“We [should] reclaim the civil rights movement,” Glenn Beck said, with a straight face no less, three months ago on his radio broadcast. “We are on the right side of history, individual freedoms, and liberties. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place.”
We? Who is we?
Marian Anderson on the Lincoln Memorial Steps, Easter Sunday 1939.
Emmett Till.
Rosa Parks.
Medger Evers.
Michael Schwerner.
Jimmie Jackson.
James Reeb.
Viola Liuzzo.
Cynthia Wesley.
Andrew Goodman.
Denise McNair.
James Chaney.
Addie Mae Collins.
Little Rock 7.
Charlene Hunter.
James Meredith.
Robert Kennedy.
Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Martin Luther King.on the Lincoln Memorial steps -- and in Memphis.
Where was Glenn Beck?
The “we” to which Glenn Beck belongs is the “we” that said no.
The “we” he belonged to cried out for ---
“States Rights” IE white rights to enslave the black population
“Local Control” IE white rights to keep the black population uneducated and the white population in power
“Socialism!” IE decrying the Congress passing equal rights laws and the executive enforcing equal rights laws
“Communism!” IE White supremacists branding their equal rights opponents with a Russian system when the equal rights proponents insisted that black and whites get equal opportunities to the best jobs.
“Tyranny!” IE white supremacists complaining when their civil rights opponents insisted that blacks vote free in all the elections, too.
Where was Beck any way in the 1950s and 1960s whenever black people and their allies cried, “freedom” ?
I find Glenn Beck’s fatuous, dishonorable effrontery utterly monumental.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
RIGHT ASCENSION'S MARRIAGE EDITORIAL IN ITS ENTIRETY
On Friday, 13 August, the Deseret News editorial page published a letter to the editor that I wrote.
I do not like the way the editorial page editor edited my original letter. I reproduce the published version and, after that, my original unedited letter for your consideration.
First the edited version:
A father and a mother
Deseret News
letter to the editor
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700056325/A-father-and-a-mother.html
Published: Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 12:00 a.m. MDT
Marriage is not an arrangement between two people; it is a covenant between four entities: a man, a woman, God and/or the culture in which the couple live, and children — whose interests always get lost amid the legalistic smoke generated by same-gender marriage controversies.
Heterosexuals damaged marriage more than any other group. They, after all, created marriage definitions, traditions and laws to include polygamy, mistresses, dowries, la casa grande and la casa bonita, quick divorces, and institutional acceptance of violence against women and children. Their liberalized marriage laws made a successful marriage harder to achieve. After we accept many of these bogus assumptions, marriage between same-gender couples is just another small leap. Backward.
We should allow and accept the companionship legalities and domestic arrangements that consenting adults want. The law should accept both gay and straight domestic partnerships with unblinking legal equality and objectivity. A child, however, deserves both a father and a mother in a family. A father is not an afterthought.
Now my original letter, with the crucial cut highlighted:
Marriage is not an arrangement between 2 people; it is a covenant between 4 entities: a man, a woman, God and/or the culture in which the couple live, and children – whose interests always get lost amid the legalistic smoke generated by same-gender marriage controversies.
Heterosexuals damaged marriage more than any other group. They, after all, created marriage definitions / traditions / laws to include polygamy, mistresses, doweries, la casa grande and la casa bonita, quick divorces, institutional acceptance of violence against women and children. Their liberalized marriage laws allowing people of different cultures, classes, nations, and races to marry in fact made successful marriages harder to achieve. After we accept many of these bogus assumptions, marriage between same-gender couples is just another small leap. Backwards.
We should allow and accept the companionship legalities and domestic arrangements that consenting adults want. The law should accept both gay and straight domestic partnerships with unblinking legal equality and objectivity. A child, however, deserves both a father and a mother in a family. A father is not an afterthought.
RIGHT ASCENSION AFTERTHOUGHT
Men and women of different cultures, classes, nations, and races do have a moral and legal right to marry each other. It does not follow, though, that they have created marriage that will be inherently more successful,
I do not like the way the editorial page editor edited my original letter. I reproduce the published version and, after that, my original unedited letter for your consideration.
First the edited version:
A father and a mother
Deseret News
letter to the editor
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700056325/A-father-and-a-mother.html
Published: Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 12:00 a.m. MDT
Marriage is not an arrangement between two people; it is a covenant between four entities: a man, a woman, God and/or the culture in which the couple live, and children — whose interests always get lost amid the legalistic smoke generated by same-gender marriage controversies.
Heterosexuals damaged marriage more than any other group. They, after all, created marriage definitions, traditions and laws to include polygamy, mistresses, dowries, la casa grande and la casa bonita, quick divorces, and institutional acceptance of violence against women and children. Their liberalized marriage laws made a successful marriage harder to achieve. After we accept many of these bogus assumptions, marriage between same-gender couples is just another small leap. Backward.
We should allow and accept the companionship legalities and domestic arrangements that consenting adults want. The law should accept both gay and straight domestic partnerships with unblinking legal equality and objectivity. A child, however, deserves both a father and a mother in a family. A father is not an afterthought.
Now my original letter, with the crucial cut highlighted:
Marriage is not an arrangement between 2 people; it is a covenant between 4 entities: a man, a woman, God and/or the culture in which the couple live, and children – whose interests always get lost amid the legalistic smoke generated by same-gender marriage controversies.
Heterosexuals damaged marriage more than any other group. They, after all, created marriage definitions / traditions / laws to include polygamy, mistresses, doweries, la casa grande and la casa bonita, quick divorces, institutional acceptance of violence against women and children. Their liberalized marriage laws allowing people of different cultures, classes, nations, and races to marry in fact made successful marriages harder to achieve. After we accept many of these bogus assumptions, marriage between same-gender couples is just another small leap. Backwards.
We should allow and accept the companionship legalities and domestic arrangements that consenting adults want. The law should accept both gay and straight domestic partnerships with unblinking legal equality and objectivity. A child, however, deserves both a father and a mother in a family. A father is not an afterthought.
RIGHT ASCENSION AFTERTHOUGHT
Men and women of different cultures, classes, nations, and races do have a moral and legal right to marry each other. It does not follow, though, that they have created marriage that will be inherently more successful,
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Inspired by the Walker ruling on Proposition 8, AN EDITORIAL ON THE DEFINITIONS OF MODERN MARRIAGE
On 4 August, Judge Walker ruled unconstitutional California Proposition 8 defining marriage in California as a domestic arrangement between one man and one woman. His logic, such as it was, seems along the lines of what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, and in the 21st century we cannot go around following the foolish old traditions of our fathers. Some bigots will probably try to make an issue of Judge Walker’s sexual preferences, but few associated with the case cared to do so. American culture for year has allowed heterosexual married judges make rulings about marriages.
Heterosexuals ruined the concept of marriage ages ago. They saw nothing wrong in defining heterosexual marriage in polygamist terms, in terms of la casa grande and la casa bonita, and in terms of man-woman companionship of various types and stripes. Heterosexuals for ages allowed violence to become part of marriage traditions and laws. Heterosexuals made divorce more prevalent and easier to obtain.
Meanwhile in Salt Lake City, the public communications department of the Church of Jesus Christ issued a statement expressing regrets at the judge’s decision. We would hope the Brethren and their department could come up with a line more sophisticated than [paraphrase here] God ordained marriage between a man and a woman and that’s the way it has always been and that is the way it just has to be sort of stuff. The P C department does a fine job making God look like some sort of bigot.
For Mormons with parents or children who prefer same gender relationships, this current situation resolves itself by whom do they list best – the Brethren or their gay relatives and their gay friends. If the gay crowd has more charming people, then there goes the Church’s influence.
Marriage is not a domestic arrangement between two people. Marriage is a covenant among four entities, not two:
one man
one woman
children of the culture
the culture in which the covenant takes place.
Children have a personal stake in the definitions of marriage. Children’s interest always gets lost in heterosexual – homosexual marriage controversies.
A child has a right to the love, respect, nurturing, and care of both a mother and a father. Fathers are not just a biological act or an afterthought.
Companionship and domestic arrangements are one's own business between Consenting Adults. A child has a right to the loving influence of both a man and a woman.
RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION
Politicians in California, Utah, and elsewhere mouth platitudes about protecting the sanctity of marriage, but most of them possess vague notions and definitions of marriage. Congress and the states should spell out the covenant relationship of marriage among the four entities of a man, a woman, American culture and American children in a black-letter law Constitutional amendment. Politicians should not banter marriage about for electioneering points.
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