Hate Crime Unlimited

The last time I was a candidate for office in 1997, although it was the third time I had been a candidate, my youngest had moved here to San Luis Obispo County.  She had long before let us know that she was a lesbian.  That required that the two of us should have a really down to earth talk.  We both of us recognized that if we did not get out ahead of the media with her lesbianism, someone, somewhere would try to make it an issue.  At the same time, we did not want to make it a hot-button issue ourselves.  Therefore, we decided that I should comment truthfully if the subject came up, but certainly not try to “hide” it.  It so happened that there was an incident in South County where she and her then partner were shopping where someone stopped them and was really quite disgustingly rude.  The incident so infuriated our other locally living daughter that she wrote a great letter to the editor about it.  That, needless to say, surfaced the issue quite nicely, although we were sorry the incident happened in the first place.

 

Our family was very supportive of our daughter marrying her partner of 18 years, because we love that woman very much as well.  We had the wedding ceremony, and a small reception here at the house.  They had a much bigger whoop-de-do later in the year.  And we still support them, and their friends who are in same-sex relationships, as we do all in any committed marital relationship, same-sex or not.

 

You can imagine our horror and absolute freak-out anger this morning as we read in The Tribune, our local county paper, that some lawyer, Matt McLaughlin, in Orange County has paid his $200 fee to get his “Sodomite Suppression Act” which authorizes the killing of gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head” or any “other convenient method”.  From The Tribune:  [“McLaughlin’s plan refers to “buggery” or “sodomy” as “a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.”  Under the proposal, “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification (would) be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”]  This in itself is bad enough but one could assume that this would be after a legal trial, with lawyers on both sides, and decent judges.  But then there is:

 

f) The state has an affirmative duty to defend and enforce this law as written, and every member of the public has standing to seek its enforcement and obtain reimbursement for all costs and attorney's fees in so doing, and further, should the state persist in inaction over 1 year after due notice, the general public is empowered and deputized to execute all the provisions hereunder extra-judicially, immune from any charge and indemnified by the state against any and all liability.

 

Think about this for a moment.  If the State of California rightly drags its feet on this, then after a year, if I were seen with any of my daughters or female friends, and we gave each other a big hug on parting, conceivably some religious whack job could haul out his/her gun and shoot us in the head, using the excuse that it was obvious we were just getting ready for “sexual gratification”.  And get away with it!  This is not free speech.  If it is illegal to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre, then it is certainly a hate crime to advocate shooting people in the head extra-judicially, and with immunity for the actions!  
 

I used to wonder about not using the name of God in vain, the 4^th Commandment, considering that OMG is such a frequent and wonderful expletive.  I think rather it refers to using God’s name to justify evil, as this lawyer from Orange County is doing.  For a Christian to use what a Christian believes is God’s Word to justify such hate, in direct contradiction to what is taught in the Christian Bible is about as blasphemous as one can get, in my opinion.  What a travesty of the Great Commandments of Jesus:  Love God with all of your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.  Using a reverse logic, if this man hates his neighbor to this extent, he must really hate himself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Little of This; A Little of That

Ah, what to write about this week?  So many things; so little lengthy inspiration!  How about a little about a whole lot?  No!  Too bad!!  Here goes.  Some of value – some not.

I guess the new Republican budget could be worse, but I’m not sure how.  Although I have Medicare, and it helps us a great deal, we would still be able to scrape along without it.  But there are many my age, or younger or older, who desperately need it.  In good conscience, how could these people who call themselves Christian call for an almost total gutting of our country’s social safety net in order to cut taxes for those who don’t need to have their taxes cut.  Medicare, children’s health care, social security are all programs that truly help people who need the help.  There are many more that need help than churches, synagogues, temples and NGOs can conceivably supply.  Register to vote, then vote the bums out!

Last night we heard that a bunch of Christians are starting a Christian militia to go over and fight with the Iraqis against ISIS.  Oh, goody!!  A new crusade with their marching song, Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war?  This will certainly not endear us to the radical Islamist right to have a bunch of radical Christian right soldiers on their land.  That, by the way, is a song I refuse to play, along with Battle Hymn of the Republic in my music group at church.  It is not an issue at this time, but one pastor told the director to go ahead and schedule Battle Hymn, and that I would play it if everyone else was singing.  They sang without me. 

Closer to home, yesterday was a good day for me.  I got new “speakers” in my hearing aids, and my new glasses came in.  So now I can hear young women’s higher pitched voices much better, and can actually see some details I didn’t know were there.  Of course, that means I’ll have to haul out the sewing machine and mend some shirts of Bill’s that were ordered, delivered to our front door when we weren’t home, and our then puppies had a great time tearing the package open and playing tug-of-war with one of the shirts.  We took corrective action after that, but the shirt still has holes in the sleeve.  Fortunately it is a work shirt. 

Yesterday in between getting my new “ears” and “eyes”, we had a fender bender when a young driver thought he could make a left-hand turn in front of us before we entered the intersection.  Could have been much worse, but the good thing is the insurance adjuster today was a young woman with a very high voice, and I could hear her clearly!  How nice that was.  We used the fender bender as an excuse to have lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.  Hey, whatever works!

We have lived in our house now for some 35 years, so the inside really needed painting.  Which would not have been a problem except that I had a 60 year supply of books on one wall; books I considered as friends.  It took me about six months to slowly go through each book to determine if it should be given away, or kept in the new cabinet our neighbor/furniture maker was going to make for me.  Then I simply couldn’t part with any of the books until one of our daughters committed to taking them to the local homeless shelter for me.  She said they were always looking for books.  But then that meant that I had to take down all of the pictures as well, which of course presented the problem of what to do with them since we wanted to “unclutter” our walls.  I was complaining to a friend about what to do with all of the “kid” pictures which are about 40 years out of date, and her suggestion was brilliant.  Give them to the kids so we can enjoy them on their walls (if they chose to put them up).  We are in the process of doing that, but the guest bed is still awash in pictures, so hope no one wants to come and stay for a bit. 

Our big room is now all painted, the furniture is back where it belongs, a few pictures are up, and the only thing left is to have the new cabinet/console stained and a wall decoration put up.  I had looked in stores, catalogues, other people’s houses, etc., but really didn’t see anything I liked.  Then one Sunday morning a group of us decided to have brunch at a local restaurant after Mass.  I walked in, happened to look up at their big wall, and there it was!!  My perfect wall décor.  Bill liked it as well, so we bought it.  How nice of them to sell me their wall décor for my house.  Lovely people.  Now our neighbor is going to measure where it should go for me, since I am notorious for not being able to measure anything correctly, and we will be through with that.  Except that I bought a new quilt for the bed, and it doesn’t match the paint on the wall.  Ah, but I do love the smell of new paint!

Now if I could only get the Republicans in Congress to coordinate their often proffered religious beliefs to their actions, all would be well in my world!!

So VOTE, Damn It!!

This blog is either quite late for last week, or a tad early for next week.  But, the timing is right, I hope.

The fact that so many people didn’t bother to vote in the last election really bothered me.  As an almost member of the Greatest Generation (missed it by 3 years), watching as my cousins, friends and brother went in the Navy in WWII, worrying over whether they would be wounded, or worse, killed fighting against countries wherein the citizens could not vote, or else could vote for one candidate, and were jailed, or worse, if they didn’t vote for that one person, I was most distressed, to say the least.

Then I read that the son of a good friend of mine didn’t vote because he couldn’t see the point, and that bothered me to the point that I decided to write a blog about it.  Fortunately, life, in a good way, got in the way of having the time to write because the events of this past week have emphasized in my mind the importance of voting.

Sunday will be the 50^th year anniversary of the march of black citizens of this country crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge to protest the fact that black citizens were denied the right to vote by all sorts of techniques such as cumulative poll taxes and difficult literacy tests.  There were about 600 marchers who were told they could not cross the bridge and who refused to stop marching.  They were then attacked by police officers who beat them with billy clubs, sending some 50 marchers to the hospital, including John Lewis, now a respected Congressman from Alabama.  They regrouped, marched again a few days later, and were turned back again.  A few days later, they marched again and crossed the bridge.  These protests led to the voting rights act of 1965.

Fast forward to this week.  I would imagine that anyone reading this blog has heard about the scathing report from the US Attorney General’s Office regarding the really horrendous situation in Ferguson, MO, and the reasons the community erupted so forcefully after the shooting of the black teen-ager, Michael Brown.  What has also emerged from the mess in Ferguson is that over time, and probably with discouragement from the non-black side of town, was that the black community in Ferguson did not vote.  And they ended up with a government that had no regard for them whatsoever to the point of using them to fund the government by arresting the black citizens for specious reasons, then imposing outrageous fines for arrests.  And, if the individuals could not pay the fine, putting them in jail!  The citizens of Ferguson are now organizing themselves to register citizens, and then making sure they get to the polls because they have recognized that they need to vote for a government that will regard them as the lawful citizens that they are.

So what does this have to do with me?  I’m not black, nor even maybe brown.  I’m OK.

First they came for the Communists,

and I didn’t speak up,

because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak up,

because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,

and by that time

there was no one left to speak up for me.  

There is an offshoot of Christianity called the Dominionists.  These folks want to make the United States a Dominionist Christian nation by being elected to local, then state and federal offices, school boards, special district boards, etc. thereby gaining control over all of our governmental institutions.  Google them if you think I am off center on this.  For the sake of the argument, let’s assume the Dominionists win.  There is no way I could subscribe to the government they want to impose.  But if I don’t speak up now for the black citizens of all of the Fergusons of this country, how can I demand that people speak up for me if the Domionists are in power, if there would be any left to do so.

There is another old, but excellent, maxim.  Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.  We all must register and vote; we all must start attending local board meetings, including the Board of Supervisors, and demand that these meetings be conducted in a civil and respectful manner, whether we want to go or not.  We must respectfully demand that people of all ages have a reason for voting, and that they recognize that if they want to enjoy the benefits of democracy, they sure as hell need to work for those benefits by at least voting.  Voting is the primary requirement of citizenship in a democracy.

Scott Walker and Christianity

Oh, good!  President Obama is not even running for anything and Rudy Giuliani who used to have a shred of respectability lost it this week when he said he didn’t think the President loved his country.  But he was not impugning the President’s patriotism!!  And right on the heels of that, Scott Walker implied that President Obama wasn’t a Christian!!!  Other than the fact that the U.S. Constitution under Article XI states, “…but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”  So what’s up with all of this range-land waste with whether someone is a Christian or not?

And just what is Walker’s definition of Christian?  Is he referring to the deceased pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church that protested at the funerals of soldiers for some obscure reason dealing with homosexuality?  Is he referring to the brand of Christianity that Jeff Sharlet described in his book, C Street, Jesus plus nothing?  That is, all one needs is a personal relationship with Jesus so that when one prays for guidance, Jesus will let you know what to do.  With this one, as Sharlet pointed out, it was amazing how many times Jesus agreed with the person doing the praying.  Some churches proclaim that all one need do is accept Jesus as your personal savior, and read the Bible.  Others say that if one accepts Jesus, God will reward you, so that if you are poor, you don’t love Jesus enough. But the problem with that is which translation is being read.  As one infamous Texas preacher said, “If the King James Version of the Bible was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for me.”  Or is it one of the more theologically vague, but social justice very savvy Protestant churches.  How about the politically conservative rigid and monolithic church that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI tried to lead, and Cardinal Burke, et al, tried to force on American Catholics?  How about the Catholic Church Pope Francis is leading, with an emphasis on the love of God first and equally necessary, mercy, love and compassion for everyone else?  There are so many ways to say one is Christian that it boggles the mind if one is not an adherent to any of them.  It is hard enough if one is an “insider”.

This is what really is obnoxious about the current bunch of radical religious right people in our Congress now, who are putting pressure, financial or otherwise, on their buddies in Congress.  All of this nonsense about how it is the Christian thing to do to cut taxes on the wealthy so corporations will have more money to invest in their companies, and the result will be a “trickling down” of that wealth to the poorer people. That in their view is compassion.  No one has said just what century this is supposed to occur in, since trickle down started in the 20^th century, and now it is the 21^st. 

The contention is asinine that it is the Christian thing to do to cut the safety net for people all the way from seniors with Social Security and Medicare down to children with no health insurance, no food stamps, and no education, etc., in order to force people to get out to work which will then enable them to realize their potential.  Rand Paul made the comment that people on Social Security Disability are “gaming the system”.  Some probably are, but the majority simply require it to survive, or for their families to survive.

One of the Bible stories that is told often is that of the Good Samaritan.  For those who may not be acquainted with it, it is the story of a man who belonged to a tribe not accepted by the Jewish nation as a whole.  And it is the story of another man who was travelling, was met by robbers, beaten, robbed and left for dead.  A couple of upstanding citizens came by, but not wanting to be involved, crossed to the other side of the road, and went on their way.  But the Samaritan stopped, put the battered man on his donkey, took him to an Inn, paid the innkeeper to take care of the man, promised to stop on his way back to pay more if the Innkeeper required it, then the Samaritan went on his way.  This story is told as the reason why churches need to teach compassion.  Which is a good thing, but it is only half the story.  The Samaritan did not care for the man himself.  He went on his way, after paying the Innkeeper to do that. 

My point in citing this story is that it is directly applicable to our current political situation.  The upstanding citizens now could be those who just want to go by the people who are hurting and hungry.  The Samaritan now is the rest of us, who want to help out and do what we can.  Now instead of paying the Innkeeper and going on our way, we pay our taxes to the government to supplement what our churches and other non-profits simply cannot keep up with.  The Samaritan did not care for that battered man himself.  He paid someone else to do it for him.  The Innkeeper then; taxes now.

Scott Walker is probably one of the most hard-hearted governors in this country.  There are quite a few, but he takes the cake.  For him to impugn our President for not being a Christian, I wonder which of the above definitions he would claim as his own.  Or is he an upstanding citizen who simply crosses the road before he might have to be involved.

 

 

A Traumatic Experience

Yesterday I had a very traumatic experience that left me shaking.  Really!  The unflappable me! What was it?  I had to listen to Fox News for about 10 minutes!!!

I needed a test at French Hospital (nothing serious).  I checked in quickly, but then had to wait for a while.  Bill got tired of waiting, and said he would dash to Farm Supply and would be back and would look for me in the same waiting room.  That sounded OK to me, and I continued to watch a home renovation channe.  So, I eventually had the test, came back to the waiting room, and there was a woman watching Fox News.  She turned to me and asked if I could hear it, to which I not very nicely responded that I would probably take out my hearing aids since I didn’t like Fox News.  She not only didn’t take the pretty overt hint, but said that she did like it.  So, there I was trying to convince myself that this would be a learning experience, and that I should just be quiet and treat it as such.

The first segment I came in the middle of, so don’t know what set them off, but there were two people talking about how Obama’s (no title) executive orders were unconstitutional, were thus illegal, and were his way or the highway.  Nothing about the 291 executive orders George W. Bush (W) signed, or what they contained.  Nothing, for example, about the executive order Bush signed on 10/08/2001 creating the Department of Homeland Security.  Nothing about what executive order President Obama had signed, though as I said I came in late, but only how awful President Obama is to be signing these orders.

The segment ended, and the next one included a Republican Congressman from some State back East (where I live everything is back East).  I think it was Ohio.  Anyway, the subject was voter fraud, and how it was very necessary to curtail voting in order to stop voter fraud.  In the discussion it left me with no doubt they were talking about stopping brown, black, young and old people from voting.  They did everything but blatantly say that it was necessary to keep “those people” from voting because they would not vote Republican, and any other vote was fraudulent.  And with Obama and the left-wing so awful it is absolutely necessary to make sure there is no voter fraud.  Nothing about how very important voting is – for everyone.

I could feel my blood pressure start to go up, but not to worry.  It is low anyway.

The next segment included John Bolton, former Bush appointee to the United Nations, and a very “interesting” person with a radical right-wing religious perspective discussing the recent events in Yemen.  There was nothing on what had led up to the problems; nothing about anything the Yemeni government had or had not done to prevent the problems.  Only that it was Obama’s fault; that he didn’t know what he was doing; if only he were someone else, and on, and on.

But the final straw started out with a sort of hysterical introduction that federal employees had been caught watching porn on their work computers.  Then came, “Federal employees watch porn on their work computers, and are wasting your tax dollars, etc…”  At that I came unglued.  The segment started out with the proper setting that federal employees had been caught, although it did not mention whether this was two or two hundred, or two thousand.  But by the time it got to inferring that all federal employees watch porn, I was livid.  It was another right wing attack on legitimate government.  There was no corresponding study done on how many private-business employees watch porn.  The study needn’t include Fox News employees because in my opinion they were spewing porn the whole time I was watching. 

At that point, I told the lady that I deeply resented the inference that all federal employees watch porn because my husband had been a federal employee, and I could assure her that neither he nor anyone else in his office had ever watched porn.  At that point I left the waiting room and went out into the hallway.  Fortunately Bill arrived about 2-3 minutes later, so didn’t have to stand there for any length of time.  When he realized how pissed off I was, we went to the cafeteria.  When in doubt, feed me!

It was so obvious to me in that 10 minutes that this is where the current divisiveness in our society is coming from.  It was hate and fear, hate and fear.  I was so angry to the point I was shaking because to me this was a form of evil.  I don’t use that word lightly, by the way.  A deliberate distortion of the truth for either personal or political aggrandizement is evil.

More Irrelevant Stuff

There is so much on the national level one could write about, but this week I will write about other stuff.  Like the fact we have had a tad over 3 inches of rain this week.  For those overseas readers, I live in the very, very darkest red of the red covering the drought area of California on the maps.  We have our own water supply so to celebrate the rain, I let the water run while I rinsed off the dishes!!!  Not for long – just enough to feel decadent.  We are so dry here that even after 3 inches there are no standing puddles.  It just soaks in, and in, and then in some more.  We are supposed to receive more rain about Feb. 17, but haven’t read whether that will be some or a whole lot of it.  Hope for the whole lot.

We have lived in our house for 35 years now.  When we were building it from 1977-1979, we lived in Fresno, CA.  For those two years, all but about 4 weekends, we would leave Fresno at 3:00PM, arrive here about 6:00 PM, work on the house all weekend, then leave here at 6:00 AM, and arrive back in Fresno by 9:00 AM.  A good friend of ours had a contractor’s license, so he would work on the house while we were in Fresno.  One weekend we arrived to find that he had decided to fit the ceilings to his height, which was about 6’9”.  He had always wanted a house where the ceiling was way above his head, so our ceilings are about 14’ in our living/dining room!  We have heated with wood, primarily, so after 35 years this room has really needed painting.  We did it last time, but no way could we do this again.  So, we have professional painters.  I’m looking forward to when they are finished.  They are not only going to do the walls, but will paint the bricks behind our wood stove.  The bricks are beige, but our friend thought I would like black grout with those, and they were done before I saw them.  So, finally, the bricks, and grout will all be one color to match the fireplace at the other end of the room.  Oh, joy!!!

While getting ready for the painters, however, taking stuff off of the walls, etc., I came to the conclusion that I have too much “stuff”.  Some of it I don’t want to throw away, so will get a plastic bin and pack pictures away.  Years ago a friend gave me a picture of a Japanese Madonna and Child which I really liked.  Then I inherited an Italian Madonna and Child.  When our adopted granddaughters arrived, since their fathers were from El Salvador, I found a Salvadoran Madonna and Child.  Over time people have given me others from Greece, Russia, Italy, and the United States.  But I don’t want to put them back up.  I think I want to keep my walls clear for a time, but neither do I want to throw them away.  So, into a bin they will go, along with about two dozen family pictures in frames. 

I’m glad that my “office” isn’t going to be painted this time because I have a bad habit (or not) of cutting out, or typing off quips or comments that I really like and taping them to the side of my antique wood file cabinet.  One I wrote myself.  At one time, Bill was involved in a discussion on the placement of nuclear waste in unlined trenches in Ward Valley, which is very near the border of California and Nevada, and the Colorado River.  It took some time, but Bill proved that Ward Valley drained into the Colorado River in five places.   There was a hearing in Needles, CA, which, of course, we drove over to.  If anyone has driven across California to Nevada, you know what a long trip it can be, with nothing for about 90 miles of it through the Mojave Desert.  So, to occupy my mind I wrote the following take off on the old cowboy song, Home On the Range.  I will complete my blog with this:

Oh, give me a home, where the isotopes roam,

And the children play, let’s mutate today.

Where the tortoises’ are so big

They could swallow a pig,

             And the vadose zone is wet all the way. 

Home, home on the range,

Where neither deer nor the antelope can play.

Where good values of old

Have been sold for some gold

And we wait for the river to glow.

 

 

Football and Greed

Some things just stick in my mind and will not go away.  These things are like the infamous melody that gets stuck in there and just goes on and on.  Once I had to go to a conference at Disney Land, and that song, It’s a Small, Small World, got stuck in my head for days.  I still don’t like it.

That’s why, after the Super Bowl yesterday, I decided I’d better get this thought out of my head before it gets stuck in there.  One needs to mention all of the hype and stuff prior to the game – deflategate –and how the Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, would never do anything like that.  He is such an upstanding player, and on, and on.  I don’t know Tom Brady, so don’t know if he is all of the wonderful things people were saying about him, because when I watch professional sports, except for the SF Giants and ‘49ers, I simply root for the team closest to the West Coast.  On the other hand, the Seattle Seahawks attitude, so marvelously exemplified yesterday at the end of the game, made me not want to root for them yesterday.  So, as I watched, Russell Wilson seemed to me to be a pretty good quarterback as well, but Brady kept getting all of the hype, which I couldn’t understand since the Patriots were actually losing.  But the kicker at the end of the game, when the player, Butler, was a fantastic enough football player to grab that ball in a really split, split second, which won the game for the Patriots, I was annoyed no end when Brady got all of the credit for winning the game.  He didn’t win it, Butler did! 

Another thing has been stuck in my head for quite some time.  The radical right-wing Christians, regardless of denomination, for years and years have been and still are bitching and complaining about abortion and homosexuality.  I have known for quite some time that nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus mention either one.  There are some three references to some passages in the New Testament that have been interpreted to refer to homosexuality, but considering all of the translations that the Bible has undergone, one would need to be a First Century Greek academic to fully understand what the references actually mean.  After reading the supposed references to homosexuality, it occurred to me that the verses before and after the suspect ones also list many activities that should not be indulged in:  greed, gluttony, laziness, etc. 

So we get to greed.  There are 51 passages in the entire Bible that refer to greed, and some 28 in the New Testament.  I will only quote two: Matt. 6:24, Peterson, The Message Bible.  “You can’t worship two gods at once.  Loving one god, you’ll end up hating the other.  Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other.  You can’t worship God and Money both”.  I Tim 6:10, same cite, “But if it’s only money these leaders are after, they’ll self-destruct in no time.  Lust for money brings trouble and nothing but trouble.  Going down that path some lose their footing in the faith completely and live to regret it bitterly ever after.”  There is not too much to quibble about in those quotes.  One may not agree with them, but their meaning is quite clear.

So we have no references regarding abortion, 3 maybe about homosexuality, and 28 (if I counted correctly) about the dangers of greed.  We are not discussing here whether the Bible is true or not.  What we are discussing is the attitude of the radical right-wing Christians on Christian teachings, and one would assume that the Bible would be their foundation of belief and emphasis. 

I thought about the comment of what self-identified Catholic Christian, Paul Ryan said about President Obama’s new budget, that it is “envy economics”, with the poorer citizens wanting to take away what the poor oligarchs have.  He also said that now that the oligarchs have so much it is beginning to “trickle down” anyway.  Really?  And considering that it has been supposedly “trickling down” now for some 30 years, ever since Ronnie Baby introduced the theory of and established “trickle-down economics”, in what year does Ryan predict that it will reach the bottom 99%?  2075? 

Or is Reaganomics and his “trickle-down” the new false god of the radical religious-right?