Why Homosexual Unions are Not Marriage

People generally consider marriage as a certificate and really expensive ceremony that declares to family, friends, and the world: "After a period of time together, we have strong feelings for one another and think we might live happily together for the rest of our lives. Let's celebrate that hope."  This new-fangled marriage serves almost no purpose. It's the step you take after "living together and testing sexual compatibility," and it signals a hope for eternal happiness. But it can be broken and cast aside if need be. It's practically pointless.

Heck, if you just really want a certificate and a really expensive, crowded ceremony, all you need is a computer, a printer, and an assembly hall.  Nobody's going to stop a minister from pronouncing you "married."

But once upon a time, marriage served a function. The marriage of two people, a man and a woman, was not merely the joining of two people in love to support each other through good and bad; marriage served the society. A man and a woman in marriage love each other and procreate.  New children, new members of society, new citizens are born and raised in this construct, taught and trained and nurtured for adult life. And that is why the government has a duty to protect and support the family structure - it is good for society and builds society.

My stance is not going to be popular but I know this is true: children need a mother and a father. That is true biologically and it is true psychologically. Children can survive without one or even both of their parents, but it is more difficult for them. For example, young boys often suffer, these days, because of the absence of a father. Sometimes another male father-figure in their life helps them stay on the path, but studies have shown that children usually do better with both their parents.

Of course, that is ideal. Sometimes, that can't always be. But a homosexual union fails to fulfill the goals of marriage completely. They cannot procreate children, and children they raise have two of one gender and are denied their need for the other. Furthermore, a man or a woman is used to create a child on demand and then never participates in the life of that child again.  Their motherhood or fatherhood of the child is denied. The child grows up not knowing who they came from, their background, or their origins.  They don't know who they are.  They don't have roots.  This will sound harsh, but the biological parent essentially seems to say, from the perspective of the child's heart, "I don't love you.  You were created for the pleasure of your homosexual guardians.  Have fun with your life."  Even adopted children have to deal with that phenomenon, never mind a child brought into the world through a surrogate mother.

If you are homosexual and want to live with your significant other, I can't stop you. But you don't need marriage. Marriage serves to create and bring up new people in a stable home, ideally, with both a mother and a father. Science has shown, testimonies have shown that children need that. [And yes, that affects how I feel about divorce as well.]

And society suffers if it defines marriage as whatever you want it to be.  Because the children suffer.

I'm not anti-love.  I'm pro-marriage.

Our School System, a point of interest with me

I'm working on a post for my other blog and I'd like your honest opinions!  This is the second draft.

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Here's the Situation

Something absolutely disgusts me and so I will share my hotheaded, passionate, strong-worded opinion with you about the school system in America.

The school system sucks.  We send our kids across town or into the next to attend a school where the hormones way outnumber the adults, and the adults have very little power because we don't trust them because we don't know them and they don't know us.  And it would be a liability for them to do anything about anything.

I know quite a few people who want to be teachers and I know they would never knowingly let a child be bullied or kill themselves.  But these are big schools, and what can the teachers do if they do know?  They don't have a lot of power.  The least they can do, you hope, is to tell the parents what is going on, and sometimes that doesn't even happen.

And what can the parents do?

Well here is where it gets ugly.  Parents knowingly send their children to school, day after day, to be bullied and sexually harassed.  I mourn the loss of children who take their lives and only after do the parents find out that bullying was involved.  That's a horrible family structure but it moves me to compassion, given the general rushing about and distraction in our modern, first-world country.  But when I hear the testimony of some mother who knows her little girl is being harassed or knew the whole time that school was a living hell for her son and sent them off every day anyway... I feel disgust and revulsion.  How in the world can a parent tell a child that they just have to put up with this behavior?  That there is nothing anyone can do about this and no one cares that your life is driving you to an early death?

I sympathize - this is a tough world, a tough culture we live in and we're all stressing out to stay ahead.  But if you can't tighten your belts to send them to another school or take them out and homeschool, you best at the very least be raising Cain about it and keeping your child away from that mess, one way or another.

We are very protective of our children.  That is to say - we love griping about injustices done them.  We have way too many tests now in school.  The teacher doesn't care at all.  The school is forcing my child to do this, but they won't take care of the bullying.  The ref made a bad call!  My four-year-old wants to be a girl but people have the nerve to tell me I shouldn't let him!  He'll only be vaccinated if I say so!  I have a right to have children any way I want, in whatever relationship I want!  Don't force labels on my kids!  Don't leave them home alone!  Don't have guns in the house!  They should have taught them that at school!  What's the matter with them, leaving my child unprotected and ignorant like that?  No shampoo in my baby's eyes!  Only the most organic, healthy food for my children.  No more soda at school!

But when it comes to action, we're pathetic.  When it comes to caring what is actually best for the children, we're selfish and stupid.

These days, children are future politicians.  We need to indoctrinate them with a politically correct education (no offense if that's you, but really, how long has Christopher Columbus been a hero?) and measure their intellectual growth and make sure it's alllllll the same everywhere so we can force "equality" (intellectual sameness) across the nation.  They need to accumulate as many certificates and diplomas and awards and stats as possible so that their resume is more impressive, regardless of their actual skill or ability to function in society and the workplace.

Scholarship is numbers.  Skill is book learning.

But There's a Problem

John Oliver, who is a favorite of mine, recently commented on how the obsession with testing is affecting our children.  At least, how it is affecting them in ways we can immediately see.  He didn't, I'll note, mention how it's affecting their love of learning or their psychology.  But it's too early to know everything.  Perhaps we should experiment with them for a few more years.

This past Sunday, John Oliver did a segment on FIFA - oh how glorious an overhaul that is turning out to be!  (Not actually sarcasm this time.)  He challenged the sponsors of FIFA to take a stand, promising that he would even drink a Budweiser product if they withdrew their sponsorship.

In the past, John Oliver has instigated ridiculous and funny social media movements with various effectiveness and varying degrees of actual importance.  He launched a campaign to save mating geckos lost in space.  He started a movement to protest the casting of Christian in Fifty Shades of Gray. #NotMyChristian

But when it comes to children, he did nothing.

Well, we are all more aware of what we should have known in the first place, but where is the great emotional uproar?  Where are the ice bucket challenges and dares and matched pledges to get this crap under control?  Where is the call to action?

Well, "to be fair," many of John Oliver's calls to action have been jokes or for something that is easily changed.  Bullying, educational requirements, smaller class sizes, actively aware parents - it can't be done with a catchy hashtag.  And my point isn't to accuse John Oliver of not caring enough about children.  That's not he point - the point is how complicated and difficult a problem this is and we're not spending nearly enough time on it as a whole.  These are, if you will, the future politicians.  You can't not care, even if you're not sparked by the injustice of torturing young and immature people who don't have a choice but will be affected by this for the rest of their lives, then affecting the next generation and so on.

And We Need a Solution

For me, personally, I have a vague idea of what I want.  I want way smaller schools, and more of them - in the communities that they serve.  Perhaps one large facility of expensive equipment for the area.  I want tutors/teachers to teach students by studying the greats as well as new theories, where contrary schools of thought are allowed and not feared so thinking can flourish, and the arts are included.  I want the work environment to adopt a learn-on-the-job environment, an experienced-based totem pole, rather than a "how many diplomas and qualifications can you pay for?" system.  And I want universities to be more about fulfilling the student's needs than handing out the diplomas and qualifications, and certainly not about bringing in money to compete with other schools.  If it's not about the students, what is it about?

I'm not an expert; I just know this system is not ideal for me.  It doesn't seem ideal for anybody.  And if someone can prove that my vision couldn't work, at least I'll have gotten someone thinking more about this issue.  Because I'm not qualified to say what needs to be done and I don't have the power to do it, but what we need is a decision about what ought to be done so that people like John Oliver and you and me can actually do something about it: #notmyeducationsystem

We can't just complain.  We have to decide what we want done and push for it.

Test of Fire

~Meggy

"Never Forget" explained to the next generation

 

Adults are always telling us, the younger generation, "Don't you ever forget."  The day America's security was attacked was one of the worst days in history, no doubt.  It wasn't war.  It wasn't mob action.  It wasn't rebellion, or an underground control system, silently manipulating America.  It was a massacre of many, many innocent lives.  Innocent because they could not defend themselves and they had not in any way personally threatened their killers.  No one saw it coming, and you hear all the time about people who, only through the grace of God, made it out alive, and how some lost their lives going in to save others, but also how many more were killed suddenly and dramatically on that otherwise ordinary day in September.  And the older, wiser generation tells us never to forget.

For me, it was first a process of learning.  In 2001, I would have been about seven years old.  I didn't know at the time that it had happened.  Nor, later, when the memorial day came around year after year, I didn't realize that it had occurred during my lifetime.  I encourage you not to blame my parents for "over sheltering me", for ironically, it wasn't until after I was home-schooled that I began to see the world beyond my front door.  I thought 9/11 was something that had happened years in the past, like WWII.  The truth probably didn't occur to me until I was in my teens, and even then, I didn't understand it.

It was history.  It had happened.  Like war for many people, it's something that happens, and it's too bad, but what can be done about it?  9/11 was another history lesson.  It was like the Revolution, the Civil War, and any other event that had happened in history.  What did it matter that more men died somewhere than in all the wars in Asia?  It had happened so long ago, it had nothing to do with me, I spit back the information on a sheet of paper, and that was that.  And this isn't a problem confined to my own sympathies, I know.  There are numerous stories, gruesome, that make some people break down in tears while others shake it off their backs.  Those sort of things come and go, and to an ignorant child like I was, death didn't mean very much.

Now I know what that means.  In a world ravaged with abortion and impending religious restrictions, I face the possibility of terror for my life and the life of those around me.  In a few years, I could lose everything and everyone that I love and I need for a feeling of security.  And then I remember that this is exactly what is going on all over the world, and has happened, and will happen; and I pray it won't come in my time.  "Please, God, don't bring this test before me."  I wish I could pray for an hour before the Blessed Sacrament and make everything right, but "so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that's been given to us.  There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil."  From there, it is only a small step to understanding the horror of 9/11.

I understand all this, but what are adults telling us when they say "never forget"?  Some may mean that they want us to take up the pitchforks of revenge, but I have a great respect for the adults who have told me never to forget.  They are the kind of people who advocate forgiveness, and they don't promote war or anything like that.  So I think they are trying to say "never forget, because it was horrible".  Is it just classic worrying about the future generation?  For what about Pearl Harbor?  What about the Civil War?  What about the various persecutions that drove some of our ancestors here?  We never hear them mentioned.  I think the adults in our lives are trying to express to us their feelings and memories about 9/11.  It's the only logical motivation I have come to, and it makes sense.  If you tell someone to "never forget" some great event, it's usually something you have deep feelings about.  I don't think it's a phrase that means "take action"; I think it means "please don't forget what brought my generation to its knees".

I may have said something like this last year, for it seems that many lessons have to be learned twice, but I think I focused more on the respect-for-life aspect in last year's entry.  Last year, Osama bin Laden was killed, and I was disturbed by the national reaction.  Looking over it with sympathetic eye, I can understand, but my natural reaction to the man's death was sorrow.  It is another soul we cannot not save, another life we could not touch, another man whose life was wasted for evil.  It was a relevant topic for 9/11.

Today, I want to once again remind you to remember all the deaths of the world, especially the ones that were most unfair – the persecutions, and attacks on women and children for example – and pray fervently for world peace.

"Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and the end of the war."

"I want you ... to continue to pray the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only she can help you."

"You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father."

"Without prayer there is no peace. Therefore, dear children, I urge you to pray for peace before the Cross."

http://www.theotokos.org.uk/pages/approved/words/wordfati.html

http://www.marypages.com/MedjugorjeEng.htm

The end of the world, we know, will not come smoothly, but let our prayers, to the best of our ability, combat the evil done and soothe our Savior's bleeding heart.  Let us never forget the evil and sorrow of 9/11, and yet it is not the worst atrocity to have ever happened.  Let us pray the horrors that have built up in the eastern hemisphere will not come find their home in America.

 

 

~Meggy

Ron Paul

Ron Paul looks like a very good candidate for the presidency.  He is a Christian, though not Catholic, and he feels that his duty to God should influence his political standing.  He is pro-life, approves of homeschooling, and does not approve of the current health care system.  His website is very comprehensive and explains what he feels about each area of concern and what he wants to do about it.  He seems like a very upright and good-standing citizen, with a strong military support and a long reputation for having one mind and one way of thinking.  He even knew the financial state our country would be in before the crash.  Those who don't like Mitt Romney's reputation could, understandably, turn to Ron Paul.

There are, however, some issues that I am concerned about.  He believes, for instance, that every man has a God-given right to own and bear arms.  That is hogwash.  While it may be right to bear arms, it is not a God-given right.  Life is a God-given right, and no one may be deprived of that short of very serious circumstances.  Guns, however, can be denied to anyone who shows a lack of good judgement.  I have not come to any firm conclusion about the private ownership of guns and I have nothing against keeping the second amendment, but God did not endow us with a right to weapons.

Another major issue is his thoughts on federal government.  His motto on the subject appears to be "End the FED", and his website states that "There is no greater threat to the security and prosperity of the United States today than the out-of-control, secretive Federal Reserve."  I don't believe that is true.  "Ultimately, he [Ron Paul] will lead the charge to end the dishonest, immoral, and unconstitutional Federal Reserve System, enabling America to take a giant step toward economic security, financial responsibility, and lasting prosperity."  He may be right that the Federal Reserve has caused a lot of problems and mischief, and undoubtedly the government has been taking on more and more responsibility lately, and furthermore I belong to a Church which believes in subsidiarity, yet "End the FED" seems too extreme, far too liberal.  Most likely, should he become president, he will affect some change for the good.  So long as he doesn't tear our system apart completely (as head of that system ironically), I don't mind him making changes for what he calls the better.  He'd also like to legalize "sound money", which sounds intriguing but I'd be interested to know how he'd make it work.

Another big issue today is illegal immigration.  Ron Paul believes in laying down the law on illegal immigrants and closing our borders.  I have yet to hear from any politicians what exactly they would do in order to "close our borders" but the term doesn't sound good.  While all in the interest of security, it feels like an iron curtain - and I mean that in a very loose definition.  Furthermore, there is no such thing as just American.  The only exception might be if your entire lineage is Native American.  Otherwise, American means a random combination of Italian, Irish, English, French, Indian, African, Korean, Swedish, and much more.  Personally, I'm Italian, Irish, English, German, and Czech.  Those people are my people, and I can't imagine telling them they aren't welcome.  For many of us, our first ancestors to step on (what became) American soil were fleeing from something or came here to help their families or find a better life.  This is the case for many "illegal immigrants" today.  Our country is founded on immigrants, built on immigrants, and is immigrants, and I don't think that we should simply deport hundreds of hopeful people looking for a way to survive.  Short of invading Mexico and trying to fix it for them, we shouldn't close our borders.  America is her own country in her own right.  She is independent and runs herself without help from other governments.  Still, we should not forget our roots.  We should not forget where we came from.  And I certainly don't agree that we should end birthright citizenship.

Ron Paul also wants to lower taxes, eliminate compulsory unionism, and he believes our troops should serve our own nation and not unnecessarily go to war.

So that is Ron Paul.  For the first time, I will be voting this year and so, for the first time, I've been more than just curious in politics.  For the record, I am incredibly simple when it comes to politics.  I don't get it.  Listening to politicians makes my head spin because they seem to make what I see as simple into something complicated, and in the process I get left behind.  What is is - to me, but not to politicians.  Therefore, I am open to criticism and debate about what I have said in this post.  That is partially why I decided to post about politicians on my blog.  I am seeking guidance from my parents and their friends, but I don't always agree with them on the details and I'd like to know your opinion as well - just so long as it remains a calm, easy atmosphere.

~Meggy