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euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.
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One problem with being a parent is that you occasionally find yourself semi-responsible for the acts of other people’s children. When your kid plays, he tends to play with other kids, whose parents may not be as…attentive as you are. You’re just trying to keep your kid from eating mulch, and suddnely a bunch of other halfwit rugrats are digging through trash cans and throwing old “forty” bottles at each other.
A few weeks ago, I took Charles to the park near our house, which has a nice little jungle gym with a couple slides. It’s usually a nice place to go because he gets bored with it quickly and wants to go home. On this occasion, while we were playing, we were descended upon by about a dozen children, ranging from a few months to 9 or 10 years old, and their grandmother, who was very friendly and nice but clearly overwhelmed. She focused mostly on the baby, while the rest of the terrors ran around injuring themselves and each other. One odd child decided the fun thing to do was to wait until my back was turned and throw a frisbee at my head. It was a pity that Granny was there, as I would have enjoyed dropping the kid out of a tree.
Charles played nicely, as is his usual wont, aside from occasionally trying to “borrow” toys from other children, which I corrected as needed. At one point, however, the older kids wandered to some nearby trees and started climbing them. Fine by me, they were 9 or 10, I was climbing trees when I was younger than that. Peer dynamics being what they are, however, most of the other kids wandered over to see what was going on. I convinced Charles that he was too small to climb trees, but by then the kids were picking up sticks off the ground and swinging them haphazardly. Hey, not my kids, not my problem, unless they came near Charles, in which case I’d start kicking butt and taking names. They didn’t, so I didn’t interfere.
This, of course, was when Granny swooped in, yelling at the kids to stop beating each other with flora, and giving me a nasty look for, I assume, having permitted her malignant seed to do such dangerous things. Because it’s my fault she showed up to a park with a plethora of idiots she couldn’t control.
Do you like poetry? I like poetry. Here’s a neat new one by Jill McDonough. Warning: it has some bad words. Many, in fact. Turn down your outrage meter so it doesn’t get blown out.
Yesterday’s murder of an abortion doctor has thrust the debate back into the national headlines. (One wonders whether the killer did so to affect the confirmation process of Sonia Sotomayor, but given the fact that he chose to advance his pro-life agenda by taking a life doesn’t seem to indicate a lot of intellectual depth.) Andrew Sullivan has been all over it, posting reader responses and emotionally draining stories about couples who have chosen to end a pregnancy despite their personal misgivings. One such story can be found here: Catholic Doctrine and Merciful Choice.
At 17 weeks gestation our baby had been diagnosed with major heart defects requiring a minimum of three risky open-heart surgeries beginning at birth, and would later require a heart transplant. At 19 weeks we were finally given our amnio results which revealed our baby also had Trisomy 21. A surgeon at the major teaching hospital where we’d had our fetal echocardiogram informed us that even if our baby somehow survived his palliative surgeries, this latest diagnosis meant he would not ever be eligible for a heart transplant.
As we sat talking quietly in our living room, our priest shared with us that he’d spent time at the same hospital where we’d had our fetal echocardiogram and where our son would have had surgery. He was there to support the family of a three-month-old who was having heart surgery. In the three weeks or so that he tended to this family, he also met 10 other families in the waiting room, each of whom also had young babies undergoing heart surgery. Sadly, within the short space of time our priest was there, every single one of those babies died.
Our priest came away from that experience feeling that this world-renowned children’s hospital was basically experimenting on babies. He saw their futile suffering and likened it to being crucified. The family he had gone there to support later told him that if they had only known what their baby would be forced to go through before dying, they would never have chosen surgery.
Our priest told us that he believed we were not choosing our son’s death, only choosing the timing of his death in order to spare him a great deal of suffering. Something he said that brought us great comfort was “God knows what is in your hearts.” God knows our choice was based on mercy and compassion. Who would better understand our hearts than God, who made the choice for His own Son to die?
I’ve made about a 105-degree turn on the topic of abortion, caused mainly by the births of my own kids. I had always believed that a fetus was little more than an organ, part of a woman’s body, to be discarded at her whim and without my or my government’s interference. But once you feel your baby move inside your wife’s belly, there’s no way to consider that as anything but a child. (Interestingly, I’m told that historically, the Jewish standard for “life” was when the fetus could be felt moving.)
I still think abortion should be legal in almost all situations (although I’m very, very squeamish about late-term abortions).
This contradiction stems from the fact that in the end, it’s both a woman’s body and a child. If I were a woman, I couldn’t end my own pregnancy (unless, perhaps, I was faced with the above situation). But I have no business forcing that position on a woman than someone else would have telling me I can’t eat meat on Fridays. Each person has to have their own conscience on the subject.
I pose the following query: which is the more compassionate action? Ending a pregnancy, or subjecting an infant to a month of suffering before letting it die on its own?
Oh snap! I totally forgot to post things today! Stupid, you know, other tasks. Well, while I try to come up with something better for later in the afternoon, I give you: Some crazy guy who says you can cure mental illness by boxing someone’s ears. It’s a lot like TimeCube, if you’re familiar with that, and if you aren’t, well go check that out too and consider yourself edumacated.
Remember all those other times I said I knew why the internet had been invented? I was wrong. Oh God, I was so wrong. This is why the internet was invented: 30 Awesomely Bad Unicorn Tattoos
While we’re on the topic of vice and mood-altering substances, here’s a short video on the Sweet Sweet Cheeba that details its interesting history, courtesy Andrew Sullivan:
A fun little survey of what people are drinkin’, and why. Kinda fun, particularly if you like booze. (I like booze.) My favorite so far:
Gin and Tonic
“The first and last time I drank vodka, I woke up in a military graveyard in Denver. So I started drinking gin, and I never looked back.” —Josh, 27
It’s hard to tell how accurate they are, considering I don’t know much about statistics (I barely passed that course) and I’m far too lazy to check any of the cited sources, but here are some interesting figures on divorce among Christian fundamentalists. It would be hypocritical of me to point out the hypocrisy of others, but I can at least allude to it, right? Right.
This has obvious ramifications in light of the California Supreme Court’s decision upholding Proposition 8. (Those of you who are completely incensed by it, by the way, read John Scalzi on the subject; if the decision is a setback at all, it’s a pretty minor one. Andrew Sullivan, somewhat an authority, believes that seeking to affirm gay marriage rights through the courts is a mistake: it’s too easy for the conservative pundits to shout “activist judges!” Let each state, and the federal government in turn, see the light on its own. It’s better to wait 3 or 4 years and either convince enough people that gay marriage is a good thing, or wait for the bigots to die off, as they inevitably will. When the courts get involved, the conservative base tends to get riled up and do things like enact constitutional amendments, which are much harder to get rid of down the road. But back to the topic at hand.)
Does it matter if fundamentalist Christians are marginally more likely to get divorced than other demographics? Well…no. The only real bonus to it is that when someone rants about the “Death of the American Family” or some other bull, you can point out that Fundamentalism seems to be the greatest threat of all. That’s satisfying, but counter-productive: you don’t convince people that way.
In my opinion the easiest way to argue with someone who is against gay marriage is to demand specificity. When they say, “Gay marriage is bad,” ask why. When they say, “Well, because it damages the institution of marriage,” ask how. If they say “The bible says homosexuality is wrong,” ask what that has to do with secular policy. You probably won’t convince all of them, but you don’t have to: you just have to convince enough.