FORGET FAMILY VALUES: FOCUS ON HUMAN VALUES

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…

Can you believe that the Pope, the world’s defender and number one promoter of the doctrines of compassion, love and equality, has ordered the formal reprimand of Catholic nuns for spending too much time on addressing the issues of poverty and social justice and not enough time on abortion and gay marriage?

Holy Jesus Christ!  Say it ain’t so.

Now I am not a Christian but from the little I know about the theology of Christianity, the issues of poverty and social justice are as close to the core of its teaching as the concerns over abortion and gay marriage.  So I have to ask:  How can the Vatican, the defender of doctrine, condemn those for following the basic tenants of their religion?  Is this what our world has become?  Has religion taken on a new more politically charged focus than it should?  How in the name of decency can the Vatican abandon critical efforts to ease the suffering of its flock?  Has God gone blind and deaf and sold his soul to those who seek political advantage over religious needs?

I offer Matthew 5:43-45: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

Are you listening right wing talk radio?  You claim the pedestal of religion but you know nothing of the religion that you wear on your lapel next to the American flag.

I believe that the time has come for us to talk less about family values and spend much more time talking about the totality of protecting and promoting basic human values.  We need to stop cataloguing, categorizing and ultimately excluding people because they do not come out of some Orwellian cookie-cutter, one size fits all life style social engineering machine.   We have for whatever perverse reason invented this picture of the perfect nuclear family.  We have established this narrow, restricted definition of a household that by default condemns and criticizes those that voluntarily or driven by an adverse set of circumstances live a different life style.

We need to stop inventing and promoting as fact the concept of something being “perfect.”   Perfect is a subjective assessment and the term should be avoided whether applying it to theological doctrine, political philosophy or the makeup of a family structure. A family can be defined in many different ways and composed of many different components and does not have to reflect a household where there is a white daddy who is the self-proclaimed master of the universe, a white mommy who is subservient to her husband and lives to serve, bear and raise the two perfectly behaved children and tend to the quintessential family dog named Spots who is often caged on top of the family station wagon and driven down the expressway at high speeds.

I’m sorry Rick Santorum but you need to take your perfect nuclear family and find some abandoned missile silo and take up residence there.  How dare you challenge and condemn those who choose to live a different life style. Who in the hell are you to make such judgment?  Who are you to day what is right and wrong?  Didn’t YOUR God reserve that right for himself?

You and your kind are an embarrassment to the religion you say you support.  Take Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman, the Assistant Majority Leader and a close ally of GOP Governor Scott Walker, who has introduced a bill that would require the State of Wisconsin to officially deem single parenthood to be a “contributor” to child abuse and neglect and to put the same into statutory laws of the state.  Yes, being a single parent contributes to child abuse like two parent families never do.

The time has come to stop defining marriage in terms of a specific religious or social doctrine.  The time has come to stop promoting family values and expand the calling to human values that are inalienable to all of mankind regardless of marital status or family structure.  The time has come to stop demanding that we co-opt and sign in on one specific set of religious values.

Do you really think that Jesus, be he of human flesh or a product of divine spirit, would accept the rationale that poverty and social justice should be ignored in favor of concentrating solely on the issues of abortion and gay marriage.

When did any of you goody-two-shoes have a conversation with God who gave you the right to establish such priorities.  The Pope needs to take a good hard look at his own vanity and stick to promoting a God that is just, fair and far reaching.  He needs to work to end all evils; not those that make good political and partisan theater. He needs to stop ignoring child abuse in his houses of God.

Human values must be our focus.

…the Bleacherman has left the stadium not praising the Lord today….

KEEP YOUR GOD OFF OF MY PORCH

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…

Sometimes I feel as if I am tied to a chair and forced to listen to an eight track tape that keeps going around and around and around.  There is never a beginning and never an end.  Same old noise, over and over again.  Ugh.

All that I hear lately is a constant and bellowing lamenting on the absence of God in politics, the war on religion and the degradation of the American moral soul.  It seems as if God has been called in from the bullpen to save the game although I’m not sure what game really needs saving and whether God can really, at this point in our quest for absolute insanity, save us from ourselves.

Somewhere in the minds of those politicians who are out there every day whoring themselves out to get votes or radio and television personalities who seek to further their influence over their flock by stoking the fires of hatred and distrust; the need to reinsert Christian values into the political discussion and elevate it to a one size fits all standard savior of our society has become a dominant theme in voiced opinion.

The more I listen to this never ending cacophony of religious dogma the more I fear.  At times I feel as if what is spoken reflects a path towards the Inquisitions rather than a furtherance of democracy and social ethics.

When I was growing up, I was led to believe that God and the word and philosophy of God was all about compassion and empathy.  Kindness was an implied commandment. Benevolence and the love and respect for humanity axiomatic.  But then come the vulgarities of the Conservative Christian right and my whole belief system comes tumbling down like Chicago Cub pitching staff in June.

The Christian right cheers when they hear of a policy that condemns the poor to die because they do not have money for healthcare.  They cheer like the Romans cheered the lions when they devoured their ancestral Christians in the Coliseum.  They condemn those that receive food stamps because it helps people survive a downturn in the economy which they helped create and foster.  They talk of a war on religion to support their own crusade against those that don’t believe as they do.

Who in the hell is this God they are talking about.  Surely it is not the God that I believe in.

Rush Limbaugh calls a young college student a slut and a prostitute simply because she seeks help in paying for her contraceptives.  He does this while applauding those who commit adultery…like Senator Vitter and twice convicted Newt Gingrich.  Has their God revoked the anti-adultery amendment?

Whether Rush Limbaugh’s apology was a sincere reflection of his conscience or contrived and constructed to placate a host of fleeing advertisers, what needs to be learned from this episode of vulgarity is the need to keep political debate focused on the issues and not turn rhetoric into vitriolic character assassinations.

Such lessons need to be learned on both the left and right side of the political spectrum.  Calling Ms. Fluke a slut is no more becoming of American morality than Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a cunt.  Neither discourse belongs in our culture. Neither is funny, neither is appropriate and neither adds value to any offered opinion.

America faces some real issues and needs real people to engage in real debate.  People aren’t snobs because they want children to seek advanced education and possible a college education.  John F. Kennedy’s speech on the separation of church and state, if read correctly, should not make even the most religious vomit.

It is not an act of opportunity for a President to call a constituent and offer moral support for being viciously attacked by idiots for expressing political views.  It is an act of compassion…something we need a hell of a lot more of in this country.

If Republicans really advocate small, less intrusive government then let’s debate exactly what that means.  If they want government out of their fiscal matters then why do they advocate such a prominent role in defining morality and social conduct?  Let’s discuss this…civilly.  It is important.

Santorum should stop being a hypocrite.  I wonder how many wives of current members of congress are taking some form of contraceptives which, I may add, are being paid for by taxpayers.  So why doesn’t Rick of God propose eliminating contraceptive coverage from today’s Congress’ health care coverage?

Santorum needs to stop blaming media for committing fraud because it reports on his constant and endless demand for religious and moral engineering in our society.  He demands that there should be less children born out of wedlock but denies women access to contraceptives.  He opines that all of the world’s problems emanate from the fact that there is marked erosion in community and family infrastructures.  Yeah, that is the reason.  Sex.  There my friends is the root evil of all that is wrong with the world.

We need to stop this out of control proclivity to force feed Rick Santorum’s God and his morality on the rest of us.  He needs to stop planting HIS God on our front lawn like some KKK cross threatening that if we do not believe as he does harm will come to us.

Why have these false prophets stored civility and godliness in a Tupperware container and hidden it in the freezer behind my grandmother’s chicken soup?

In a recent tweet, Professor Caroline Heldman, of Occidental College, reminded me of a biblical tenent that I had long forgotten.  I thought it had been repealed by the Christian Right.  Judge not lest you be judged.

…the Bleacherman has left the stadium…