Live your life (legally), forget The Family Leader’s bogus pledge

Date: 7/18/2011

• Personal fidelity to my spouse.
  
  Yes, I agree to that.
  
  
• Respect for the marital bonds of others.
  
  Sure.
  
  
• Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.
  
  Who decides what are “faithful constitutionalists?”
  
  
• Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage — faithful monogamy between one man and one woman — through statutory-, bureaucratic, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
  
  Sorry, marriage equality is right.
  
  
• Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
  
  Really? What “overwhelming statistical evidence?” There are plenty of offspring of single parents who have done well. Don’t you know several yourself, dear reader?
  
  
• Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
  
  While people should give their marriage a second or third chance, if it’s broke, it’s broke. People do make mistakes.
  
  
• Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
  
  Why? Seriously.
  
  
• Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
  
  Please show me any hard widespread evidence that same sex marriages have negatively affected American society.
  
  
• Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy — our next generation of American children — from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
  
  No one wants children to be hurt in any way. We have been debating the ramifications of abortion for years and will continue to do so.
  
  
• Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
  
  No one wants to be harassed. I take it that women should not serve in the Army?
  
  
• Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
  
  What are you talking about? There is no “Sharia Islam” in the United States. And it would seem that “totalitarian control” as long as it is your control is just fine.
  
  
• Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.
  
  Ah, shouldn’t all children come into this world wanted? Shouldn’t all children be born to people who can afford to take care of them? Simply pumping out infants doesn’t help our economy or our world.
  
  
• Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA’s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
  
  What is a burden to my family is the fact the tax system is unfair to the middle class; that we don’t have term limits in the House and Senate; that lobbyists are allowed to buy votes; that the ruling Republicans in the House haven’t come up with a job growth philosophy other than allowing the richest in American society to keep more of their money; that the trade policy followed since the Reagan Administration has allowed American corporations to send jobs overseas; that a college education is now beyond the economic reach of many who need it; and that health insurance still needs major reform.
  
  
• Fierce defense of the First Amendment’s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.
  
  So does that mean you will respect people with opposing viewpoints as well? Hey, live your life the way you want — as long as it’s legal — but stay off of my lawn.

Hey, agree with me? Disagree? Drop me a line at news@thereminder.com or at 280 N. Main St., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. As always, this column represents the opinion of its author and not the publishers or advertisers of this newspaper.