LINING UP FOR MARRIAGE: an essay discussing real definitions of marriage and family values

On August 1, people lined up for blocks to buy sandwiches at Chick-Fil-A to show solidarity with a company president who publicly defined traditional man-and-wife marriage as a command of God and the best way to go.   A few days later, same-gender couples lined up around the restaurants and smoched openly on the kissers. 

People find it easy to stand in line to buy sandwiches.   Will these people stand in line to vote?  Will they write for the record their stand on marriage and family?  

Someone I know wrote on Facebook the other day: 

“There is real inequality and favoritism taking place with the government choosing who can and can't be married. It isn't fair. And while a lot of religious people take pleasure being "favored" by the government - it's immature. What if tomorrow the government decided to only recognize marriage between homosexuals and void everyone else's? Would you still be happy with the government's ability to favor?

“Everyone gets caught up in fighting the definition of "marriage" when the truth is we need to be caught up in the gross lack of separation between church and state that has taken place. That's what's causing all this mess, and causing my facebook feeds to read like a bipolor teenager (let's just say my Utah and California friends wouldn't get along very well).”

What does a parent say when his favorite son elopes to British Columbia with his sweetheart to get married in a same-sex marriage ceremony?   How does he respond to this --

“All Tom and I ever wanted was to get married because we love each other.   And if we hurt some people’s feelings, well — that is just too bad.  It is their problem, not mine.   I married the only man I ever loved and am glad I married the man I loved.  It meant a lot to me to marry the person I found most precious, despite the fact that some people thought he was the wrong kind of person for me to marry.   Government has no business forcing some people’s religious beliefs over others.  I support the right to marry for all – white or black, gay or straight.  That is what loving is all about.”

Interesting that in red states in general and in Utah in particular –

 When the homosexuals corrupted the concept of marriage, their opponents called it "sin."   However, when heterosexuals corrupted the concept of marriage they call it "progressive."

Marriage as political alliance.  Dowries.  Women treated as property with no rights.  Institutional violence between men and women.  Polyandry.   "la casa grande” for the mistress.  “la casa bonita”  for the wife.   No-fault quickie divorces.  Heterosexuals have done the most damage to the concept of marriage over time.    Changing the gender ratio is only just the latest step in the devolution of marriage definitions. 

Marriage is not a domestic agreement between two people.

Marriage is a covenant between at least four entities

the man

the woman

the culture in which they live

and or

God

and children, who have a vested right to a solid stable extended family. 

The central issue in this debate  needs to be stated a different way.    Children have a right to a legal family relationship.   They have a right to two parents, one of the male persuasion, one of the female gender. 

Civil governments in general have done a lousy job in protecting and preserving marriage.  Traditional orthodox churches, however,  have in the main been ineffective, as well.    In fairness, though, neither the Old Testament or the New Testament are really clear on the subject of when God considers a couple “married.”     The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains sections that do a clearer, more convincing, job of defining marriages both in the world and in the next sphere.

Marriage is not first and foremost about companionship.   People should not confuse marriage with companionship.   Marriage is about a stable legal framework to raise children.   Eventually most if not all marriages get various people and things attached to them:  houses, summer homes, yachts, in-laws, friends, ecclesiastical leaders, accountants, teachers, trainers, and attorneys -- as well as children.     If a married couple is not careful, their marriage will evolve into a way of insuring that they get what they do not want.

Marriage was ordained by God.   Civil unions were ordained by humans.   People in civil unions should have clear rights of inheritance and work benefits for themselves and their partners. 

The president’s comments on marriage on 9 May 2012 only shows how little those in authority have thought out the definitions of family life, marriage, and domestic arrangements.  Domestic arrangements have a long, sometimes honorable, history in the long evolution of human events. 

THE CALL TO ACTION

In the meantime, red-state, traditional family values political activities will insist on chicken sandwich lunches and blue-state progressive family values political activities will insist on Swedish meatballs or Greek salads for lunch.  Lunch will not have much fun in it.  We will accomplish very little in the way of getting strong solid families for children.  

Children deserve both a male and a female parent either at birth or at adoption.   If a government allow gay couples to adopt, then the law must stipulate that the child must have regular meaningful contact with someone of the other gender.

DARK KNIGHT RISING MASSACRE: CONTEMPLATING THE SECOND AMENDMENT

INTRODUCTION RATIONALE

The mass killing outrage at the Aurora Colorado cineplex brings to mind all sorts of bad memories associated with another mass murder incident which took place in the Columbine public high school in Littleton, Colorado, back in 1999.    

It should be noted clearly that in both cases, people willingly sold weapons to these unbalanced – maybe crazy –  individuals. 

The ironies of the Aurora atrocity compound before our eyes.   A bunch of citizens come together at a cineplex at midnight to watch a famously violent movie in which people (one character in particular) die.   Instead dozens of them become the victim of a violent person.   It will be interesting to see if Dark Knight Rising gets associated in history with this event the way Manhattan Melodrama still brings to mind that authorities killed Dillinger as he left a showing of that Gable-Loy-Powell romantic drama. 

In the wake of this outrage, certain Utah leaders talk about increasing gun availability and  concealed weapons permitting.  What a pretty picture of civility that paints. 

It does not seem to occur to any of  them to promote the use and research-improvement of non-lethal weaponry. I suspect their fascination with guns must have something to do with the sexiness or violence of them.


BACKGROUND

The Second Amendment guaranteed the rights of a community to create militias.    Militias fell out of favor in favor of professional militaries rather early on.    It is ironic that Constitutional purists use this amendment in modern times to guarantee a person’s right to own as many deadly weapons as he or she wants, when this was not the original meaning at all. 

The Second Amendment guarantees the exercise of power and dominion in  militias.

The Amendment barely made sense in the 1790s when police forces did not exist, and many citizens lived in isolation or small villages.  In those days the weapons were primitive.   One had to load the powder, then the shot, and maybe the weapon would fire correctly and maybe hit someone if one was a good shot under pressure.    And maybe not.

In 2012, The Second Amendment guarantees the right of a citizen to stop a person from shedding the citizen’s blood by giving the citizen the means to kill or disable the person.   Instead of the person bearing responsibility for shedding the citizen’s blood, the citizen gets to take responsibility for killing the person.   This really does not open up much by way of a choice. 

Now the military industrial complex builds bigger, more sophisticated, and deadly weapons.  One person can do a lot of mayhem without much effort.  Unfortunately, many merchants happily sell automatic weapons to just anyone who has the money.  Thus the atrocity that occurred in the Tucson Safeway parking lot is not one of those things that just happens.   There are cause and effects; there are reasons why. 

The Second Amendment is not about hunting.  English common law addressed that topic back in 1791.

The Second Amendment  is not about self defense.   The Old Testament guaranteed that. English common law covered that as well.   We should not rely on the Hebrew Covenant and English common law for this particular point of law.

As a result, gun enthusiasts hang their rights on an amendment that has nothing relevant about twenty-first century conditions.


THE CALL TO ACTION

1 Both the Utah Legislature and Congress should encourage research-improvement on non-lethal weaponry.

2 Congress and The States really should  replace the outdated Second Amendment with two new amendments. 

One should address the limits of American military power.  It should limit soldiers’ minimum ages to 19 (preferably 20).   It should ban conscription. 

The other should guarantee the right of citizens to self defense with non-lethal weaponry.

3 State and federal laws should require gun owners to buy insurance for their guns.  The gun owners –  not the governments -- should pay for cleaning up messes caused by misuse of guns.

Federal and local law should require people who want to buy guns and/or concealed weapons to submit four notarized affidavits.  Those documents should specifically endorse, for the public record, prospective gun owners as law-abiding,  mentally, emotionally,  physically competent to own and use a gun.  Government should charge people with perjury if they lie.  All four documents need to agree on the particulars. 

I would like Romney and Hatch and Herbert state for the record How long will Republican Constitutional conservatives misuse an amendment that guaranteed civic militias to justify and guarantee mayhem

OBAMACARE > ROMNEYCARE > HEALTH CARE > HEALTH

The John Roberts Supreme Court today upheld the Affordable Health Care Act – and by conservative estimate, this is the most important supreme court ruling since that day in 1973 the Burger Court discovered the right to privacy for women and took away the right to life for unborn babies.   It really may be the biggest ruling since that day the Taney Court ruled that Dred Scott was not a person.    In today’s ruling, the Act is declared constitutional.  However, the 5 justices justified it as taxation, not commerce.  
Taxation always brings out the hypocrisy in both America’s citizens and America’s Congress.   Everyone has a favorite federal program; everyone has a favorite entitlement.  Everyone wants that program and entitlement funded to the max —  but with someone else’s tax money.     
Just a few days ago in Utah, Senator Orrin Hatch won a primary election by exploiting that very cultural hypocrisy.   He won the election by, in essence, flattering Utah voters into believing he will use his massive seniority in the Senate Finance Committee and his basic fiscal conservative principles to slash federal spending and federal taxation – while preserving federal programs  important to Utah’s jobs.   This not only illustrates taxation hypocrisy, it may be this week’s best working definition of “federal pork” :    Excessive federal spending in someone else’s state. 


MEANWHILE ON CONSTITUTION AVENUE
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate presumptive, decried the Supreme Court decision and promised to repeal it.   It is a tall order; we will see if he is up to the task.
First, the Electoral College has to elect him.  
Next, the American voters need to elect Republican majorities to the Senate and the House.    And the voters can be fickle creatures.  Do more of them want Affordable Health Care?  Or the status quo where only people with money can get access to health.  
We should hope that Romney does not exploit divisive tactics simply to appeal to the bitter devils of  his countrymen’s natures as the negative method to win election.    Anti-Obamacare – like anti-Communism of the 1960s – mixes fear, jealousy, and intense emotional displays and rhetoric all for a theatrical quasi-patriotic effect.   
Romney, however, really needs a positive plan to replace Obamacare.  He cannot just take a negative stance.   He’d be the one to develop a plan:   as an executive he made plans;  as governor of Massachusetts, he created his own state insurance mandate.  


IN FOCUS
Some people like to say that The American Health Care System is rather like a glass half full of possibilities for those with the funding.   Other people like to say The American Health Care System is rather like a glass half empty for those without status or money.   I think The American Health Care System has the wrong glass.
A problem in the whole Health Care debate is that people and leaders generally across the nation ignore  “Health.”    Health always seems to get lost amid the bickering and posturing over Insurance and Taxation.     
What is health?   How do we get it?   How do we maintain it?   How do we preserve it in old age?   What things in American culture and American cuisine make us unhealthy?   What can the governments do to promote health instead of just funding care for sickness?

THE CALL TO ACTION:

Romney could lead a national discussion on American health and make proposals as to how governments can encourage a healthy American life.  This will not be easy.   Americans, as a generalization, want to live as heathens but still stay healthy.   If that does not happen, what with causes and effects, they want complete funding to repair their damages to their health.   Neither expectations are reasonable in a 21st Century of tight budgets and scarce resources.  We should promote health fire, health care systems next.

IS SENATOR HATCH NECESSARY?

In his campaign ads, Senator Orrin Hatch says it is urgent to reelect him, again, because he might become the Senate Finance Committee Chairman.

Actually -- 

If Orrin Hatch gets reelected and if the Republicans take control of the Senate, Hatch might become chairman of that committee.

If America elects a Republican president, and that is not yet a sure thing. If the Republican leadership proposes budgetary cutbacks. If.

America contains more than 310 million people. A nation that big cannot have a small government. It cannot have a small budget especially if a prospective President Romney seriously wants to increase military size and scope. 

Military spending comes in one variety -- expensive. 

Furthermore, a leader gives the people what it needs. A politician gives the people what they want. The senate's ratio of leaders to politicians means that the senators will all have various programs that they insist on funding. So far as I can tell, the Republican definition of budget cutting is cutting back on someone else's pet programs.

When Hatch served as senator in the Reagan administration, I remember he supported most or less enthusiastically the president's deficit spending, particularly the militaristic deficit spending, for two terms.

When Hatch served as senator back in the First Bush administration -- ditto.

When Hatch served as senator back in the Second Bush administration, I remember he supported most or less enthusiastically those two large wars that Bush funded off line by deficit spending and borrowing. If Hatch has any fiscal conservative tendencies, I do not quite remember them.

Frankly, several Republican senators sit on the Senate Finance Committee whose conservatism on the record is more conservative than Orrin Hatch's.

THE CALL TO ACTION

Senator Hatch really should have more time to spend with his grandchildren and in writing his poetry.    Eventually, the Republicans will take control of the Senate, though I have a hard time picturing this happening in 2012.   However, when the change comes, Utah should have a more conservative senator in the chair ready to go.   And that senator is not Orrin Hatch. 

MARRIAGE: DECLINE?? DEFINITIONS??

Interesting that around here in Utah when heterosexuals corrupted the concept of marriage they call it "progressive," and when the homosexuals corrupted the concept, it's called sin.  From marriage as political alliance to dowries  to women treated as property with no rights to polygamy to "la casa grande -- la casa bonita" to no-fault quickie divorces, heterosexuals have done the most damage to the concept of marriage over time.    Changing the gender ratio is only just the latest step in the devolution of marriage

Marriage is not a domestic agreement between two people. 

Marriage is a covenant between at least four entities

the man

the woman

the culture in which they live

and or

God

and children, who have a vested right to a solid stable extended family.  

Civil governments in general have done a lousy job in protecting and preserving marriage.  However, churches have not been entirely effective, either.    In fairness, though, neither the Old Testament or the New Testament are really clear on the subject of when God considers a couple “married.”     The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has sections that do a more convincing job of defining that point. 

Marriage is not first and foremost about companionship.   Marriage should not be confused with companionship.   Marriage is about a stable legal framework to raise children.   Eventually most marriages if not all marriages get in-laws, friends, ecclesiastical leaders, and lawyers attached to them as well as children.     If a married couple is not careful, a marriage is a great way to insure that you get what you do not want. 

The president’s comments on marriage on 9 May 2012 only shows how little those in authority have thought out the definitions of family life, marriage, and domestic arrangements.  Domestic arrangements have a long and sometimes honorable history in the long chain of human events.  However, children deserve both a male and a female parent.

CAMPAIGN 2012: MILITARY SPENDING AND THE DEFENSE OF THE INDEFENSIBLE

George Orwell back in 1946 wrote this observation about political discourse.    It was true then; it seems utterly prophetic today in the 2012 presidential campaign.  

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“ ‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’

“ The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.”
    — George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)

In 2012, there is no such thing as keeping out of politics.  Political speech and writing are still mostly the defense of the indefensible. Things like

    ●    the Colombia Armed Conflict, the Mexico Drug War, the Syria Civil Uprising, and various African wars in and around Sudan,
   
    ●    the continuance of Israeli domination of Palestine
   
    ●    Russian purges and corruption
   
    ●    the use of drones in Afghanistan
     
can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of our political parties.

Mitt Romney says in his campaign for the Presidency of the United States that Americans must expand the American military both in men and in funding.   He advocates this even though The Federal Government he wants to lead sits up to its dome in various varieties of debt.   Whether the Federal Government can even manage said debt in the short term remains to be seen. 

The United States of America had a population in 2010 no less than 310 million people.   That represents at most 4.5 percent of the world’s population.

  My experience in the Local Census Office 3147 in Provo Utah in 2010 taught me that counting people is more complicated than it looks. The best census still has the element of guestimate in it.  

Currently, various organizations in the know estimate the world population at 7 billion people plus or minus a few hundred million.   Humans do not know for exactly the Earth’s resource limitation.  Even so, humans continue to push their population right into the red zone of resource reserves. 

China probably has (give or take) 1.4 billion citizens.   That is almost 20 percent of the world’s population.  

India probably has (give or take) 1.3 billion citizens.   That is about 17 percent of the world’s population.  


QUESTION FOR MR. ROMNEY TO ANSWER
AND FOR AMERICAN VOTERS TO PONDER
Based on comparing labor and resources – 4.5 percent vs. a little less than 40 percent – the United States cannot win a war against China and / or India.     So how money should The United State spend on the illusion of military security?   This money will be, in the main, borrowed.

The United State does have several thousand nuclear weapons and we could use them on our enemies.   How many people who do not live in the United States can the United States kill to insure a USA victory?   Given we represent 4.5 percent of the world and China represents nearly 20 percent: How many dead Chinese can we consider ethical in our defense?

100 million dead

200 million dead

300 million dead

400 million dead

500 million dead

600 million dead

700 million dead

800 million dead?

TUNED IN BUT NOT LISTENING: CONTEMPLATING TITANIC DISASTER AT 100

To review the basic facts involved in the Titanic Disaster which occurred 100 years ago today:

Titanic did not have enough lifeboats for everyone on board. The British Board of Trade lifeboat regulations worked off a fantastically outdated and complicated mathematical equation that actually involved the size of the ship, not the number of people it held. The Board of Trade required 16 lifeboats. The shipbuilders thought that 64 boats would be ideal and recommended 32 to the owners.

The leaders of White Star Line, the owners of Titanic, believed that if the ship ever did sink, it would not sink fast. The lifeboats, they believed, could be used as shuttles taking passengers to nearby rescue ships and then returning to pick up more. Therefore, they ordered 20 lifeboats.

The designers of the ship built the watertight compartment bulkheads to stop flooding in the worst sort of accident they could comprehend. That calculation involved four water tight compartments at most. They did not comprehend an iceberg compromising the ship’s hull and bottom for the length of six plus compartments. This sort of accident happened a hundred years ago tonight. The resulting flood sank the ship in just under three hours.

Hindsight is always 20/20. It is easy today to fault everyone involved for overconfidence and the cutting of the proverbial corners. Building technology, then and now, is a compromise between safety, politics, and cost.

About eight problems manifested themselves on the Titanic after it hit an iceberg, and they all conspired to sink the ship and kill 1500 people. If any one of these eight problems had not occurred, the incident might have turned out less tragically. Despite the truth of that statement, we should not overlooked the one proximate cause of the disaster – overconfident bridge officers.


TITANIC RADIO

The Marconi Company privately owned the radio system as a convenience to the passengers; its operators did relay weather and other safety messages to the officers, though passenger communication to the shore was its main concern. Titanic’s wireless had a transmission range of about a 1000 miles. Its massive antennae stretched between the masts. Titanic was out of direct contact with Europe and North America for about half of the voyage, but it not out of contact with other ships in the lanes.

For a couple of days, as Titanic sailed west across the Atlantic, its wireless operators received warnings from east-bound ships that their sailors had seen ice problems southeast of Newfoundland in and around the shipping lane to New York.


TUNED IN BUT NOT LISTENING

Edward Smith, captain of Titanic, knew of ice warnings to the west. He traveled at top speed right into the problem. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, when the largest vessels were half the size and weight and about half as fast as Titanic and its sister ship Olympic, their captains regularly sailed through ice infested waters at full speed. However, a ship weighing in at over 46,000 tons and traveling at 22 knots an hour has increased its vulnerability by some quantum factor. It cannot quickly stop for an iceberg or quickly port around an iceberg as did smaller vessels.

The day of the disaster, Titanic’s wireless operators sent messages to its officers that warned of ice problems in the shipping lane ahead of them to the west. The captain shifted his course south -- a little -- but continued to increase his speed.

According to an entry in the Encyclopedia Titanica, (reported also in Walter Lord’s landmark book A Night to Remember):

“The single-funnel liner Mesaba was among the vessels that sent ice warnings to the Titanic. On 14 April, at 7.50 p.m. Mesaba time, the wireless operator Stanley Adams sent the following message:

To Titanic
In Lat. 42 N. to 41.25 Lond 49 W to Long - 50.30 W saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs also field ice. Weather good, clear”

Adams should have sent the message directly to Captain Smith. Titanic radio operator Jack Philips received the message, as it was, at 9.40 p.m. On Sunday evening,, Titanic's radio transmitter receiver was in range of the Marconi station at Cape Race in Newfoundland. Philips, alone at the Morris-code key, sent a pile of messages to the this Marconi station,Titanic time, while second operator Harold Bride slept in bed, Perhaps it was for these reason that neither one of them relayed this message to the bridge.

One way or another, the Marconi operators should have taken that message immediately to the bridge for the officers’ attention. The officers would have discovered from this message that a big ice problem lay right ahead of the ship. And in the middle of a moonless night -- yet. The officers might have shifted the course south again. They might have slowed down. They might have remained overconfident and continued barging into danger at top speed. They would not, however, have remained in the dark about the situation to the west.

As if one undelivered message is not enough in the Titanic list of incompetence leading to catastrophe, the Marconi officer heard another wireless message about icebergs around 11 p.m. Titanic time. A ship radio operator rather close by barged in with some loud message about icebergs. He did not use the proper hailing phrases. Philips, frazzled by all the work ahead of him, cut off the warning and continued sending his messages to Newfoundland.

This was the crucial mistake before the disaster.

Had Philips listened, he would have found out from Cyril Evans, radio operator aboard the Californian, that it was stopped for the night because its officers could see nothing but pack ice and icebergs on the western horizon. He would have found out that the message was loud because the Californian was close, which meant the Titanic was also close to the same horizon of pack ice and icebergs.


SPECULATION

One can only speculate what might have happened if the officers that night had received not one but two messages about the mess of ice Titanic approached at full speed ahead. Some officer might have ordered the ship on a more southern route, or slow down, or even stop until dawn’s light illuminated the scene. Titanic might have continued in to New York.


GOOD FROM BAD

The Titanic disaster resulted in 1913 in stricter international laws: lifeboats required for everyone on board, twenty-four hour wireless communications, and an international iceberg patrol. If none of these laws had come into effect, big ships would have continued to carry few if any lifeboats because the owners and builders would have considered the liners unsinkable. The ship builders and owners would have continued building massive unsafe passenger liners with minimalist safety features. Sloppy incomplete international laws would have overseen passenger liner safety – until some other unfortunately Atlantic liner might have wound up as [in the immortal words of Eastern Onion] "the biggest metaphor of the twentieth century. "


UNFORTUNATELY, SHIPPING HAS GROWN OVER CONFIDENT AGAIN

Robert Ballard, the explorer who rediscovered the Titanic wreck in September 1985, is on the record stating that Titanic was actually better built the a lot of modern ships. Contemplate, for example, a catastrophic accident happening to the world's largest passenger liner – Allure of the Seas, an aircraft- carrier-sized cruise ship that can hold 6000 people. How would its crew get everyone off in less than an hour, especially if it were listing at some crazy angle in rough seas or if well-trained, well-armed, sea-going terrorists attacked it en masse.