October 21, 2005
Compassion and Caring On The Other Side
Compassion and Caring On The Other Side
There are hate-filled nasty people out there. They should be generally avoided. To hear some people talk most such hatemongers are right-wingers and Christians. Although there are people who claim to fall under those titles, and we don't need to debate right now whether they actually deserve those category listings, who are pure evil and certainly disturbed, right-wingers and Christians do not have a monopoly on hate and vitriol.
Occasionally this strikes me rather forcibly, as with this article Big Arm Woman wrote about yesterday. Entitled "God Does Not Want 16 Kids" Mark Morford's article go on to lash out at the Duggars, whom I assume most everyone is aware just had their sixteenth child.
Some where in the article, he asserts that their having so many children is going to bring on environmental destruction and overpopulation of the world. Ignoring , of course, that Arkansas is not overpopulated and that one family with sixteen children is hardly a trend in the making, that seems to be his only real point in the article. The rest is all hate. He hates to see a family of apparently happy people who don't believe what he believes.
He attacks their hair, Mrs. Duggar's (as we call them around here) girl parts, and even complains that they are so white (I've looked at the parents and I'd like to figure out how they could produce children that weren't white). When one has to resort to complaints about another's appearance the arguments and any real point is already lost.
The bile and hate do slip into the realm of funny once or twice though, when Morford worries that the Duggar children will be, "encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right." Or when he notes that there aren't any "liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex" people with sixteen children. I think he must have missed the part of Health class where we learned that sex wasn't just for fun and getting to know someone on the first date, but was actually for procreation. How can one assert that people who have sixteen children aren't "pro-sex" and as far from "asexual" as they come? Sure they may, gasp, think that sex belongs in a marriage relationship, but these aren't people who are against it.
When I hear from some one or other of my more liberal acquaintances how they are looking for tolerance and acceptance and when they assert that the Christian Right is simply full of hate, I'll be sure to remember this article. No acceptance. No tolerance. No better than what I have been accused of merely by going to a conservative church and voting Republican.
God does not want 16 kids? So that whole "be fruitful and multiply" thing stops at 15? Did he actually hear from God on that?
I think we already know the answers to those questions. One factor driving this "hater" is his fear that the undesirable people will continue to multiply and put him further into the minority. Western European countries are struggling with replacement births, as people from Eastern Europe and the Mideast move in and proliferate.
I just saw an article by a rabbi sounding the warning that Jews are on the road to dieing out, because their births/couple is significantly below 2.1, the amount needed to maintain a replacement level.
I think you'll see more federal "help" for US families to encourage an increase in native birth rate. Much of the US growth has been through immigration, legal and otherwise.
[And if I was in TN and someone accused you of being an intolerant hater they'd have a fight on their hands from me. I'm intolerant of (though I don't hate!) people who would accuse you. You are too nice of a lady to have to put up with that.]
Posted by: MarcV at October 21, 2005 11:39 AMWell said, girl. I am afraid that us Christian boomers swallowed whole all that materialistic, I say, materialistic, fear-mongering about population explosion that gained currency in the dreaded sixties. What a decade. The decadent decade. Pardon me, while I play with my words. So the new religion, proclaimed with missionary zeal by the blowhard that you cited, deifies materials. Love and caring, that is, conservation, of materials, is now the highest form of devotion. (Way to go, Ohio!)
Posted by: Ted at October 21, 2005 12:01 PMI didn't even go read that link.
I already wrote about the Duggars and by Golly if they want 16 kids more power to them!
People think we are nuts for having 6.
As long as we can support them and take care of them, it is our business.
My religion my politics my tv preferences...these things and SO much more are MY business.
Posted by: Mary at October 21, 2005 01:56 PMThe column is called Notes and Errata. I guess we can file this one under Whoops! I am SOOOOO wrong!
Posted by: Patricia at October 21, 2005 02:07 PMMark Morford is a loathesmome man who wraps up his own ideology of peace, love, and open sex in the veil of "tolerance" - demanding that all respect and "tolerate" his views. Sadly, like so many of his brethren, his "tolerance" is very much one-sided, as this article so clearly shows.
Tolerance for me, but not for thee seems to be his mantra.
Big surprise.
Posted by: Athena at October 22, 2005 11:04 AMNow, now all. We all know that the left is the voice of sweet reason, intelligence, and all wisdom is collected there. The rest of us are struggling in the darkness of faith and the values that have sustained society for thousands of years. Lo, let us move to the light of "no culture is innately superior to any other, unless that culture is tearing down white european culture."
And Mark, I suspect that figure on Jews is for the non-observant Jews in this country. The orthodox Jews are still having many children - I went to school with a kid who was one of 17. The hasidic groups in particular still have a concept of rebuilding their numbers after the Holocaust, and they don't seem to be slowing down.
Posted by: skinnydan at October 24, 2005 08:35 AM
Jordana Adams, Chief Pontificator