Relay For Life and the moral compass

I posted the note below in April 2009, after a successful Relay For Life. We'll be doing the Relay again next month, this time not at the behest of the kids, though some of them will be joining us. This time we adults have some personal drive to Relay, as many people we love have been touched or taken by cancer this year.

When I read the story at LifeNews calling for a boycott of Relay For Life and likening participation to supporting Nazi  experiments at Dachau, I decided to revisit this issue.

We can have a conversation on stem cell research, sure.  I will insist that you understand 1) we are not talking about embryos but about cells that are destined for destruction, and 2)  someone close to me has been benefiting from all that research lately so my opinion is more hardened now.

What I won't do is offer respect to or "tolerance" to the idea that a community coming together to raise precious funds for research, education, and care can be compared in any way to Nazis, or the suggestion that any compassionate God would tell a kid or their parent to stand down when given the opportunity to be of help. 

When I write below about the baggage that comes with the word "religion", this is what I mean. I have come to terms with the fact that a large minority of "Christians" have hijacked the very concept in order to construct a world in their own image. They make me terribly angry, but I can hold the concept of religion apart from them.  I don't wonder why other people, especially young people, can't, however.

Anyway, my note below. It was popular a couple of years ago. I still feel pretty good about it.

 April 27, 2009

So yes, this weekend was all about Relay for Life. And in addition to the tired and the proud and the giggles I brought home with me, I brought some thoughts that keep swirling through my brain.

 First, I should make clear: we relay because some of our kids feel very strongly about this cause. One of them has been relaying every year since he lost his mom to cancer. A couple more wanted to get involved when their grandmother was diagnosed. So we relay as a team because they asked: not because the grown ups thought it was a swell idea.

 But that's not what my note is about. My note is about who my community is, who our kids are, and how sick I am of being told by mainstream so-called moral leaders that religious or political liberalism means the death of a moral society.

 The Relay kicks off with a ceremony. The Boy Scouts raise the flag, followed by the pledge of allegiance and the singing of the national anthem. Then there's a prayer.

 My kids are in a church group, yes. But some of them (most, maybe) have difficulty with identifying themselves as "religious", for many of the same reasons that liberal adults do. "Religion", unfortunately, is a word with baggage. It carries with it notions of dogma and conformity and unreason. It brings visions of group-think and bigotry and mob mentality. It carries an idea of "God" that many are uncomfortable with.

 So we try to talk a lot about what it means to be us- to be a part of a liberal religion, where we are encouraged to figure it all out according to our own conscience, and to support each other on our paths. We talk of religion as a joining together, rather than as a school of thought.

 So a local minister offered a prayer on Saturday morning.

 He began rather beautifully. He asked for God to be with us as we recall the people we've lost, as we celebrate the people who're still fighting, to recognize and be with us in our pain. I'm a Universalist at heart, and so it's reflexive for me to translate certain words so that they work for my own spirituality. I don't have to picture or to speak to that minister's idea of God, and I don't ask for direct intercession while I hear and internalize his words. That's not part of my world.

 And this is the kind of prayer I am comfortable discussing with the kids. How we can take the prayer and make it meaningful to ourselves, appreciate the love that the minister is trying to communicate, respect the fact that he has a very different path than we do.

 Ah, but then he went on.

 He began to speak to his God about the sins of our society, the things we do, the policies we embrace, which are against God and which doom us to things like cancer.

 He went on to decry the removal of prayer from schools, and how we're raising successive generations of Americans without a moral compass.

 At that point, I checked out. Literally. I left the stands and went on a supply run, thinking all the way out, speak for yourself, asshole.

 Because my kids- and especially my son- do not lack a "moral compass". They somehow do not need engraved tablets to tell them how to behave in a civilized society. They somehow have developed empathy and compassion and respect without prayer in school, or, for that matter, in church.

 They have these things because they are each brilliant and deep and they are encouraged to think about what they believe, about what responsible action means, about what they want the world to look like and what their place is in that world. They have these inherent qualities because they are surrounded with family and community who care about them and who model right behavior, and who demand the same from them.

My kids weren't tramping around making noise and talking loudly during the Luminaria ceremony and the reading of the names. My kids weren't stealing food and making disgusting messes that no one cleaned up. My kids weren't yelling "GIMME THAT, YOU QUEER!" at each other in the middle of the night. My kids are silly and passionate, and held forth on neuroscience and male/female differences and ageism and a host of other topics all night, challenging the adults when they didn't agree with us. 

My kids weren't unchaperoned. While the majority of the teen teams were completely without responsible traditional Christian adults all night, my kids had crazy liberal grown ups sitting with them in camp, and they put up with my nagging (and usually reassure me that it's ok when I nag like the middle aged mom that I am).

My kids, in short, rock. And they're the people that I want to create society as they grow. They're the ones who give me hope that the world will not only go on, but will become a better place, in small ways and large, as they take charge.

So stop telling me that liberalism is the scourge of morality.

And no, my son doesn't need your prayer in his school. He'd only question it afterward, anyway, and I doubt the faculties of the local middle and high schools posses the background in theology you'd need to argue with him or answer his questions.

So that's what the kids are calling it

Ted Haggard says he's probably "what the kids call bisexual."  Ok.

These days when I see his face all I can think is, that poor man. What a huge lonely gaping wound he is.

GQ profile here.

Hope

Via SFGate:

Outrage and anguish over the passage of Proposition 8 has spurred massive street protests throughout California, and leaders of the gay and lesbian community believe the backlash could spark an unprecedented nationwide push for gay rights.

Today, same-sex marriage supporters have planned simultaneous protests throughout California and in all 50 states, as well as cities in Canada, England and Australia.
It's a never-before-seen response, surpassing in size and scope even the 1969 Stonewall riots, which started the modern gay rights movement after New York City police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar.

I had planned on heading downtown for the protest, but will instead join the locals in front of City Hall at 11:30 am.
If it's true that this vote has activated a new civil rights movement across the nation, then maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe it leads to the repeal of DOMA and a Supreme Court decision that protects the Constitutional rights of every family, every couple.
We can hope.

Last word (for today)

Scott's comments are really very good. So here they are:

The day after Prop 8 passed, Vicki asked me some pointed questions about the nature of possible challenges and the validity of her brother's marriage about three months ago. My bottom line reply was that she was asking for $5 Million of legal analysis in 15 minutes, and that as good as I am I don't bill at $20 Million an hour.

Fortunately, the ACLU, LAMBDA, among others have all opened fire with direct review to the California Supreme Court. Along with several highly respected appellate firms, the plaintiffs challenging Prop 8 have the best representation possible.

Interesting issues include the procedural validity of Prop 8's purported amendment to the state constitution, retroactivity (the AG's statement is not precedent, although I agree with his analysis), and one meaty issue I noticed November 5 (apparently validated by ACLU), that Prop 8 speaks only to the validity of same sex marriages, but does NOT address the Equal Protection Clause of the state constitution. Prop 8 could have avoided this thorny issue by adding the words "Notwithstanding the Equal Protection Clause of this Constitution . . ." So there is a patent contradiction between the purported amendment and the Equal Protection Clause.

Prop 22, by contrast (which amended the California Family Code, not the state constitution) was struck down by the California Supreme Court as violating the state Equal Protection Clause. The constitutional right of course trumped the statutory restriction.

The absence of the prefatory language in Prop 8 was doubtless intentional, as the Mormon Church also has very good attorneys.

In the end this is purely political, even though the legal issues are fascinating. By not including that prefatory language, the drafters of Prop 8 simply created one more issue to litigate, thereby ensuring the “issue” remain active that much longer.

Not surprisingly, the backers of Prop 8 are in business, and business has been very, very good for them. Unfortunately the product they sell is hate and fear.

The longer they can keep the manufactured "issue" of gay marriage alive (cf. the politically conceived term "partial birth abortion"), the longer they can continue to sell their product: "we hate fags." We shouldn’t be overconfident, however, since in 2004 Karl Rove proved this to be a very, very successful product.

But take heart that the righteous fight for a properly expansive interpretation of equal protection under the law and for marriage equality is being fought by the best available. Until then, let’s raise our voices in righteous indignation.

Playing devil’s advocate is essential to being an effective attorney. I, however, am simply confounded by the opposition, meaning either that I’m lacking professional chops, or that the proponents of Prop 8 and its ilk totally lack logic and merit. I doubt very seriously that the problem is any lack of skill on my part.

ed note: Vicki is a friend of ours. Her brother was married this summer to the love of his life. The family rejoiced that, for the first time since he hit adolescence and knew who he was, he was a full member of society, with all of the rights and responsibilities and sheer joy that accompanies that.

California weeps, Arkansas sticks its head up its ass

Nate Silver reminds us that the vote for prop 8 was really a generational phenom, rather than a race or class or geography phenom. And Nate is always right, about everything. At least, so far.

And Dan Savage has an oped in the NYT today, reminding us that our state may be full of stupid, but at least we're not Arkansas.

But while Californians march and gay activists contemplate a national boycott of Utah — the Mormon Church largely bankrolled Proposition 8 — an even more ominous new law in Arkansas has drawn little notice.
That state’s Proposed Initiative Act No. 1, approved by nearly 57 percent of voters last week, bans people who are “cohabitating outside a valid marriage” from serving as foster parents or adopting children. While the measure bans both gay and straight members of cohabitating couples as foster or adoptive parents, the Arkansas Family Council wrote it expressly to thwart “the gay agenda.” Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Savage was also rather good on Colbert last night.

A word on prop 8, and what we each do now

The passage of prop 8 in my state makes me sick. We were right to oppose it, the only arguments made for writing discrimination into our constitution were/are religious, emotional, or outright lies. The Equality For All campaign ran a straight up, honest, and simple opposition, which I think should have been more effective. It was the right campaign to run, and the fight is not over yet. Poised as we all are to continue the fight, I'm concerned now about the anger we're all feeling, and mistakes we may make that will have short and long term impact on our communities.

I spent all day working the polls for No on 8. I worked with a woman who'd just been married. I worked with an 18 year old boy whose conservative religious parents were voting no, for him, and because they realized that prop 8 was not a vote on morality, prop 8 is the denial of civil rights. Period.

I attended two training sessions for the No on 8 campaign, each conducted by very dedicated and talented field organizers, who also happened to be lesbians, who also happened to be married to each other. One of them is a minister, ordained in the Disciples of Christ in the early '80s. Talk about a trail blazer. And the local head of the effort is a good friend of mine. So over the course of the campaign, I became well versed in the aims and focus designed to beat this initiative. It was, and is, very simple. This is about civil rights. This is not about religion, or morality, it isn't really even about marriage. We are free to disagree on all of those fronts. This is about whether we, as a people, believe that our laws should be used to deny certain rights to a specific group, based not on their actions but on who they are. Based on god-given characteristics of their humanity.

The No campaign invested in very sophisticated marketing information. Early on, phone calls were made to the base- people who are almost certainly no votes, as determined by shopping patterns or whatever. Then, the calls shifted to the middle- the people who probably had not made their mind up one war or the other, or who perhaps leaned in our direction and needed to be committed. The press of time, the sheer number of people we needed to reach was the driving reason behind the decision not to engage probable yes voters.

This also meant that we did not intentionally go into the African American community, particularly its churches, and I believe this was the campaign's sole mistake. The African American community understandably does not appreciate it when people try to equate marriage or anything else with slavery and Jim Crow. But I do believe that talking about civil rights and denial of such by law may have touched a portion of the community.

Anyway. We didn't do that, and the courts will probably have to fulfill their traditional role here. Congress could do its part by repealing DOMA. That's worth fighting for. Get used to calling Washington. I think we may even get used to Washington paying attention to us in the coming years.

It's also worth it to get out into the streets, wave your No on 8 signs and rainbow flags, vent the frustration, just mourn the wrongness. Be a presence, a witness, for justice and equality and the values of the American Constitution. Let your heart break wide open with people who share your values, and be a comfort to each other.

While we're venting frustration and seeking our comfort, though, let's not go out of our way to close hearts on the other side. Over the week I've received several suggestions that just don't work for me, and I don't believe they'll do the fight any good.

- When you're painting your signs, refrain from calling people haters and bigots. Some people will change their minds on this issue, probably after some personal experience. They almost certainly will not change their mind because someone called them a name or accused them of bigotry.

- Asking the IRS to investigate the Mormon Church, or any other church, just isn't a good idea. Firstly, churches are within their legal rights to engage in issues based advocacy, and that includes organizing, lobbying, and fund raising. Hell, my denomination has a legislative ministry office in Sacramento and a Washington Office for Advocacy. We're the good guys, and the right loves to threaten us over our tax exemption (FUN FACT! The Nixon Administration even went after us, because our Beacon Press published the Pentagon Papers.). And remember All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena? The right went after them in 2004 after the minister did a sermon on war. They also held an interfaith No on 8 service two weeks ago.

I'm not trying to pretend that churches on the right don't engage in what is clearly disallowed partisan activity. But that isn't what this campaign was. Nothing comes from these IRS attacks, because the churches probably haven't done anything illegal. Don't stoop to the level of the Nixon administration.

- Likewise please don't go marching to churches and calling everyone inside bigots. I think it's wrong when nativists protest outside United Church of Christ in Simi for providing sanctuary, and I think it's wrong to protest outside a church who disagrees with us- even when what they have done is dishonest and hurtful. The marketing decisions were not made by the people who are entering the church for some sacred space and time. Leave them be. Doing otherwise will just harden people in their fears.

- While we're at it: do we really want to attack our local business community? I mean, if they had Yes on 8 signs posted in their windows, ok, avoid that store. I will, too. But what about Lassen's in Ventura, or El Coyote in LA? Lassen's owners, who've been part of our community for years and whose presence has always been positive, happen to be Mormon. And at El Coyote, a Mormon member of the family made a personal contribution to the Yes on 8 campaign. (Jess wrote about this perfectly, please read)

But these are individual, private actions, encouraged by the leaders of these peoples' churches. Will going to war with their employers or their storefronts accomplish anything positive? In the cases of Lassen's and El Coyote, do we really want to destroy places where we experience community bonds, meeting places where we are not merely anonymous consumers? Perhaps, instead, we could strengthen these community bonds by directly addressing the issue: by al means write to the owners of Lassen's and tell them why their support of this issue concerns you. Go to Margie's lunch at El Coyote and talk to her. Provide the kind of personal experience that leads people to change their minds on this issue.

When we win this battle, we will have done so on the merits. Because it is right. Let's not leave bruised and angry churches in our wake, suspicious of thuggery and ever more convinced of some militant "homosexual agenda". It just won't work.

The Constitution is on our side. Discrimination is wrong. We can disagree on religion, morality, and even marriage, but we cannot write discrimination into our laws. It's wrong. It's unfair.

People will change. With personal conversations and experiences, they will change. Like the parents of the boy I volunteered with. People will regret their support of this proposition, like Margie at El Coyote. But not because we bully them. Because it is right.

updated this morning because this is just not a well written post, but it's very important to me.

Saddleback forum: my final word (I think)

After the previous post, I spent some time watching replay of the Obama segment, and spent some time on the phone with a pal who was unnerved by McCain's answers and outraged that the forum was held before such a friendly audience. I think, however, that the vent has to be, for Obama, a net positive, for the following reasons.

Obama was thoughtful and gave mostly clear, concise, answers. As congregants at Saddleback told Salon's Mike Madden yesterday, they came away having seen an authentic man, a principled man, a man that was worthy of respect and their attention, even if they weren't going to vote for him in the fall (after all, as one pointed out, they are the people who make $250k or more, and don't think they are wealthy, as they still "struggle" to keep all that they have acquired).

The Saddleback congregation wasn' the only audience, though. And if middle-of-the-road voters across the nation got to experience that same authenticity and thoughtfulness, how can that be a negative? In a campaign season where the biggest themes running against Obama seem to be his "elitism", his not really being"like us", the "who is he and why should we trust him?" theme, how can it be bad for him to have an extended open conversation in such a sensational forum?

There are segments of the voting population who will vote for John McCain no matter what happens: they are hard-line "pro-lifers", or reflexive anti-taxers, or so deeply partisan that John McCain could spend the rest of campaign season in a bunny suit handing out peeps and singing camp songs and he wouldn't lose their vote because he's a republican.

There are still the Tony Perkins and James Dobsons of the world, and their email lists of people like my mom who will always vote for whomever they label "conservative" enough in their version of "Judeo-Christian values". There are the audiences of Jerome Corsi and Rush Limbaugh and Mchael Savage and others who will absorb every lie they hear and presume that they now know everything there is to know about the Senator form Illinois.

And there are people who are either still devoted to President Bush, or completely in love with McCain's prisoner of war stories.

Obama will never, not in a million years, get a vote from these people.

But any chance he gets to reveal himself in an extended, authentic way before a national audience, any time he can spend which is not devoted to answering smears and misrepresentations, is a net positive. Because he's that good, that smart, that real.

Aside: memo to the McCain camp on the "Cone of Silence" :

It's not so much that anyone would question the honesty of "A John McCain, a former prisoner of war", it's that we question the deviousness and history of cheats and low blows by his campaign staff.

In other words, don't ask us to trust the integrity of the candidate when we know the campaign is run by Karl Rove and his accolytes.

Saddleback forum: initial impressions

I think the only problem I have with this forum taking place at a church is that it's only going to take place at a church. That is to say: this kind of forum, this "conversation", as Barack called it, should be taking place every day, in many venues, so that the electorate isn't making decisions based on a single talk radio show and a few campaign ads.

Yes, we'll have the official debates, but not enough of them. And the moderation may or may not be good.

The format: on the plus side, no "gotchas". Each asked the same question, not playing off one another.
On the downside: no follow-ups. For instance, when McCain talked about torture, he got to say that he was against it. No follow up on his capitulation to the president on this issue.

I was out all day, so missed most of Obama. Saw all of McCain.

Hated the "I don't want to raise taxes" speech. It was based on two false points.
1: The Republican canard that we will all magically get rich together. As my husband says, societies will always have ditch diggers, and this get rich together! fantasy never addresses them.
2: Did you know that the congress committed a few million dollars to some mammal paternity research thing? McCain made a good joke on this line ("I don't know if this was a legal issue"), but the truth, as any economist or budget analyst knows, is that eliminating these little earmarks alone will never solve our budget woes. McCain also knows that he's been as skilled as almost any of them at bringing home the bacon.

Hated the "choice and competition" bit on education. Build public education because it is for the public and the national good. Period.
I really believe that a lot of parents make the choice to keep their kids out of the public school system because they have been told, over and over again, that it won't serve them, and the only solution is home-schooling or vouchers.

Really did not like McCain's response on marriage equality, because saying people of same gender can make "legal arrangements" falsely suggests that these "legal arrangements" offer the same protections as a legal marriage. They do not even come close, and I am sure the Senator knows this.

Barack seemed comfortable and open during the portion I saw. Really appreciated the final answer, he'd tell Americans that great sacrifice may be required of our generation, and we should be up to the task, as our parents and grandparents were. Much more appealing to me than "My friends, we should all be rich."

Just by the way: on a very personal level, I really resented McCain's response to the wealth question. He spoke about people who've suddenly lost jobs, insurance, etc, and then said something about giving people hope. No, asshole. I have hope. I want an income and some upward mobility. Which I will continue to work toward, if you and your pals will stop wreaking havoc on the national economic playing field.

I don't like being lectured about rich people being unhappy by a man in $500 shoes while I'm sitting at home wondering about how I'll make enough money to keep paying my mortgage this year.

The CNN heads are going to do "analysis" now. Let's see how big the war hero worship can get.

Saturday local focus: CVUSD and Mike Dunn

Here in the Conejo Valley, we're blessed with good schools. Parents in LA Unified and elsewhere through the state have to weigh scores and hope that they can get their kid into a reasonably good public school somewhere in their district; here there really isn't a bad option.

The schools are different from one another, certainly. One thing that has changed a great deal since I was a CVUSD student is the level of parent involvement. Back in the day, parents weren't involved with schools so much as required to pay attention now and again. Yes, there was the PTA, but kids, for the most part, got up and walked or biked to school and developed their relationships with teachers and brought home report cards. Parents showed up for plays and the occasional conference, and complained to the principle when something got in their craw.

Now parents are everywhere in the school experience. Parents raise money to offset budget cuts. They volunteer in classrooms. We know our kid's teachers- what music they like and maybe where they went to school and how many pets they have, in addition to their teaching style. Parent involvement has a lot to do with the character of your neighborhood school. If you live in a neighborhood with a high concentration of artists, musicians, people who work in entertainment, your school probably has a very strong arts focus. Likewise science, sports, and multi-cultural events.

But the schools also have dedicated, talented, loving staff. I have been thrilled each year with my kid's teachers- all of them different in style and focus, all of them offering inspiration and support, all of them providing life lessons and academic skill to a diverse student population. We also have a really amazing child care program in CVUSD. It costs very little, and surprises me every year with the professionalism of the staff.

When I moved back to TO after years away, I was a mom expecting that the school district would never be able to meet the demands I have for my kid's education. I had been convinced that schools were in such decline, that educational standards were so low, that our family would have to resort to private schools.

I was so wrong. And the school board is primarily responsible for strength of our district.

Standards are, in general, much lower here in the US than I think they should be. Our kids are not required to do enough in depth science, history, geography, etc. The "Three Rs" advocates that I recall from my youth have largely succeeded in shrinking education down to reading, writing, and 'rithmatic. But here in the Conejo Valley, I have seen teachers and staff (and parents) who strive to broaden the curriculum and each child's academic exposure, against painful and repeated budget cuts and increasing testing demands (which focus solely on the "Three Rs").

The biggest fights around here used to be over which math curriculum to teach (and no, I really have no problem with "everyday math"). Used to be. Until Mike Dunn was elected to the school board, giving voice and power to a weird subset of people who seem to have made it their life's work to denegrate and demonize the school board.

Dunn has been a frustrating and very expensive presence on the board since his tenure began. Styling himself as the "voice of the parents" he has sowed division and controversy at every opportunity, slandered the service of the other board members repeatedly, and cost the district thousands and thousands of dollars in legal expenses every time he pulls some bone-headed illegal maneuver. He hates the teachers union, and that has been an ongoing issue, because he won't play by the rules when dealing with them, resulting in more legal costs. He won't even learn the rules, since he considers the training that's been offered him brainwashing.

Two years ago, when elections came around, Dunn had recruited a raft of candidates that would give his views an easy majority. They had a sizable evangelical contingent behind them, not to mention the Stricklands. It was pretty worrisome, for me and families like mine, and the teachers I had come to know and respect so deeply, and the volunteers who work closely with the district and the PTA. In the end, all three incumbents running were reelected, including Dunn. Which said, to me, that residents really didn't know the board, just voting the incumbents because everything seemed to be going ok. There is no other reason that anyone would cast a ballot for both Dunn and Tim Stephens.

There will be another election this fall, and the climate has changed here, dramatically. Due to declining enrollment and repeated state budget cuts, the district made the painful decision to close two elementary schools. It created a panel to review objective data and determine which schools should be closed. The panel worked for several months, as I recall, and then made its recommendations.

Then followed the great school closure fight, which got ugly and classist and racist very quickly (and when one parent group threatens to call the INS on another parent group, I don't know what to call it other than racism). I know that not all parents involved in the fight were into the ugly parts, but still: it was everyone out for themselves, with no regard for what their "win" would mean for other families, or the rest of the district.

My kid came home one day and asked if he could paint "Save " on his clothes. We said no. He could paint "Save ALL of our schools" if he wanted to, but his school staying open meant that another kid's school would close, and we care about that kid, too.

There's still fighting in the works, as one of the schools scheduled for closure is applying for magnet status. For the most part, the biggest hubbub has died down. But hundreds and hundreds of families were following this issue closely and actively- school board meetings had to be held in high school auditoriums. And of those hundreds of parents, I will bet that most of them were getting their first look at trustee Mike Dunn, the "voice of the parents".

Dunn, off course, convinced all of them that their schools could remain open, if only the other board members weren't so stubborn, refusing to look at other options. And his affected persona, his outsider status, his renegade "voice of the parents" act, has been enhanced to a great degree for people who know little else about him, or the other board members, or the work that any of them have done during their tenures.

I have exchanged email with Dunn on several occasions: once, when he was first elected, because I was a bit disturbed by his website (which became another legal issue for him a couple of years ago). Later, we had a few exchanges over the Glencoe high school biology curriculum, which he used in his culture war against all the liberal monsters he imagines under the bed.

I have thought a good deal about whether to publish his words, whether that's really fair game, as when he wrote them, he was writing to a parent, not a reporter. But I decided that he was writing as a public servant, and the public who will choose whether to vote for him and his new recruits this fall should probably know who the man really is, and then decide if they want him having a majority on the board when it makes decisions that affect our kids and their teachers.

So, email 1. I wrote:

Hello Mr. Dunn:

I am a parent, my child has registered in a CVUSD school for the first time this year. I am also a member of my church's Faith in Action group, and we're interested in school board activities, among other things.

I have been researching current members of CVUSD board, as you're new, I have questions regarding some statements you make on your website. I would appreciate your clarification. I specifically would like clarification on the following:

1) Please explain "freedom of all religions".
2) Please explain "support for other traditional family values".

Thank you,

And yes, I put in the part about church intentionally, because I wanted him to be honest. It wasn't a lie, though.

He responded:

Evidence supports my conclusion that groups like the ACLU are trying to purge from this country all public expression of religion. I can also present evidence that suffering in our society is increasing as the influence of religion and moral absolutes is declining. The worst example is the rise in the number of unwed mothers.
I contend that if religion had more influence in the public schools that we would have fewer drug problems, unwed births and disciplinary problems.
To reduce suffering and to promote stable families, I will support freedom of all religions in the public schools. Judism, Christianity and Islam all desent from Abraham and Moses.
All three monotheistic religions promote moral absolutes.
My support for traditional family values is in response to attacks from some secular groups against groups like the Boy Scouts. People like George Soros are aggresively using judicial dictators to promote a Godless humanistic society. They want kaos and no limits on morality.
No right or wrong. Sounds tempting until you look at the rates of unwed mothers, drug abuse and crime in the parts of this country where they dominate.
My primary motive is to make our world a better place to live in. Serving on this school board is one step of many to accomplish this objective. I remember a happier, healthier, country when I grew up in the 1950's.
Thank you for writing me. I would be glad exchange ideas with you.
Sincerely,

This post is long, so I won't comment further. But there will be more.

So funny...

... it almost hurts.

Some far-right sites that subscribe to the Associated Press feed, for example, will use auto-correct to change "Democratic Party" to "Democrat Party." This, of course, is because they have the temperament of children.

But the American Family Association's OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right group replaces the word "gay" in the articles with the word "homosexual." I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy.

The problem, of course, is that "gay" does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. [...]

"Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. [...]

Homosexual didn't get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead.... Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: "A little fatigued."

from the War Room

The birthrate thing

Very interesting article in todays NY Times Magazine on declining birthrates in Europe, which, as you've undoubtably heard, mean that selfish, secular, childless women are opening the gates for the fertile muslim hordes to enter and destroy western civilization.

You haven't heard that? Well you clearly don't read the right books.

Data indicates, according to the article, that the decline in birthrate is higher in societies that have not really embraced modern family paradigms. Meaning, the need for women to work butting up against a society that expects them to stay home with the kids.

In Scandanavia, the welfare state helps families make ends meet, supports life/work balance with paid leave, and offers child care and education for the very young. And Scandanavian birth rates are substantially higher than in Southern Italy, where economic realities mean that young people live at home longer, and when they venture into marriage there is no social or economic "safety net" if they decide to procreate.

In the US, the welfare safety net may not be generous, but the society at least accepts changing gender roles, and there are resources for families to get started. And women will not be cast forever out of the work force if they stay home for a few years, the risk of temporarily giving up their jobs or careers is not nearly as great as in more traditionalist cultures. Hence, the birthrate here is substantially higher than in southern Europe, Japan, etc.

But also fascniating is this question: on a planet that is increasingly taxed by overpopulation, can't the declining birth rate be viewed as a net positive?

In one German region (Germany has perhaps the lowest birthrate in Europe), local officials and the BauHaus Institute are busily reimagining villages that have shrunk by 25% or more. And their visions are inspiring. They see not economic and social collapse, but renewal and long-term vitality.

Anyway, good read, much food for thought.

But then, I'm a feminist with 1 kid and no plans for more, so maybe you should go to mass rather than listening to me.

Stuff that's so funny I lack the imagination to have made it up

Via:

Senators Craig and Vitter are cosponsoring SJ res 43, a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Not clear: whether adults wearing diapers or trolling for sex in restroom stalls are specifically included in the classes "man" or "woman".