily one of the most evil corporate entities in the world, I still don't think anyone has the right to go there and commit violence against the people who work there. The ends do not justify the means. In fact, I don't even think the ends are worthwhile: violence committed against abortion clinics tends to make the general population more sympathetic and even perversely sentimental about abortion and its practitioners.
All of this brought to mind one of the latter verses of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," one of the lesser-appreciated Christmas songs, but one which I love.
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:Peace on earth, good-will to men.
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
The solution to violence is not an abdication of your goodwill toward men. Throwing invective at people in your Facebook timeline because they disagree with you about gun control is not displaying good will. Refusing to acknowledge that law-abiding gun-owners are not the problem is not the way. Let's all recognize that evil exists. When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood or a community center (for one of the most vulnerable populations in our society, by the way), let's acknowledge that their motivation was not "for fun" or "because of the Second Amendment" or "motivated by Christianity" or "ginned up by irresponsible anti-abortion rhetoric," but instead their motivation is the commission of evil in service of the Evil One.
And let's realize that two things can be true: I can be saddened and sickened by the loss of life in these mass shootings and still, in good faith, not support your gun control agenda.
I pray for our country. I pray that we turn from our collectively pretty horrible ways and be the city on the hill again. I can only work on my little corner, and so can you.
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.
28 July 2015
Can open, worms everywhere.
I have a daughter and a son (so far).
I was already 100% sure that my daughter would never be a Girl Scout. That is because of the Girl Scouts' extremely troubling involvement with Planned Parenthood, and also their founding membership in WAGGGS (the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts), which has been known to send girls to petition the UN for sexual and reproductive rights. This from an organization intended for girls under 18.
Just today I saw the news that the Boy Scouts of America have decided to end the ban on gay scout leaders. There is a tiny silver lining in that there is an exemption in place for scout troupes that are sponsored by churches. (For now.)
I'll say it straight out: this is depraved.
This is obviously a touchy subject. The BSA has been fighting making this change for years in the face of enormous pressure and has evidently finally buckled under the strain. And let me be clear: I'm not suggesting that all gay men are pedophile predators, or that there's no reason other than sexual interest that a gay man might be interested in being a scout leader. But the reality of the situation is that some scouts are 18, or nearly so. Furthermore, unlike other jobs that men can hold which brings them into regular proximity to potential objects of desire (for instance, high school teachers), the boy scouts go camping. Overnight. And it's not as if high school teachers have a stellar track record of keeping themselves from temptation under circumstances that afford them far less privacy with the teens by whom they find themselves tempted.
I was recently discussing this with a priest friend. His pastor has put him in charge of deciding these issues in his parish and he's feeling paralyzed with indecision. On one hand, the church-sponsored troupes of both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts are faith-centered in a way the national charters can apparently no longer sustain. On the other hand, he's worried about the trend, and how long the church-sponsored troupes will be allowed to maintain their independence in these matters.
I told him about how my pastor denied the Girl Scouts meeting space in our parish a couple of years ago. It made national news. Obviously some of that coverage was extremely unfriendly. But it blew over, and fast. In my opinion, I told my priest friend, it's smarter to cut ties now and face the angry parents -- and there will be angry parents -- than to wait until he's looking at a lawsuit for refusing to allow a gay scout leader in his troupe. I don't know what he's going to do, but this decision makes the need to decide more acute.
My decision is made: my son will not be a Boy Scout, any more than my daughter will be a Girl Scout.
Such a shame.
I was already 100% sure that my daughter would never be a Girl Scout. That is because of the Girl Scouts' extremely troubling involvement with Planned Parenthood, and also their founding membership in WAGGGS (the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts), which has been known to send girls to petition the UN for sexual and reproductive rights. This from an organization intended for girls under 18.
Just today I saw the news that the Boy Scouts of America have decided to end the ban on gay scout leaders. There is a tiny silver lining in that there is an exemption in place for scout troupes that are sponsored by churches. (For now.)
I'll say it straight out: this is depraved.
This is obviously a touchy subject. The BSA has been fighting making this change for years in the face of enormous pressure and has evidently finally buckled under the strain. And let me be clear: I'm not suggesting that all gay men are pedophile predators, or that there's no reason other than sexual interest that a gay man might be interested in being a scout leader. But the reality of the situation is that some scouts are 18, or nearly so. Furthermore, unlike other jobs that men can hold which brings them into regular proximity to potential objects of desire (for instance, high school teachers), the boy scouts go camping. Overnight. And it's not as if high school teachers have a stellar track record of keeping themselves from temptation under circumstances that afford them far less privacy with the teens by whom they find themselves tempted.
I was recently discussing this with a priest friend. His pastor has put him in charge of deciding these issues in his parish and he's feeling paralyzed with indecision. On one hand, the church-sponsored troupes of both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts are faith-centered in a way the national charters can apparently no longer sustain. On the other hand, he's worried about the trend, and how long the church-sponsored troupes will be allowed to maintain their independence in these matters.
I told him about how my pastor denied the Girl Scouts meeting space in our parish a couple of years ago. It made national news. Obviously some of that coverage was extremely unfriendly. But it blew over, and fast. In my opinion, I told my priest friend, it's smarter to cut ties now and face the angry parents -- and there will be angry parents -- than to wait until he's looking at a lawsuit for refusing to allow a gay scout leader in his troupe. I don't know what he's going to do, but this decision makes the need to decide more acute.
My decision is made: my son will not be a Boy Scout, any more than my daughter will be a Girl Scout.
Such a shame.
28 April 2015
Rioting in Baltimore
There are a couple fellow bloggers/blog readers who stop by here on occasion who live in Baltimore and its environs; if you are that person, know that I'm praying for your safety.
I don't know if it's national news (I'm local enough that it's been dominating my news), but there are riots happening right now in Baltimore following the death in custody of a 25-year-old named Freddie Gray. Gray was arrested for carrying a switchblade; at some point during his transportation to incarceration, he suffered a serious spinal injury. He doesn't seem to have been given timely medical attention, and as a consequence, he passed away.
And now Baltimore is ablaze, literally.
It's not clear quite what happened to Freddie Gray. It seems to be undisputed that he wasn't buckled into the transport van, but I don't see how that can cause, as his family alleges, his spine to be 80% severed at the neck. It's certainly possible that Freddie's cause of death was some form of police brutality, but we don't know what happened to him.
Meanwhile, since I live in the Northeast corridor, Facebook is rife with opinions. They range from the simple and poignant: "Prayers for Baltimore," to the vitriolic: either "The rioters are animals," or "Anyone who would call the rioters 'animals' is an animal."
As always, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly there is something to be said for making an effort to understand. I don't know what it's like to be a young black man in a majority-black, economically declining city like Baltimore. I also don't know what it's like to be a police officer in Baltimore, on the other end of the kind of interactions that cause mistrust on both sides, and charged with keeping the peace.
However.
There is never any excuse for the kind of rioting happening in Baltimore right now. Rioters looted and torched a CVS drugstore, and then punctured the firehose so that the blaze couldn't be put out. Explain to me how CVS is responsible for what happened to Freddie Gray. A store run by Chinese immigrants was completely wiped out. Innocent people are losing property and they're being made unsafe because all the police in the city are otherwise occupied.
After the death of Michael Brown in August 2014 in Missouri, Ferguson experienced weeks upon weeks of this kind of unrest. It is widely accepted that it only died down because the weather got to be too inhospitable. Unfortunately for Baltimore, protest weather is just ramping up.
I have to withhold judgment on what happened to Freddie Gray in Baltimore. But I do not have to withhold judgment of indiscriminate destruction.
I don't know if it's national news (I'm local enough that it's been dominating my news), but there are riots happening right now in Baltimore following the death in custody of a 25-year-old named Freddie Gray. Gray was arrested for carrying a switchblade; at some point during his transportation to incarceration, he suffered a serious spinal injury. He doesn't seem to have been given timely medical attention, and as a consequence, he passed away.
And now Baltimore is ablaze, literally.
It's not clear quite what happened to Freddie Gray. It seems to be undisputed that he wasn't buckled into the transport van, but I don't see how that can cause, as his family alleges, his spine to be 80% severed at the neck. It's certainly possible that Freddie's cause of death was some form of police brutality, but we don't know what happened to him.
Meanwhile, since I live in the Northeast corridor, Facebook is rife with opinions. They range from the simple and poignant: "Prayers for Baltimore," to the vitriolic: either "The rioters are animals," or "Anyone who would call the rioters 'animals' is an animal."
As always, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly there is something to be said for making an effort to understand. I don't know what it's like to be a young black man in a majority-black, economically declining city like Baltimore. I also don't know what it's like to be a police officer in Baltimore, on the other end of the kind of interactions that cause mistrust on both sides, and charged with keeping the peace.
However.
There is never any excuse for the kind of rioting happening in Baltimore right now. Rioters looted and torched a CVS drugstore, and then punctured the firehose so that the blaze couldn't be put out. Explain to me how CVS is responsible for what happened to Freddie Gray. A store run by Chinese immigrants was completely wiped out. Innocent people are losing property and they're being made unsafe because all the police in the city are otherwise occupied.
After the death of Michael Brown in August 2014 in Missouri, Ferguson experienced weeks upon weeks of this kind of unrest. It is widely accepted that it only died down because the weather got to be too inhospitable. Unfortunately for Baltimore, protest weather is just ramping up.
I have to withhold judgment on what happened to Freddie Gray in Baltimore. But I do not have to withhold judgment of indiscriminate destruction.
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