Some BSA Parents: Screw Equality, We're Elite

It is difficult waiting on the Boy Scouts to decide whether they are going to allow equality in their ranks. Even at the accelerate rate that equality has been pushing forward for gays and lesbians recently, it is still moving at a glacial pace with regard to a human lifespan. Too many people that are born into inequality are forced to live with it until they die. And yet patience is becoming one of the most common refrains sung by the people that want to stop equality from happening.

NBC News reports:

A coalition of Boy Scouts councils representing some 540,000 youth -- or 20 percent of the organization’s 2.6 million active Scouts -- asked the national organization on Monday to delay a decision on ending the controversial policy, saying it was concerned “about the pace at which such actions are being taken,” according to a statement posted on the website of the Utah-based Great Salt Lake Council.

So what, specifically, is the problem with the Boy Scouts allowing each individual troop to make their own determination with respect to whether to allow gays into their ranks? It can't be because the rate of change is actually too fast. Depending on how the individual troops made their decisions, it is possible that not a single gay person would be allowed in the Boy Scouts. Instead, they feel sure that there are troops out there that want to end the discrimination, but if they don't all discriminate equally, then the ones that continue to discriminate will look bad in the eyes of the public.

Oldham said he had spoken with some troop leaders, pastors and parents who have expressed concern about the way forward if gays are allowed, particularly those units that will try to maintain the ban locally as would be permitted under the proposal. For more than two-thirds of Scouting groups affiliated with religious bodies, faith plays a large role in the private youth organization.

Yes, that's right. Religion plays a role in their discrimination decisions. And it isn't the love your neighbor, do unto others, kind of religion; instead, it is the kind of religion that is poison to the concept of equality and pisses on their own concept of loving your fellow man. It is a place where even though religion is required, it has to be their kind of religion that pushes bigoted ideas. No lesser religious thoughts that would not judge your fellow humans would possible be allowed, even if they are Christian religions too.

And what happens if other religious people step forward with equality in their hearts? Well, it seems like the only solution to the people that practice religions that push prejudicial ideas would be to remove themselves from dangerous thoughts like all men are created equal.

Angela Russell, who has an 11-year-old in the Boy Scouts and a 9-year-old in the Cub Scouts, said that if the BSA allows gays, particularly as leaders, they would be “breaking their own highly held codes to be ‘morally straight’ and to commit to such principles via oaths and promises.”

If the ban is lifted, “I must remove my boys from this program. My heart truly aches to think of it,” Russell, of Auburn, Wash., wrote in a letter she emailed to NBC News. “However, to leave them in a program that goes against its own teachings would be worse.”

There is a reason that people like Mrs. Russell don't want change to come so slow that essentially nothing changes. They don't want to see the idea of a tiered society come to an end. They don't want all people treated equally. They don't want any competition to their religious teachings that hold some people as lesser. The writing is on the wall. They realize that they will never be able to completely stop equality. Their only hope now is to slow it down to a crawl and pray for a miracle.

What? Background Checks on Firearms Actually Work?

It was just yesterday that I wrote about Wayne LaPierre and his claim that universal background checks wouldn't help reduce the number of illegal firearms available. Today, NewsOK published an article online with a gun shop owner contradicting Mr. LaPierre's position:

“Some people have their application rejected or may change their mind or whatever, but those numbers show you how many people are at least considering buying a gun,” said Darren Burger, co-owner of Choctaw gun store Locked and Loaded.

You can't have rejected applications and still claim that universal background checks wouldn't help at all. Obviously they wouldn't catch everyone, but reducing the number of guns in the hands of people that shouldn't have them can only help reduce the potential for gun violence.

Who Do You Trust With Firearms?

It sure isn't Wayne LaPierre. He told CBS News that:

Closing the federal loophole that allows Americans to buy guns in private transactions without having gone through a background check would be a slippery slope, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre said today, suggesting that President Obama and his administration would insist on taking it a step further.

The type of person we need in the National Rifle Association is someone that is willing to look at all the laws concerning firearms and do what is right of the American public including gun owners. There is no reason to be against universal background checks. I will grant that they won't catch everyone that shouldn't be allowed to purchase a firearm, but they will prevent some of the people that shouldn't be allowed to purchase firearms from getting their hands on them. Ultimately laws like this will help decrease the number of people that will end up being killed by rogue weapons.

But what makes Mr. LaPierre's stance truly horrendous is the fact that it won't help legal firearm owners at all. People that buy firearms legally aren't afraid to go through background checks. Legislation like President Obama is proposing won't infringe on our rights even in the slightest. There is no downside to legal owners of firearms. Universal background checks should be an example of a law that everyone can support; both gun owners and non-gun owning citizens.

By standing in the way of every piece of legislation regardless of the potential benefit of the legislation, Mr. LaPierre is showing himself as nothing more than a danger to all of the people of the United States regardless of whether they own a firearm or not.

The FBI Rescues Captive

Fantastic news! It is being reported by NBC news that the five year old that was held by Jimmy Lee Dykes has been rescued. One of the things that is telling in the story is that there are still plenty of people willing to give the credit to their god. But it wasn't their god that had anything to do with the resolution of the crime, it was the trained, skilled, and brave members of the FBI that brought this standoff to a successful resolution with a minimum loss of life.

"This boy is a very special child. He's been through and endured a lot and by the grace of God, he's OK," Olson said. "That was the mission of every man and woman on this compound. Of every law enforcement officer, every first responder, and all of the community who prayed to bring him home safely."

That might have been the mission of every man, woman, and law enforcement officer on the compound and in the community, but it was the FBI that delivered; not a god. I will keep my praise for the men and women that create the laws that protect us from the predators of society, the men and women that enforce those laws so that we can all pursue a living with a minimal degree of fear, and the people that work for a better future for humanity instead of wasting their time praising an imaginary being for something he didn't help with.

Those That Prey and Those That Pray

In case you haven't been watching the news with an eye out for the most dangerous and deluded people out there, Alabama has been dealing with a live one. Police are saying that Jim Dykes shot a bus driver before taking a kindergartener hostage and holing up in an underground bunker. It is deplorable what people can do to each other. The question is, what do we do in the face of this kind of brutality? We can try to control gun violence, we can support the family and friends, we can rally support from the community and nation, we can comfort the people involved, we can try to construct ways that prevent this type of situation, or we can do something completely worthless like pray.

Fox News has decided to opt for the do nothing approach in their puff piece on the Alabama tragedy. They have come to the conclusion that shining a spotlight on the people that opt to pray instead of doing something worthwhile is the best course of action in this situation. Of all the things that could be done by every one of these people involved, they would rather sit around and parade their piety in front of the world instead of actually trying to accomplish anything.

Legislation Against Gun Violence Making Progress

Legislation is working its way through congress even as the public focus on gun violence is waning. Many of the recommendations in the legislation have broad public support and have the potential for tremendous advantage and minimal consequences. So what exactly has a chance at passing?

New York Magazine is reporting:

(...) The new legislation would limit magazine sizes, expand background checks to include all sales at gun shows and private transactions, do more to keep guns from the mentally ill, and cut down on sales in states with weaker gun laws to buyers in states with stricter laws. (...) and the legislation could be amended to add provisions such as a ban on certain assault weapons.

I am in firm agreement with all these measures. It seems like the least we could do as a nation to try to limit the violence and death made capable by such killing machines. But despite my personal feelings, before any legislation can make any difference, it has to pass the House, Senate, and be signed into law by the President of the United States. I don't think any legislation has a chance if it contains an assault weapons ban. It also seems like an assault weapons ban would be the least effective in actually making a difference in the volume of gun violence we face as a nation. Because of these reasons, I have no particular love for the assault weapons ban.

Now, the reason that I think the assault weapons ban should be in the legislation is because it gives some wiggle room when it comes to negotiations. The NRA is going to scream that their members are being abused regardless of what type of legislation is put forward. The assault weapons ban gives them something to focus on, something that can be negotiated away to achieve bipartisan support and still leave meaningful reform available for the American people. So by all means, let's get the assault weapons ban added to the bill. Let's push for everything that will help while still being prepared to loose the parts of the bill that will help the least.

Clearing the Cache

Personal education has been at the forefront of my agenda this past week. I have been wanting to get some concepts strait and try to make sure my positions are consistent.

It started off with the Kübler-Ross model, commonly referred to as the "five stages of grief". I was never able to keep the stages strait, or even remember what all of them were. I could get denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance, but I never could remember what that fifth one was. It's funny that the fifth stage should be depression. Since depression always walks with me in life, I never actually think of it in any other context.

After getting the Kübler-Ross model correct, someone suggested that the problem I was searching for might be found in the concept of culture shock. After all, it has four distinct stages: honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment, and mastery; as well as several other hindrances to living in the new culture.

That was enough work for me regarding remembering different models of how we interact with the world and our culture. I didn't get far before someone brought up the concept of dualism in regard to the mind/body philosophy. I was pretty sure I knew what they were talking about, but I didn't want to take any chances at missing some of the finer points, so back to Wikipedia I went to make sure I wasn't missing anything. And it's a good thing I did. There are more layers stacked on top of each other in dualism than I would have ever imagined.

I had my grasp on dualism, culture shock, and the Kübler-Ross model. There didn't seem to be anything that philosophy, psychology, or religion could throw at me that I wasn't prepared for. What I didn't expect was that all the changes that I was talking about with other people might cause a moral panic. I gave up at this point and started reading about politics.

My ideas on politics seem to be pretty simple to me. I want as much freedom for myself and others as can be allowed. I want every type of freedom by default, and only put limits on that freedom when there is a specific and compelling reason to limit that freedom. But as I tried to form my ideas into more specific words, I ran up against the problem of exactly what freedom I was talking about. Was I talking about political freedom, or economic freedom. And regardless of what type of freedom I was thinking about, there was the principal-agent problem.

By this time I had a headache. My only choice was to take two aspirin and go to bed.

Pray to the Gods of Football

I am baffled when it comes to what a fairly sizable percentage of Americans believe. They see their god everywhere. He is personally doling out health, success, and presumably money to people all over the world. He is using his cosmic power over the entire universe not to help the starving, hungry, and suffering, but to assist in American sporting competitions.

The CNN Belief Blog reports:

With millions of Americans set to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, a new survey finds more than a quarter of Americans believe that God "plays a role in determining which team wins" at sports events.

The survey by the Public Religion Research Institute also found that more than half of Americans believe “God rewards athletes who have faith with good health and success.”

While I'm personally not interested in the Super Bowl, I am interested in people that think that their God is rewarding people with good health and success. By implication, that means that he isn't rewarding some of us with good health and success for some reason. And that reason, according to too many religious people I have visited with, seems to be that we are bigger sinners than them and deserving of the disadvantages we receive. Not only is that unbiblical, it also goes against everything we know about reality. It is blaming the victims of difficult times while rewarding the people that were fortunate with respect to health and wealth.

And if rewarding the lucky and punishing the victims isn't bad enough, it seems like you can't even tell the difference until after the fact.

“I'll tell anybody. One thing about God's will, you can never see God's will before it happens,” Lewis said after the game. “You can only see at the end of it. For his will to happen this way, I could never ask for anything else.”

The only good news is that we now know that the god of football is capricious and Nate Silver is his profit.

Educating Authorities

Aaron Tobey might have just come up with a workable solution for dealing with authorities. One of the main problems when dealing with authorities is that some of them are new to the job and haven't been sufficiently trained, while others have the compassion and demeanor of a third world tyrant. When it comes to doing their job, they can use their mental prowess, or lack there of, to shield them from recourse. Too often the only negative consequences they face is a public demonstration of their failed education, but in this political climate, the lack of an education can also be seen as a positive by a certain tricorn hat wearing segment of the population.

Aaron Tobey, suspecting that he would be put in a compromising position with little opportunity for direct input, wrote an abbreviated version of the Fourth Amendment on his chest. According to Wired:

A Virginia man who wrote an abbreviated version of the Fourth Amendment on his body and stripped to his shorts at an airport security screening area won a trial Friday in his lawsuit seeking $250,000 in damages for being detained on a disorderly conduct charge.

Perhaps it's time for all of us to turn our bodies into canvasses for our own protection. It isn't unheard of for patients facing an operation to leave a note on their healthy body parts to leave a note to the doctor telling them to operate elsewhere. It seems like the same thing can be applied to law enforcement. Simply write the laws on your body, and the offending officers might not have as much of an excuse for overstepping their bounds.

February 2013's Resolution

New Year's resolutions are pretty much worthless for me. I am horrible at setting goals that far in advance. I either make the goal too drastic and unobtainable, or else it is so easy to obtain that it is essentially meaningless. Instead of making resolutions a year at a time, I have decided to make them one month at a time and see if that makes any difference.

My resolution for February is to get caught up on all the sewing I have laying around the house waiting on me. That includes hemming dresses, altering work uniforms, and if money permits, sewing new skirts for late winter and spring.