“An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.” Unknown
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Friday, November 28, 2014
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Racism
I find it amazing but not surprising that there are still people that refuse to acknowledge the forensic evidence and instead choose to believe that the strong armed suspect was a victim of police brutality. This attitude reeks of racism! That's right, I said racism.
When you ignore all evidence to the contrary and believe what you want to hear there is no other reasonable explanation.
In addition, where are the people that accused the police of over responding now that Ferguson has been looted and burned? Setting up their new HD TVs or hung over from all the looted booze the acquired last night perhaps.
Michel Brown put himself in harm's way! That is what all the evidence points to. Stop looking to blame your ills on all police and all whites. This is what perpetuates racism. Working together is the only reasonable path to peace.
Reprinted from someones Facebook post.
When you ignore all evidence to the contrary and believe what you want to hear there is no other reasonable explanation.
In addition, where are the people that accused the police of over responding now that Ferguson has been looted and burned? Setting up their new HD TVs or hung over from all the looted booze the acquired last night perhaps.
Michel Brown put himself in harm's way! That is what all the evidence points to. Stop looking to blame your ills on all police and all whites. This is what perpetuates racism. Working together is the only reasonable path to peace.
Reprinted from someones Facebook post.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Monday, November 24, 2014
Iran talks fail
A hostile government that likes to play with ballistic missiles and nuclear energy. What is the logical extension of this scenario?
Why is this posted here? Because eventually our children are going to be sent there.
Why is this posted here? Because eventually our children are going to be sent there.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Did Hillary Clinton fail the bar exam in 1968?
Buried deep in media reports is a story that her attempt to pass the Washington D.C. bar exam was unsuccessful. This has never been reported before. Considering she is a candidate for president, I consider it relevant.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
It seems to part of their mental makeup. Spend today tomorrow may never come.
University Park trustees OK unusual raises for themselves - Southtown Star
We see this spending trait in so many black elected officials. Barack Obama included. It is not inadventent that he has run up the national deficit. What is the solution?
We see this spending trait in so many black elected officials. Barack Obama included. It is not inadventent that he has run up the national deficit. What is the solution?
Friday, November 21, 2014
Wisconsin Dells comes to the Chicago lakefront
‘Star Wars’ Museum: Rahm Emanuel Got Campaign Cash From Disney, George Lucas’ Wife, Before Pushing to Donate City Land
By Christopher Zara@christopherzarac.zara@ibtimes.com
David Sirota@davidsirotad.sirota@ibtimes.com on November 20 2014 11:02 AM
David Sirota@davidsirotad.sirota@ibtimes.com on November 20 2014 11:02 AM
Reuters
You might call it the Dark Side of politics, but in Chicago, is there any other side? Windy City preservationists are suing to block the construction of a so-called “Star Wars” museum after Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered to let George Lucas build the $400 million project on publicly owned lakefront land. The mayor has defended the proposal to lease the prime real estate to the billionaire Lucas for just $1 a year, insisting the project is on “solid legal ground,” the Sun Times reported.
What he hasn’t mentioned is the almost $50,000 worth of campaign donations he has received from those with vested interests in the project.
One of those donors is one of the museum’s key board members, who also happens to be Lucas’ wife. Mellody Hobson, a prominent Chicago businesswoman, is a major Emanuel supporter, contributing $31,500 to his 2011 mayoral race, according to campaign records. In fact, it was Hobson who apparently came up with the idea to build the museum in Chicago. The plan came to fruition after Lucas failed to get the project approved in San Francisco earlier this year.
“Don’t worry,” Hobson reportedly told Lucas. “I’ll talk to the mayor.”
Well-known in Chicago business and civic circles, Hobson is president of the Chicago-based Ariel Investments, in addition to being the currentchairwoman of DreamWorks Animation SKG. She and Lucas married last summer, a wedding Emanuel attended.
Emanuel also received donations from executives of the Walt Disney Company, which bought Lucasfilm and the “Star Wars” franchise in 2012. They contributed a combined $13,800 to Emanuel’s campaigns. Bob Iger, chief executive, personally kicked in $5,300, records show. The donations from those with a direct interest in promoting Lucas’s work were part of a larger six-figure cash haul from the TV and film industries, whose wares will be promoted at the cinema-themed museum.
Lucas is personally bankrolling the construction of the facility, which was recently renamed the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The museum will receive no funding from the city. But critics say the museum -- dubbed a “vanity project” by some in the local press -- is inappropriate for a swath of valuable public lakefront land that was meant for open spaces. The proposed site, south of Soldier Field football stadium, is currently home to two parking lots.
Critics say Lucas’ plans for the museum lack specifics, and that a preliminary agreement drawn up in September contains only vague descriptions of the types of exhibits that might be housed there. Citing controversial taxpayer subsidies for Soldier Field, the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board declared its opposition to the museum, arguing that “while Lucas would build the structure that would bear his name, future Chicagoans risk being stuck with the costs of keeping it alive.”
In perhaps the most significant challenge to the proposal, a lawsuit filed earlier this week by the preservation group Friends of the Park said a task force appointed by Emanuel overstepped its authority when it recommended the lakefront site. The site, the group says, is composed of landfill recovered from Lake Michigan and was “dedicated to the public trust.”
“The purpose of the trust as previously declared by the Supreme Court of Illinois is to ensure that the property recovered from Lake Michigan is preserved as a natural resource and as improved physical environment and to ensure that the public has access to navigation, fishing and commerce on Lake Michigan,” the lawsuit states.
Kate LeFurgy, a spokeswoman for the Lucas Museum, declined to comment on the lawsuit. “We remain focused and committed to Chicago,” she said.
A spokesperson for Emanuel’s office did not return requests for comment.
Friends of the Park said it is not opposed to Lucas building the museum somewhere else in the city, but as the Chicago Tribune reported, Emanuel’s promise of the lakefront site played heavily in the filmmaker’s decision-making.
Cue the Imperial March.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Hacking Problem
During the past month, this blog has experienced a problem with a hacker. They were inserting nasty comments and even went so far as to change the blog format.
Certain code changes have been made. I am glad to say that the culprit has been thwarted. I will continue to keep my fingers crossed.
Certain code changes have been made. I am glad to say that the culprit has been thwarted. I will continue to keep my fingers crossed.
GLEN POSHARD, A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE PROBLEM - WELFARE DISGUISED AS MULTIPLE PENSIONS'
I don't care what the rules say, nobody should be getting more than one public pension. It's just plain wrong.
If you want to make a fortune, try your hand in private industry.
It's obvious that Poshard is just another politician that has played the system. So much for public service. I call on Gov. Elect Rauner to clean up his transition team.
Glenn Poshard lost the governor's race in 1998, but these days he's a pension winner – collecting more than $200,000 in taxpayer-subsidized retirement benefits a year, more than the current governor makes in salary.
Poshard's take is one of the biggest among former Illinois politicians.
But how his retirement payout became so lucrative is a case study in the complexities and excesses of Illinois' pension systems – which have been a massive drain on taxpayers and threaten to undermine state finances for generations because of the debt obligations the retirement funds carry.
What's more, a Better Government Association review found Poshard – who has long positioned himself as a political outsider and reformer, and who recently was named to Governor-elect Bruce Rauner's transition team – capitalized on legal loopholes in the pension systems to greatly enhance his payouts over time.
Poshard collects $189,979 a year in state pensions from three separate public-sector retirement systems, more than the $177,412 salary currently paid to Gov. Pat Quinn, the BGA found. Among former governors, only Jim Edgar gets more in retirement: $205,425, having recently picked up a second pension from his days teaching at the University of Illinois. Former Gov. Jim Thompson gets $143,181 in state pension benefits, records show.
In addition to his state-government pensions, Poshard collects a $15,000-a-year federal pension for his 10 years in the U.S. Congress representing a southeastern Illinois district, bringing his total retirement package to slightly more than $200,000 annually, according to records and interviews.
To date, he's collected more than $1.4 million in state pension benefits, and if he lives until he's 80, that $200,000 he's now getting could increase to an estimated $280,000 a year.
Rauner has vowed to reform Illinois' pension system – suggesting as one possible model a switch for new state workers to a 401k-style program.
Rauner's spokesman said Poshard was tapped for the incoming governor's transition team – which is designed to help Rauner, who beat Quinn in this month's election, hit the ground running when he takes office in January – because Poshard "has a tremendous amount of knowledge about southern Illinois as well as the university system and is respected across party lines."
"His role with the transition is voluntary and not focused on pension issues," the Rauner spokesman said.
Poshard started his career as a Downstate public-school teacher, and served in the General Assembly and in Congress before running as the Democratic nominee for governor in 1998. After losing to Republican George Ryan, Poshard ended up as an administrator at his alma mater, Southern Illinois University, finally retiring as the school's president.
The cornerstone of Poshard's generous state pension is the five years he served as a state senator. Of all state pension systems, the General Assembly Retirement System, or GARS, has the most deluxe features, designed and passed by members of the General Assembly.
Chief among those features is a formula that allowed him to collect a pension starting at 85 percent of his final state-government salaries – which averaged $165,000 as an SIU administrator during his first of two stints at the state government-run college.
Poshard also was allowed to increase his years of state service and thus boost his state pensions by counting unused sick time, un-served state Senate time, and credits purchased for past jobs in the military and while working his way through college, the BGA found. Overall, Poshard's state pensions are based on 30 years of service and credit.
In a telephone interview, Poshard said he has done nothing unethical and "never tried to game the system."
"I can tell you, I worked hard my whole life," said Poshard, 69. "I never shortchanged the state." my ass
Poshard is currently working with his wife for the Poshard Foundation for Abused Children, the nonprofit they founded 15 years ago to help abused children in southern Illinois. The Poshards draw no salary from the group.
In 2003, shortly before he turned 58, Poshard retired from his job as vice chancellor of SIU and began taking his three state pensions, initially collecting about $140,000 a year in total.
"I'm grateful for what I got. I'm happy with it. I can't pass judgment on whether the overall pension was too generous," said Poshard.
Because of Illinois' pension reciprocity law, he was able to combine his time in three systems, and use the $165,000 salary earned as vice-chancellor of SIU as the base salary for his pension for his entire career including his time as a teacher (where his salary never topped $38,000 a year) and as a state senator (where his annual salary never exceeded $36,000.)
As a result, Poshard currently receives the following pension payouts: $76,910 a year from GARS; $65,594 from the State Universities Retirement System, or SURS; and $47,475 from the Teachers' Retirement System of Illinois, or TRS, according to records and interviews.
Thus far, Poshard has collected $1.4 million from those Illinois pension funds, which are supported by deductions from employee paychecks, direct taxpayer contributions and investment income from the pension systems.
Pension deductions from Poshard's paychecks over the years, as well as his purchase of service credits, amount to roughly $135,000. In other words, taxpayers are covering roughly 90 percent of Poshard's state pension payouts.
Working The Angles
Unlike most Americans, Poshard planned ahead for his retirement.
At age 42, while a candidate for Congress in 1988, then-state Sen. Poshard contacted the GARS office – after he was told he was eligible to buy pension credits – to check on his benefits and determine how to maximize his pension years down the road.
A handwritten note in the file said that Poshard "was leaving town & wanted to know right away" what it would cost him to buy credit for the two years remaining in his term as state senator, an office he would vacate if elected to Congress, according to interviews, and records obtained under the Illinois Freedom of Information. An initialed handwritten note in his pension file states: "situation discussed at length during office visit of 11/17/88."
Poshard decided to pay the $7,860 for 23 months of credit, increasing his years of service – on paper – to seven years in the General Assembly system.
It was money well spent. The credits now increase his annual pension by $20,000, records indicate.
Later, Poshard bought another 1.25 years of credit in the university pension system from lower-level jobs he had nearly 30 years before while an undergraduate at SIU. The credits cost $5,598 and today are worth $5,000 a year.
Another piece of the pension puzzle was the purchase of 2.5 years of credit from SURS for his time in the U.S. Army in the 1960s. (Poshard wasn't in the military long enough to draw a military pension.)
"I bought in what they told me I could buy in," Poshard said. "I did what was possible."
Poshard's years of service in the Illinois system were also boosted by 1.73 years of unused sick time from his days as a college employee and as a schoolteacher. That added time is now worth about $8,500 a year in extra pension payouts.
Concerned About 'Future'
After Poshard lost the governor's race Ryan in 1998, he left Congress and returned to Illinois.
He and his wife had decided to start their foundation, but Poshard did not know what his job prospects were. He wasn't old enough to draw his state pension, then estimated to pay $30,300.
"We were concerned about our future," Poshard said.
So he decided to take his congressional pension, but at a reduced rate because he wasn't yet 62, when the full federal pension would be due.
Poshard, who has a doctorate in higher education administration from SIU, got the vice chancellor job in 1999 that set the stage for the pension he receives today.
Upon his 2003 retirement from that job, all his careful planning seemed to unravel when state pension administrators told him he'd be getting $131,688 – rather than the $140,556 they'd led him to expect.
He wrote a letter appealing the decision, pleading that he'd already pledged $25,000 a year for SIU scholarships, and hoped to set aside money for his grandchildren.
"I cannot go back and break commitments on scholarships or charitable causes or on future education commitments to my own grandchildren," he wrote.
State officials then said their staff had "not correctly understood" the formula because it was "so complicated" and decided to honor the original, higher estimate. Poshard, however, insisted in the interview with the BGA that the original estimate was correct all along.
Either way, Poshard did not stay retired.
In January 2006 he became president of SIU, a job he held until retiring again in June 2014 with an annual salary of more than $300,000. He continued to collect an annual $100,000 in state and federal pensions during those eight years at the helm of the taxpayer-supported school, with main campuses in Carbondale and Edwardsville and a total of 32,000 students.
While SIU president, he was not allowed to collect his full university pension – the part funded by SIU contributions – but SIU more than made it up to him with an annual $55,066 retirement "annuity," effectively a cash bonus.
Poshard Has Pushed Reform
Since 2003, Poshard's annual state pension has grown by about $50,000 thanks to Illinois' automatic annual 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. Yearly COLA hikes are blamed for greatly magnifying benefits and therefore pension debt in Illinois – and Poshard has previously observed their detrimental effects for taxpayers footing the bill.
"The biggest driver of the unfunded [pension] liability is the 3 percent COLA increase, which is not attached to any measure of inflation or deflation," Poshard said in 2013, testifying in front of state legislators looking at pension reform.
Poshard said in an interview that he and other university presidents advocated reducing the SURS cost-of-living benefit by 50 percent.
"I worked really hard to put a proposal on the table that we thought would work," he said. "The philosophy behind it was everybody has to pay a little bit."
He said the plan had the support of many retirees who are concerned the SURS system would collapse without reform. But the proposal was not approved by the Legislature.
Asked his reaction to a reduction of his own pension if the system were reformed, he said: "It's fine, of course."
This story was written and reported by the Better Government Association's Chuck Neubauer, Patrick Rehkamp and Sandy Bergo, who can be reached atchuck.neubauer@gmail.com or (301) 651-9525
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This is too much. Wouldn't happen in Chicago, ever.
Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe's son gets drug arrest pardon
By Echo ChambersOpinion and analysis from around the world
When Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe's son Kyle was arrested for possession of a controlled substance - two ounces of marijuana - with the intent to deliver in 2003, the governor said: "If he broke the law, he needs to pay for it. He needs to be treated like everybody else - no better, worse."
The son was sentenced to three years of probation, which he served without incident.
Eleven years later, Mr Beebe says he will pardon his son, expunging his felony record. Some are wondering whether "everybody else" will be pardoned for what the governor calls "stupid stuff" they did in their youth.
The outgoing Democratic governor told KATV News he would have pardoned his son long ago, but Kyle, 34, "took his sweet time about [asking for] it". He also said that the action was unanimously recommended by the state Pardons and Parole Board (whose members are appointed by the governor).
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Jacoba Urist, writing for NBC's Today Parents, says the governor risks being seen as a "snowplow" parent, who clears problems out of the lives of troubled children.
"It's a real concern, not just for affluent parents, but for anyone who attempts to make our kids' lives friction-free," Robert Pondiscio, a New York City teacher and father of a 16-year old girl, tells her. "At some point, you run the risk of insulating kids from the consequences of their actions. This seems like a particularly egregious example."
Stephanie McCratic, who runs a PR firm, counters that Mr Beebe is actually setting a good example.
"He has to take care of his family too, and it's a very conflicting place to live in," she tells Urist. "But the truth is, he made his son come ask for the pardon. The governor didn't volunteer it."
But what about all the non-Beebes across the US whose records will never be wiped clean? Kaili Joy Gray writes in Wonkette that they should get a second chance as well.
"Makes Ya Think that the whole Beebe family should be working real hard, every day, to try to reform our criminal justice system and end our dumb, pointless war on drugs so that people just like Kyle Beebe, whose lives have also been forever altered and who have served much harsher sentences for the same so-called crime, can have the same opportunity to be the men, and women, they know they can be too," she says.
Earlier this month Mr Beebe also announced intentions to pardon a family friend who was convicted in 2008 of the internet stalking a child. Within a week, his office put the pardon on hold, having learned of additional allegations in a child custody case.
Mr Beebe has issued more than 700 pardons during his time in office - hundreds fewer than his predecessor, Republican Mike Huckabee, whohas been criticised for approving the requests of more serious felons.
"No way to make a pardon for your son look pure, not when Beebe has been so famously parsimonious with the pardon power," writes Max Brantley for the Arkansas Times.
In January Mr Beebe will be replaced as governor by Republican Congressman Asa Hutchinson, who served as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration under President George W Bush.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Is CPS out of control?
PARENTS SHOCKED BY SEX ED CURRICULUM IN CHICAGO PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
CHICAGO - Parents of children attending the Andrew Jackson Language Academy in Chicago were surprised and outraged to learn about the things their little kids would be learning in sex ed this coming year. In a presentation given during a parent meeting, the parents were introduced to what Chicago Public School (CPS) officials were saying is the new sex health curriculum for 5th and 6th graders. However, some of the information covered was beyond startling for the parents.
CPS claims the material was "accidentally" included in the presentation and was not actually a part of the curriculum.
“The objectionable material presented at Andrew Jackson Language Academy this week is not and never was part of the student sexual education curriculum. It was mistakenly downloaded and included in the parent presentation, and we agree with parents it is not appropriate for elementary school students,” CPS spokesman Bill McCaffrey said in a statement.
However, parents who attended the event said a CPS representative was in attendance at the meeting and was answering questions about the curriculum, which led the parents to understand the questionable material was indeed part of the planned curriculum.
The presentation can be seen HERE. Video below:
Could it said that President Obama, being the community organizer that he is, is also an agitator of racial strife? When is enough enough?
What does that mean?
OBAMA'S GRUBER: "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."
This creep is quite full of himself.
Monday, November 17, 2014
The extreme left is revealed
SIXTH CIRCUIT JUDGES STOP THE INSANITY
By Laurie Higgins -
Finally, some common sense from appellate court judges. In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that state laws in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman do not violate the Constitution.
What is the government’s interest in marriage?
Homosexuals assert that marriage is constituted solely by love and has no inherent connection to sexual differentiation or the children who may result from conjugal coupling. Further, homosexuals believe that it is the presence of love that not only makes a union a marriage but that justifies government involvement in it.
But is that true? Has the government ever been involved in marriage because of marriage’s inconsistent connection to love? Has the government ever had a vested interest in the subjective feelings of those who seek to marry?
Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing for the majority in the Sixth Circuit Court’s decision states that “One starts from the premise that governments got into the business of defining marriage, and remain in the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to regulate sex, most especially the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse.”
If marriage were constituted solely by love and the government were in the odd business of recognizing and affirming love, then why not recognize and affirm allforms of love by granting marriage licenses even to those in loving non-erotic relationships? What possible relevance to the government is inherently sterile erotic activity? What is the relevance of private, subjective, romantic feelings and inherently sterile erotic activity to any public purposes of marriage and therefore to the government’s involvement with marriage?
When “progressives” argue that marriage is constituted solely by love and commitment and that it has no inherent connection to procreation, then they have to explain why two brothers should not be permitted to marry. Why shouldn’t five people of assorted genders (or no gender) who love each other be permitted to marry? Why shouldn’t the non-erotic relationship between BFF’s be considered a “marriage”?
Dissenting judge liberal Martha Craig Daughtrey argued that in the nineteen states where homoerotic unions are now recognized as marriages “‘it doesn’t look like the sky is falling in.’” So, that’s her legal rationale? As long as legal change doesn’t result in a rapid, dramatic atmospheric calamity, it’s hunky dory? One wonders if Daughtrey thinks the sky would fall in if plural or incestuous unions were to be legalized.
Liberals can’t appeal to history, tradition, or children in their defense of marriage as inherently binary, or non-consanguineous, or related to erotic activity, because they have already shredded the notions that history, tradition, or procreation have any relevance to marriage.
But if reproductive-type sexual activity (i.e., coitus) is irrelevant to government interest in marriage then surely non-reproductive-types of erotic activity are equally irrelevant. And if all sexual/erotic activity is irrelevant to the government’s interest in marriage, then logically those in relationships constituted by any and all forms of love must be permitted to “marry.”
As homosexuals continually and rightly assert, men and women are objectively and substantively different, and those differences are anatomical, biological, emotional, and psychological. A homoerotic union is as different from a heterosexual union as men are from women. A heterosexual union is different from a homoerotic union in objective ways pertaining to the procreation, needs, and rights of any children that may result from the type of sex act in which only men and women can engage. This type of union matters to government.
When conservatives argue that the government is involved in marriage because of the connection between male-female coitus and procreation, the Left says, “Aha, but infertile couples and those who intend to remain childless are allowed to marry.” What they’re saying is that the government neither compels procreation nor attempts to ascertain fertility. This liberals see as a flaw in conservative arguments. They believe that the government’s establishment of general objective marital criteria as opposed to intrusive government involvement in individual relationships is a weakness as opposed to a strength.
But what about the Left’s revisionist view of marriage as being constituted only by love? Are liberals similarly troubled by the fact that the government will never demand proof of the presence of love or attempt to compel couples to love one another? Will the unwillingness of the government to demand proof of love suggest a flaw in liberal arguments for redefining marriage?
Do governments create marriage?
According to the homosexual newspaper the Washington Blade, “When state attorneys made the arguments that bans on same-sex marriage had a rational basis because the purpose of marriage was procreation, Daughtrey took them to task, repeatedly asking them why excluding same-sex couples from the institution was necessary when opposite-sex couples can procreate with or without marriage.”
Daughtrey reveals both her ignorance and her liberal view that government creates reality.
A man and woman who engage in reproductive-type sexual activity (i.e., coitus) and conceive a child are in reality married because the central defining features of marriage are sexual differentiation and coitus. Marriage has a nature that predates the existence of formal legal institutions. Opposite-sex couples aren’t marriedbecause the government issues them a license. The government issues them a license to formalize marriage, which becomes actualized through conjugal unions—not through inherently sterile mutual masturbatory activity. Couples who engage in conjugal activity prior to acquiring a marriage license are in reality married. It isn’t the government that creates marriage. Government merely recognizes and regulates a type of union that in reality exists. We call that type of union marriage.
Since government does not create marriage, it cannot un-create it or recreate it. Thus, legally allowing two people of the same-sex to “marry” does not mean they’re married in anything other than a legal (de jure) sense. They are not married in reality because in reality marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation, and without which a union is not marital.
If some silly government officials decided to issue dog licenses to cats because both dogs and cats have fur and four legs, some citizens—it is hoped—would recognize that dogs are in reality not cats because cats have natures that don’t change because the government issues a license.
Harm to children
The Left claims that children are “harmed” by not having their same-sex parents married. Since the Left worships at the woefully unstable altar of social science research, have liberal judges asked attorneys for homosexual couples to provide conclusive, incontrovertible sociological research demonstrating the ways these children are measurably harmed. Are children being raised by unmarried homosexual parents scoring lower on standardized tests? Are they abusing drugs and alcohol at higher rates than are children whose homosexual parents are married? What are the statistics on mental illness? Are their peer relationships more unstable?
If there is research demonstrating that these children suffer, have researchers controlled for all the factors that may contribute to their suffering? Is it the legal marital status of their parents that causes the harm or might it be the absence of either a mother or a father? Even President Barack Obama has publicly stated that both mothers and fathers are critical to children’s lives, and all children haveboth a mother and a father—even though some children are being deprived of relationships with them through the purchase of their DNA. Does it make sense that the marital status of homosexual parents would cause harm but being denied either a mother or father would not?
Some homosexual couples appeal to the self-consciousness their children feel about their parents not being legally married as evidence that same-sex “marriage” should be legalized. What does it mean then when children being raised by homosexuals feel self-conscious about not having a mother or a father?
Ironically, while the Left has been effective in selling the redefinition of marriage by asserting that marriage has nothing to do with procreation, William Harbison, attorney for the Tennessee same-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit Court case, complained that traditional marriage laws exclude “same-sex couples from anything related to procreation.” So, procreation matters in marriage law but only in so far as it satisfies the procreative desires of those who choose to be in inherently non-procreative relationships. While arguing that marriage is solely constituted by love and has nothing to do with procreation, “progressives” then use children’s needs, desires, and rights as a justification for changing the legal definition of marriage.
Let’s follow the logic of this revised revisionist view of marriage. If it’s love, commitment, and the presence of children (though not the begetting of children) that constitute “marriage,” then plural unions, incestuous unions, or any relational contexts in which children are being raised must logically be recognized as marriages.
Once the public becomes persuaded that love is all there is when it comes to marriage, they will start clamoring for the legalization of plural and incestuous unions. Once the notion that any adults raising children are entitled to have their relationships recognized as “marriages,” then judges will be obliged to find legal rationales to jettison requirements regarding monogamy and consanguinity from the legal definition of marriage—oh, unless doing so would cause the sky to fall in, which we won’t know until decades after platonic, plural, and incestuous marriages are legalized. Once marriages are no longer restricted to erotic/sexual unions, the minimum age requirement too becomes irrelevant.
And at long last, we will arrive at the end game for the far Left: the destruction of marriage. Once society concludes that marriage is wholly a social construct with no objective nature, and once all criteria that define marriage are jettisoned so that any persons or number of persons can “marry,” marriage ceases to exist. Once marriage is anything, it’s nothing, with no relevance to the public good.
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