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oneirophreniaCongress to blow $750 million to promote marriage and "better fathers">
Could it ever possibly occurr to these braindead religious idiots that perhaps marriages fail because our society as a whole has grown beyond the need for marriage? Cultural institutions change over time, and marriage is nothing more than a vestigial organ left over from a time in which it WAS a useful practice to determine and legitimize inheritance and maintain family records. Marriage is technically useless in today's cultural and legal milieux...but yet, thanks to the fact that we're still in the period of transition during which we're slowly waking up to the fact, church-bound morons still proclaim that marriage is the It Thing and dumbass laypeople still believe it to be true. So what happens? They get married, believing that the myth of Eternal Love will keep them together forever, despite the overwhelming evidence that that myth is about as valid as the Micmac Creation Narrative...and then what happens? The marriage inevitably falls apart. Because rather than exploring and developing a true commitment between caring partners, we have people being pressured by vestigial social standards into idiotic legal contracts to falsely "legitimize" a child's birth or perpetuate an exploded myth.
And now Congress is wasting 3/4 of a BILLION dollars on propping up this already-collapsed edifice? That's like spending money to rebuild the World Trade Center from the chunks of rubble scraped off of Ground Zero! A futile, wasteful, and simply stupid cause.
There is one tiny shred of nobility in this program, but it's completely swamped in ridiculous Christian rhetoric:
So...in essence, what these supporters are saying is this: Get the darkies and the white trash to pool their incomes by marrying each other so they won't need to be on welfare. A typical Republican response. Now, weening people off of federal assistance is a good thing--I'm a firm believer in each person having to stand on his or her own two feet...to a degree. But take one look at my county of residence, good ol' Fayette County PA, and you'll see that for every three people milking the welfare system for "laziness money", there are one or two who truly need it. I've an ex-student who is a single mother, for instance. She got married in her late twenties because she believed in the myth of Eternal Love, and had a child...after which, her worthless husband began slapping her--and her daughter--around like they were his property. She immediately divorced his useless ass and, luckily, got full custody of the young'un. She has a degree in finance, and works three part-time jobs because that's all she can get. There just aren't any jobs in this shithole county. In order to help her get food for her daughter, she gets food stamps or whatever they're called now. Well, hell, now! say the Republicans: if she would've strengthened her marriage to John the Wife Beater and just stuck with it, she wouldn't need the grub-stubs because she'd be a member of a "stable family unit" that could earn enough to keep her off the government tit.
Way to go, folks. On the one hand, you fuckers are talking about the sanctity of marriage and the need for "healthy, stable, married relationships" as if it's still some kind of blessed Hebrew sacrament...and yet...in the wording above, doesn't it sound a lot like you're equating marriage with economics primarily? Get the poor people married so they can help each other out and not live their lives on federal aid.
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
This is just another Bush Administration splurge in the name of populist religion-mongering. Yes, children who grow up in stable households are more healthy, less prone to social problems, and so forth--social psychologists, philosophers, and everyday parents like mine have known this for centuries. But what, precisely, defines a "stable household"? I know PLENTY of single mothers' whose lives may be tough, but they sure as hell provide a perfectly comfortable, loving, and educational environment for their children--and their children are, concommitantly, perfectly well-adjusted future citizens. I know PLENTY of couples who have children but are not legally married, and their households are the same. In fact, I know quite a few formerly-married couples who have since split but continue to raise their children in separate, but stable, environments!
However, I know of only three marriages which are stable and comfortable enough to provide a decent environment for children. Most of the people I know who are married are abysmally miserable. And they frequently take it out on their children.
So, Mr. Bush and the Republican Party...how does spending money on mentoring programs and the like for marriage really make things better? Marriage is irrelevant. IRRELEVANT. Little more than a vermiform appendix kept around for legal and traditional reasons. I have no problem with people getting married if they want to, for whatever reasons--misguided though they usually are: if two people want to make that official, paper-certified committment, they're more than free to do so. And many of them will make a perfectly good go of it, too. But let's not confuse the issue here. Marriage does not necessarily lead to stable homes. There are societal issues rooted a lot deeper than some calcified tradition. Why not spend money on educating children in personal responsibility? Why not spend the money on highschool sexual education programs that aim to destroy rampant teenage misconceptions of birth control and the consequences of having a child you are not prepared to take care of? Why not spend the money on investigating welfare fraud so that more of the cash being sucked up by the terminally lazy can be directed to those who legitimately need it?
Oh, wait. Can't do that. Baby Jesus would frown on anything that supports "immoral" lifestyles and encourages kids to have sex and being homosexual and probably read Harry Potter books, too.
Could it ever possibly occurr to these braindead religious idiots that perhaps marriages fail because our society as a whole has grown beyond the need for marriage? Cultural institutions change over time, and marriage is nothing more than a vestigial organ left over from a time in which it WAS a useful practice to determine and legitimize inheritance and maintain family records. Marriage is technically useless in today's cultural and legal milieux...but yet, thanks to the fact that we're still in the period of transition during which we're slowly waking up to the fact, church-bound morons still proclaim that marriage is the It Thing and dumbass laypeople still believe it to be true. So what happens? They get married, believing that the myth of Eternal Love will keep them together forever, despite the overwhelming evidence that that myth is about as valid as the Micmac Creation Narrative...and then what happens? The marriage inevitably falls apart. Because rather than exploring and developing a true commitment between caring partners, we have people being pressured by vestigial social standards into idiotic legal contracts to falsely "legitimize" a child's birth or perpetuate an exploded myth.
And now Congress is wasting 3/4 of a BILLION dollars on propping up this already-collapsed edifice? That's like spending money to rebuild the World Trade Center from the chunks of rubble scraped off of Ground Zero! A futile, wasteful, and simply stupid cause.
There is one tiny shred of nobility in this program, but it's completely swamped in ridiculous Christian rhetoric:
Supporters say that if the government can get more low-income parents to tie the knot and help them work through the rough spots that inevitably occur, then those families are less likely to need federal assistance in later years.
So...in essence, what these supporters are saying is this: Get the darkies and the white trash to pool their incomes by marrying each other so they won't need to be on welfare. A typical Republican response. Now, weening people off of federal assistance is a good thing--I'm a firm believer in each person having to stand on his or her own two feet...to a degree. But take one look at my county of residence, good ol' Fayette County PA, and you'll see that for every three people milking the welfare system for "laziness money", there are one or two who truly need it. I've an ex-student who is a single mother, for instance. She got married in her late twenties because she believed in the myth of Eternal Love, and had a child...after which, her worthless husband began slapping her--and her daughter--around like they were his property. She immediately divorced his useless ass and, luckily, got full custody of the young'un. She has a degree in finance, and works three part-time jobs because that's all she can get. There just aren't any jobs in this shithole county. In order to help her get food for her daughter, she gets food stamps or whatever they're called now. Well, hell, now! say the Republicans: if she would've strengthened her marriage to John the Wife Beater and just stuck with it, she wouldn't need the grub-stubs because she'd be a member of a "stable family unit" that could earn enough to keep her off the government tit.
Way to go, folks. On the one hand, you fuckers are talking about the sanctity of marriage and the need for "healthy, stable, married relationships" as if it's still some kind of blessed Hebrew sacrament...and yet...in the wording above, doesn't it sound a lot like you're equating marriage with economics primarily? Get the poor people married so they can help each other out and not live their lives on federal aid.
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
This is just another Bush Administration splurge in the name of populist religion-mongering. Yes, children who grow up in stable households are more healthy, less prone to social problems, and so forth--social psychologists, philosophers, and everyday parents like mine have known this for centuries. But what, precisely, defines a "stable household"? I know PLENTY of single mothers' whose lives may be tough, but they sure as hell provide a perfectly comfortable, loving, and educational environment for their children--and their children are, concommitantly, perfectly well-adjusted future citizens. I know PLENTY of couples who have children but are not legally married, and their households are the same. In fact, I know quite a few formerly-married couples who have since split but continue to raise their children in separate, but stable, environments!
However, I know of only three marriages which are stable and comfortable enough to provide a decent environment for children. Most of the people I know who are married are abysmally miserable. And they frequently take it out on their children.
So, Mr. Bush and the Republican Party...how does spending money on mentoring programs and the like for marriage really make things better? Marriage is irrelevant. IRRELEVANT. Little more than a vermiform appendix kept around for legal and traditional reasons. I have no problem with people getting married if they want to, for whatever reasons--misguided though they usually are: if two people want to make that official, paper-certified committment, they're more than free to do so. And many of them will make a perfectly good go of it, too. But let's not confuse the issue here. Marriage does not necessarily lead to stable homes. There are societal issues rooted a lot deeper than some calcified tradition. Why not spend money on educating children in personal responsibility? Why not spend the money on highschool sexual education programs that aim to destroy rampant teenage misconceptions of birth control and the consequences of having a child you are not prepared to take care of? Why not spend the money on investigating welfare fraud so that more of the cash being sucked up by the terminally lazy can be directed to those who legitimately need it?
Oh, wait. Can't do that. Baby Jesus would frown on anything that supports "immoral" lifestyles and encourages kids to have sex and being homosexual and probably read Harry Potter books, too.
