Morality Can't Be Legislated

Old Mother Hubbard.  I wonder if she was a single mother.  She certainly wasn't gay.

I get concerned every time our political candidates pander to a special interest group.  Like the unions.  Or the christian conservatives.  I don't want either dictating the laws of the land.

The unions are a whole different ball game than the christian conservatives, however.  I just don't think social issues are the most important agenda item at this point in time and  holding a politician's feet to the fire by threatening to withhold votes is as unjust as government mandates.  It is, in a sense, a voter mandate but not necessarily a mandate from the majority of voters.

I think their concerns regarding abortion and gay marriage belong in an entirely different arena.  Especially, as with some of the previous candidates for national office, keeping their own families in check hasn't worked out particularly well. Isn't that where morality should begin?  In the home within the family?

Of course that only holds if there is a family, which goes to the same point.  Morality.  Almost every hard luck story I heard on the news over the weekend involved a single mother.  It led me to wonder why so many were single.  It wasn't race.  Has having kids out of wedlock now become an entitlement rather than a disgrace?

One story in particular struck me for its absurdity.  It was about the couponing phenomenon.  It told of a young woman who was so into it she stole papers from vending machines to get the extra coupon inserts. "Hey," she said,  "I'm a single mom.  I do what I have to do to support my kids."  Does being a single parent now excuse stealing?  I don't care if it's a newspaper, it's stealing.  Where's the morality in that?

And gay marriage.  Or civil unions.  Never mind.  I've beaten this one to death on many previous occasions.  What I do know is I have a cousin living in Iowa who is gay.  He and his partner were about the fifth couple in the state to marry when it became legal.  The sky didn't fall.  They both still have productive happy lives.  They are loved by one another, family and friends.  And, oh, yes.  They were together thirty years before it was legal for them to marry.  So what's to the issue?  They were together anyway!  What's wrong with wanting a legal bond?

I'm encouraged that the Republicans have candidates that are trying to bring an air of reason to the race.   Of those Romney and Huntsman thus far seem to be the only ones speaking to the middle.  Cain and Gingrich have a lot to add to the debate but I don't see their overall chances improving.

There is a time and place for the morality sought after by the christian conservatives, to be sure.  I wonder, however, if abortion would be the issue it is if basic morality was taught to the young at home during their most impressionable years.  Certainly unwed motherhood could once again bear the pall it had when I was a teen and young adult.  Boy, talk about the generation gap!

And back to the gays.  You cannot legislate a person's sexual orientation.  Unlike what Ms. Bachmann and her husband would have us believe,  you are what you are.  At least that is my belief. As my cousin said when asked if he was sure he was "gay" he incredulously wondered, "Why would anyone put themselves through what a gay goes through if they weren't?"

Let's look at the economy, jobs, war and maybe even peace, what we need to do to make this country what it once was.  If we return to prosperity perhaps we'll have something other to occupy our brains and bodies than busybodying and breeding.