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Mary Griggs

~ The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Mary Griggs

Monthly Archives: October 2012

Gayz and Storms

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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(c) by Mary Griggs

Frankenstorm Sandy had not even made it onto shore before Pastor John McTernan was declaring it God’s judgment for the “homosexual agenda.” This is the same guy who had made similar claims about Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Isaac (2012).

The Phelps family of Westboro Baptist Church were their usual sane selves when speaking of the storm. Margie Phelps blamed marriage equality in her tweet:

Sandy Winds AHEAD! bit.ly/VxC6qu via @godsmacksu 375,000 evacuated in NYC. Praise God! Stop marrying fags in NYC! #FagsDoomNations

—   MargiePhelps (@MargieJPhelps) October 29, 2012

Rabbi Noson Leiter of Torah Jews for Decency blamed Hurricane Sandy on gays and lesbians, calling it “divine justice” for New York’s new marriage equality law.

Unfortunately, they are not isolated crackpots, alone in blaming the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community for natural phenomena. The American Family Association’s Buster Wilson declared that Hurricane Isaac was punishment for Southern Decadence. After Hurricane Katrina, Rick Joyner claimed that “[God]‘s not gonna put up with perversion anymore.” Pat Robertson has long believed that acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombs, and “possibly a meteor.”

Why is it so comforting for these religious extremists to believe in an angry, vengeful God who uses hurricanes to punish the wicked? Hurricanes, I will add, that caused more disruption to the Republican National Conventions in 2008 and 2012 than they did to Southern Decadence.

What kind of all-powerful deity lacks the finesse to do some sort of surgical strike and hit what he aims at? Instead of targeting that 10% of the population who may be LGBT, he creates a storm of such magnitude that it impacted most of the East Coast and killed over 70 people. Seriously, aren’t tropical force winds extending 520 miles from the storm center overkill?

By the way, didn’t their God make a promise not to use storms and flooding to destroy the world again? Of course, that promise was signaled with a rainbow (Genesis 9:13-14) and, goodness knows, the rabid lunatics who see homosexuals as having some sort of weather superpowers would never want anyone to connect rainbows and God’s blessings.

In any event, hurricanes are not caused by marriage equality nor by societal advancements in extending civil rights to all citizens.

Hurricanes are formed during the summer and fall when warm, moist air from the ocean rises rapidly to encounter cooler air in the atmosphere before condensing into rain. This condensation also releases latent heat, which warms the cool air above, causing it to rise and pull more warm humid air from the ocean below. This continuing heat exchange and the Coriolis effect of the Earth spinning on its axis causes the air to spiral upwards with considerable force.

What caused Sandy in particular was four factors that came together at once:

  1. a hurricane
  2. a low pressure system from the arctic feeding the storm
  3. a high pressure system pushing the storm ashore.
  4. a full moon leading to higher than normal tides

That’s it.

Oh, and what caused the Perfect Storm of Halloween 1991 was a nor’easter that absorbed Hurricane Grace. It didn’t have anything to do with televangelist Jimmy Swaggart soliciting a prostitute.

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The Company You Keep

29 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Elections, Mary Griggs, Rant, Violence, Women's Rights

(c) by Mary Griggs

Rape of the Sabine Women by Giovanni da Bologna (1524-1608)

There has been a lot of coverage of some of the GOP politicians who consider rape just another means of conception. These politicians include Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) who does not believe in an abortion exception for rape (he also tried to add forcible to the exception definition), and Todd Akin (R-Missouri) who thinks women’s bodies shut down to keep from getting pregnant when ‘legitimately’ raped, and Steve King (R-Iowa) who thinks that because rape pregnancies haven’t been brought to his attention in a personal way, that they don’t happen and, the latest member of the club, Richard Mourdock (R-Indiana) who believes that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.”

Slate reports that “of the 28 non-incumbent Republican nominees, 12 to 15 share the view of Akin, Mourdock, and the party platform. They believe a rape victim should be forbidden to terminate her pregnancy.”

The Republican party’s self appointed historian went on ABC’s This Week to make perfectly clear to the world just how little conservatives respect  women. Newt Gingrich was defending Mourdock when he said, “He also immediately issued a clarification saying he was referring to the act of conception, and he condemned rape,” Gingrich said. “[Mitt] Romney has condemned — I mean, one part of this is nonsense. Every candidate I know, every decent American I know condemns rape. OK, so why can’t people like Stephanie Cutter get over it? We all condemn rape.”

We can’t get over it because they still aren’t getting it.

The Republican politicians refusal to recognize the historical fact of rape as a weapon doesn’t bode well for those of us who do not wish to repeat the past. The bible is full of stories of rape as the spoils of war. Rape was commonly practised by both the Greeks and the Romans in antiquity. World War II has numerous reports of rape on all sides. In recent times, rape went hand and hand with the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda and the Congo.

The Atlantic has an absolutely brilliant piece on what the historical significance of rape culture. Richard Mourdock, Mitt Romney and the GOP Defense of Coerced Mating examines how “rape, forced marriage and war go hand in hand throughout the ages, including our own.”

The author, Garance Franke-Ruta, identifies the heart of the issue: “Post-rape pregnancies are where blanket anti-abortion views become de facto support for coercive mating and the legally sanctioned denial of agency to women not only on the question of whether to have a child, but who the child’s father should be.”

She asks:

Do we want to live in a country where any man at any time can decide he wants to bear children with any woman and she has no right to stop that from happening if he can overpower her by force? If we do — and that’s the society Mourdock is advocating — then we have immediately left the society the feminists constructed and re-entered one where coerced mating is rewarded reproductively.

Think about that for a moment. The Teapublicans don’t just want a women’s right to her own body to be put back to the Middle Ages, they want to take us back to a time when men clubbed women over the head and dragged them back to the caves by their hair.

And our fears of rape babies are not just hysterical whining of privileged women. We live in a nation where 31 states grant rapists custody and visitation rights (Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming). Sexual assault survivors have come forward across the nation with horror stories of rapists using the threat of custody actions to blackmail and intimidate their victims into not pressing criminal charges.

Further, of the 19 states that have laws addressing the custody of rape-conceived children, 13 require proof of conviction in order to waive the rapist’s parental rights. This is an major issue because, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, only 9 out of every 100 rapes are prosecuted and just 5 lead to a felony conviction.

Why is it so important that we not forget what these Republicans are saying about rape?

Because these aren’t just renegade crackpots–the Republican Party platform codifies coerced mating by allowing no exception for rape in their anti-abortion plank. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan might try to explain that these politicians have just misspoken but they have also endorsed several of them.

They are what the Republican Party has become and why it should be rejected at the ballot box.

As Bill Maher said –

When you elect Mitt, you’re not just electing him, you’re electing every right-wing nut he’s pandered to in the last ten years. If the Mittmobile does roll into Washington, it’ll be towing behind it the whole anti-intellectual, anti-science freak show. The abstinence obsessives, the flat earthers, home schoolers, the holy warriors, the anti-women social neanderthal, the closeted homosexuals, and every end timer who sees the Virgin Mary in the grass over the septic tank.

Giving a clump of cells that can only be seen in a microscope more rights than the female human being in which they are growing is not pro-life. It is anti-woman.

I call on the women of this nation to rise up like Boudica of the Iceni, who rose up against the Roman occupiers of Britain in part as a reaction to the rape of her daughters by Roman soldiers.

I call on you to rise up and vote against any person who condones rape and its consequences (including but not limited to terror, trauma, sexually transmitted diseases, injury, pregnancy, etc). Such people are morally bankrupt and deserve no place or influence in civilized society. They especially do not deserve elected office.

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Books On a Shelf

27 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Mary Griggs, Publishing

I hope it never gets old, that giddy feeling I get when I go into a bookstore and see my books on the shelf. I was doing a signing at FAB Books and saw a display of my newest book, Crash Stop.

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It Is The Economy, Damn it!

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

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DOMA, Elections, LGBT Equality, Mary Griggs, Rant

(c) by Mary Griggs

I came onto Facebook this morning and saw this picture on a friend’s wall:

Beyond the fact that our economy is improving under President Barack Obama and with US military spending dwarfing the rest of the world making conquest laughable at best, what I take most issue with is the failure to understand that social issues are economic issues.

Even Forbes has written about a review of the last 80 years of economic history which show the laissez faire policies of Republican Presidencies had far less benefits than expected, and in fact produced almost universal negative economic outcomes for the nation.

I touched on this from a women’s health perspective in an earlier blog post (Women’s Health IS An Economic Issue!) and will now expand on some pretty specific ways that LGBT social issues are economic issues.

Here are some basic statistics on the impact of discrimination.

While LGBT persons tend to have more education on average than the general population, evidence suggests that they make less money than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts (Factor and Rothblum, 2007; Fassinger, 2007; Egan, Edelman, & Sherrill, 2008). Studies on income differences for LGBT persons indicate that:

  • Gay men earn up to 32 percent less than similarly qualified heterosexual men.
  • While 5.9 percent of the general population makes less than $10,000, 14 percent of LGBT individuals are within this income bracket.
  • Up to 68 percent of individuals identifying as LGBT report experiencing employment discrimination.
  • Termination of an employee based on sexual orientation remains legal in 31 American states and termination based on gender identity remains legal in 39 American states.

The consequences of youth homelessness have many implications for the socioeconomic status of LGBT youth (Ray & National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2006). Studies on LGBT youth reveal the following:

  • Studies indicate that between 20 and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
  • Upon coming out to their parents, 26 percent of LGBT people report being kicked out of their homes and being without economic support (Cochran, Stewart, Ginzler, & Cauce et al., 2002).
  • Homeless LGBT youth miss out on education and social support during critical formative years (Milburn, Ayala, Rice, Batterham, & Rotherham-Borus, 2006). For these reasons, LGBT youth often start at the lower rungs of the socioeconomic status ladder and are more likely to remain there in the future.

Beyond the statistics are the economic consequences in how LGBT relationships are treated.

Most heterosexuals take for granted that they can add a spouse or children to their employer’s health plan. LGBT employees with partners have that option only if they work for an organization that offers domestic partner coverage. Only 22% of American employers, including 53% of Fortune 500 companies, extend health insurance benefits to the same-sex partner of an employee (see “Unequal Taxes on Equal Benefits,” The Williams Institute).

Even when the coverage is available, it costs LGBT couples more because they are taxed on the value of those benefits. Employers must report the value of the benefits provided to the domestic partner as income on the employee’s Form W-2. Some companies (Bank of America, Google, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Discovery Communications, etc) recognize this a fairness issue and, to offset the tax cost on imputed income, they “gross up” the employee’s salary so that the net pay is equal to that of an identically salaried married employee.

The benefits of income splitting enjoyed by most married heterosexual couples via the joint return filing option is not generally available for same-sex partners on their federal returns. However, same-sex couples registered as domestic partners in California, Nevada and Washington (or married in California during the period such marriages were legally recognized, between June 16, 2008, and Nov. 5, 2008) must split their income on separate returns, due to the combination of community property laws and state legal recognition of property rights under domestic partnerships, including homosexual unions. Pursuant to informal guidance issued in 2010, the IRS now requires couples in these states to report 50% of their combined community income on each spouse or domestic partner’s individual federal return (see Private Letter Ruling 201021048, Chief Counsel Advice 201021050; IRS Publication 555, Community Property posted on the IRS website).

The unlimited marital deduction is not available for same-sex couples, therefore, gifts above $13,000 are subject to the gift tax. A taxable gift may result if one partner contributes over $13,000 more than the other partner to common expenses. Sharing of assets can also trigger a gift tax. If a partner owning property puts the other partner on the deed as a joint tenant with right of survivorship, a gift has occurred.

Social Security benefits are not passed on to surviving domestic partners. In some cases, IRA and 401(k) accounts can be rolled over. IRS Publication 590, Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs), states that proceeds may pass to a nonspouse beneficiary via a trustee-to-trustee rollover “as long as the IRA into which amounts are being moved is set up and maintained in the name of the deceased IRA owner for the benefit of [the nonspouse] as beneficiary.”

Under federal law, estates inherited by the surviving spouse are not subject to the estate tax. Because of DOMA, the federal government requires LGBT couples to pay an estate tax — the “gay tax,” Edie Windsor calls it.

On the issue of how transphobia impacts the economy, there is a study by Jody L. Herman entitled “The Cost of Employment Discrimination against Transgender Residents of Massachusetts,” that found that discrimination against the state’s approximately 33,000 transgender residents costs the state millions of dollars each year. According to the study, “[n]ot only does the Commonwealth suffer lost income tax revenue because of discrimination, but each transgender person who loses a job may become eligible for programs that will cost the state hundreds or thousands of dollars.” These programs include housing assistance, work-related programs, and public-assistance expenditures to replace lost income and insurance coverage.

The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that transgender people also face discrimination in housing, healthcare, and education, to name a few areas. Discrimination this pervasive comes at a tremendous cost not only to the individuals facing it, but also to society as a whole.

At a time when the economy is struggling and many are calling for drastic cuts in government spending, such blatant and pointless discrimination hurts all of us, from those impacted directly to those helping to bear the burden of the societal costs.

As much as Mitt Romney and his surrogates try to keep the focus on their economic priorities, none of us should forget that Mitt Romney has signed the NOM Marriage pledge and has committed his administration to enshrining the economic disparities and discriminations listed above into our constitution, to appointing federal judges who don’t support a right to same-sex marriage, and to vigorously defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court.

As I’ve pointed out in this post, you don’t have to be an economist to see that isn’t revenue neutral.

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Fic: Did He Say Binders?

20 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Elections, FanFic, Mary Griggs

Title: Did he say binders?

Author: Mary Griggs

Fandom: DWP

Pairing: Miranda/Andy

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 2,800

Summary: Andy and Miranda listen to the second presidential debate in the cooler.

Author’s Notes: Lauren Weisberger and 20th Century Fox are the true owners; I’m just letting the ladies play in my sandbox for a while.

Prompt response: Responding to a picture prompt of a Meryl Streep mug shot and the debate meme that swept social media.

 Did He Say Binders?

Miranda couldn’t help but muse about how right on point the Duchess of Windsor was when she said, “The only woman worth seeing undressed is the one you have undressed yourself.”

She gazed about the packed holding cell at the twenty or so scantily clad prostitutes that had been picked up in a vice sting of Midtown East. Unfortunately for her, and the soon to be ex policeman who dared arrest her, she and her former assistant had been mistakenly swept up with the sex workers.

Their evening had no foreshadowing of it ending up with them being booked for public lewdness. The two of them had enjoyed a intimate meal during which Andrea had nonchalantly toed off her Ferragamo pumps and run her stocking clad foot up and down Miranda’s calf. She had done so for most of the appetizer and entre, only stopping during dessert, which required her full attention to devour. Andrea had well known the effect the foot play would have on her and she did it anyway, a tiny smirk on her lips as she watched Miranda fight to maintain her icy exterior.

Miranda blamed what happened next on a temporary aberration on her part, one that was plaguing her more and more often now that she and Andrea had begun seeing each other socially and sexually. The temptation of that long neck had proven too much for her tattered self control and she had pulled the younger woman into a shadowed doorway when Roy’s return with the car had been delayed by traffic.

Perhaps it was imprudent of her to have been so focused in the skin beneath her lips, the silky strands of hair between her fingers and the moans that were music to her ears. Living in New York had inured her to most city noises, so failing to notice the commotion from the sirens was hardly her fault. She couldn’t be expected to help herself when the minx had spent the past week covering a story in Albany and not safe at home where they could have satisfied their baser needs on twelve hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets instead of against a cold, graffitoed security door.

Miranda’s gaze drifted over the holding cell again. The fashion crimes on display would, in a sensible world, have all these women doing hard time. What little fabric there was seemed to be primarily pleather or spandex. Faux animal prints and various shades of pink competed with black to dominate the color wheel. There also seemed to be an excessive amount of chains and collars and a deplorable lack of undergarments.

She glanced down and nearly sighed. The cell was full to capacity and it had taken her best cold stare to encourage one of the women to make enough space on one of the benches for one of them to sit. Andrea had refused take the seat and leave Miranda standing or to sit on Miranda’s lap. Instead, she had stood beside her on her four-inch heels for almost ninety minutes before giving in and sitting on the disgustingly filthy concrete floor. Miranda vowed to have her remove the skirt before allowing it to sully the leather seats of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan.

Miranda kept her eyes on her younger lover. Andrea was wearing a Michael Kors cream blouse that, from her angle, allowed Miranda a tantalizing glimpse of full breasts. Their slight movement during each inhale and exhale was mildly hypnotic and incredibly alluring.

“So close and yet so far,” she murmured.

“Pardon?” Andrea shifted slightly, exposing even more of her decollage. Noticing the direction of Miranda’s focus, she reached up to her top button.

“Don’t you dare!” Miranda hissed. “I must have something other than these visual assaults to look at.”

“What you need is a distraction.”

Miranda laughed. “It was my being distracted that got us into this mess in the first place.”

“True. Although you weren’t alone.” Andrea smiled dreamily and stroked her fingers down her neck to her cleavage.

“Enough of that.” Miranda narrowed her eyes. “I’m warning you.”

Andrea blew her a kiss and stood up. “Let me try something else, then.” She stretched her back a little and smiled some more as Miranda’s eyes caressed her frame. Walking to the bars, she cleared her throat to gain the attention of the man on guard duty.

“Yeah?”

“Would you be willing to bring that radio over here?”

“Why? I’m not having you people getting wild and crazy in there.”

“No, no. The second presidential debate should be starting soon and I don’t want to miss it.”

“Seriously?”

Andy batted her eyes. “Oh, yes,” she gushed. “See, I haven’t made up mind yet and, without these debates, I may never figure it out.”

The police officer rolled his eyes. “You ought to talk to your husband. He’ll tell you how to vote.”

Her grip tight enough to bend the steel bars, Andy kept the smile on her face by sheer will alone. “Oh, but my boyfriend took a job in Boston and left me all alone.” She softened her tone. “Please, can we listen?”

Sighing loudly, the officer took the radio off the shelf and brought it into the holding area. He fiddled with dial to get the local NPR station that was broadcasting the town hall from Hofstra University and placed it on the floor with the volume up.

“Thank you so much!”

With a grunt and a wave, he went back to his paperwork.

Andrea turned around to face the cell. “I hope you don’t mind me doing that.” she stated to her fellow prisoners.

“Girl, just because we make our living on our backs doesn’t mean we don’t have a brain in our heads.”

“Or a stake in this election.” One of the older women, a tall African America added.

The rest of group nodded and murmured in agreement.

Andy stepped away from the bars, her fingers itching for her journalist’s notebook. “Tell me about it,” she said.

One by one the women talked about their fears of a Republican presidency restricting their access to health care and reducing their birth control options. Most of their customers wouldn’t wear condoms and without access to low cost HIV/AIDS screenings and Norplant, the abortion, disease and death rate for them would skyrocket.

Several brought up the issue of educating their kids when so many conservative wanted to pull money from public schools. A large African American woman with her hair in tight curls nearly spat when Andrea brought up the voucher system. “Those vouchers are worse than useless. Even with one, I can’t get my kid into those private schools and, if I did, how am I gonna buy books and uniforms and all the shit they require?”

One of the Asian women spoke up. “My daughter has a learning disability and none of the charters will take her.”

“Yeah, my boy talked back once to a teacher and they won’t let him back either. Those charter schools might be free but they are sure picky at who gets to go.”

Some were worried about their adult children who had joined the military for the education credit and, through stop loss, were forced into multiple tours into war zones or were coming out with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD and long waiting lists for treatment from the Veteran’s Administration.

Others were angry at how the country seemed to attacking the President because of his race and what that meant for other minorities if he wasn’t reelected.

“He’s a good black,” one of the lighter skinned African American said. “All educated with a law degree and a pretty wife and smart kids. If he can’t break the chains, what chance have any of us?”

One of the younger white girls asked, “Have you really not made up your mind or were you just shining the guard?”

Andy ducked her head slightly. “Oh, I made it up four years ago. I still have hope.”

“Good for you.” The room cheered.

“What about you, Granny?” the other white girl asked.

Leaning into the girl’s face, Andy growled, “Don’t call her that.”

“Andrea,” Miranda spoke softly and Andrea turned immediately to her. “You are getting to be quite the knight in shining armor this evening. First you nearly slug the officer who was arresting me and now you’re about to brawl with this young woman.”

“He had no right touching you!”

“Indeed but she has every right to ask her question.”

“Not if she’s going to be rude about it.”

Andrea stuck out her lower lip and Miranda just wanted to kiss her pout away. Shaking off that thought, she patted her thigh and said, “Come here.”

Willingly, Andrea settled back on the floor at Miranda’s feet and hooked an arm around Miranda’s lower leg.

One of the sex workers sniggered and said, “You don’t really have a boyfriend, do you?”

“I did,” Andy answered. “Until he realized he couldn’t compete.”

Miranda sniffed. “Not in any way that matters.” She rested one hand possessively on Andrea’s shoulder and glanced across the room. “Now, I’m sure this young woman meant no disrespect.”

The girl seemed scared. “No, ma’am. Sorry.”

Miranda regally inclined her head a fraction of an inch. “I support the empowerment of women and President Obama has done an admirable job in promoting women and focusing on issues of importance to not only us and our families but the entire economy. I’ve also consulted with his wife on her couture choices.”

“You’ve met her?”

For the next several minutes, Miranda regaled them all with stories of her dressing Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and other powerful women in the administration.

As Candy Crowley called the debate to order, the cell fell quiet. They laughed at the thought of finding eighty-two uncommitted voters in New York this late in the election season and cheered every time Obama said ‘untrue’ to Romney.

There were shocked murmurs when Mitt responded to Candy with a testy, “I’m still talking.”

“Oh, no he didn’t!”

Andy shook her head. “I wondered how long it would take for them to be condescending to the moderator.”

The questioning and answering went on until Miranda suddenly leaned forward. “Did he just say “binders full of women?””

“Wow,” Andy exclaimed.

“Failing to actually address the question of pay equity is one thing but the insensitivity that he just displayed simply astounds me,” Miranda said. “How any politician, or man for that matter, can dismiss half the population like that is not someone who should be entrusted with the highest office of the land. Women’s concerns about working full time and taking care of children and the house, finding jobs with insurance coverage that covers contraception, are not peripheral issues distracting us from the bigger picture.”

Miranda was just getting wound up and her legs tensed around Andy’s shoulders. “Paycheck fairness matters! Twenty-three cents for every dollar may not seem like much but when that is for every hour, every day, every paycheck for our entire working life, it is a significant discrepancy. It also means that women pay less into social security and then get out less at the far end. Don’t even get me started on how badly women would fare if the safety net of social security and Medicaid/Medicare are turned into voucher systems that would keep even worse pace with inflation than the current models.”

Andy wiggled a little. She loved it when Miranda went on a rant. She was so powerful and articulate and sexy that Andy had an almost Pavlovian reaction to her tongue-lashings.

“And the Affordable Care Act is not just good for women who need regular checkups and for their children who get sick. It is good for every last one of us who has to foot the bill for emergency treatments at the hospital for the uninsured in the form of higher bills, premiums and taxes. Emergency rooms are not and have never been designed to care for chronic illnesses like diabetes or cancer or even Ann Romney’s multiple sclerosis!”

Several of the other prisoners clapped.

Miranda barely acknowledged them as she went on. “And all this talk of the middle class – have they forgotten the growing underclass that was created after eight years of Bush’s unfunded wars and multiple years of deficit spending that Paul Ryan and other congressional Republicans demanded? The poor get no mention in the discussion unless they are all being lumped together as moochers, content to lie about, with their hands out for other people’s money. None of these millionaire and billionaire politicians have any idea how hard you have to work when you’re below the poverty line.” She waved at herself. “I wasn’t always wearing designer names. I lived paycheck to paycheck, deciding which bills I could afford to pay that month, figuring out how far I could stretch a dollar for food and mending my clothes until they fell apart. How many sleepless nights I had, worrying about how I was going to make it until the next pay day when the only money I had was the spare change in my pockets. The poor can’t afford to be lazy!”

She shook her head. “Corporations get more welfare than people in this nation in the form of tax breaks, credits and cuts. Most of those who do get aid are seniors or, more commonly, children and the disabled. Do these heartless legislators even consider the impact of their cuts on these vulnerable populations?”

“And now they talk of immigration.” Miranda shook her head. “Like we are not a country of immigrants, like we have not benefited from artificially low wages paid to those without papers in farming and the food service industry, in construction and building, in all those low paid, high risk jobs that American’s with papers can afford not to do.”

Miranda sighed. “Far too many of the retailers and clothes manufacturers in my industry either pay below subsistence wages or ship what jobs they can out of the country to places that can do piecework for pennies a day and no benefits. Romney may have created 800,000 jobs while at Bain but the majority of them were overseas!”

Whatever she was going to say next was stalled when several high-ranking officers and lawyers in pricy business suits descended on the holding cell. In short order, Miranda and Andrea were freed to walk out of the police station and into the waiting automobile.

Miranda sank into the heated car seats and closed her eyes in bliss. She enjoyed a few moments of relaxation before rolling her head to the side and peeking through her lashes at her companion.

Andrea was scrawling furiously in her notebook.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to get it all down before I forget who said what.”

“How on earth are going to attribute it? We never exchanged names.”

“After you left to yell at the arresting officer, I asked for contact info. Seems like all of them had business cards or flyers about their services.”

“Business cards for prostitutes? What’s next, unions?”

“Don’t you know there is a union strip club in San Francisco?”

“God help us all.” Miranda closed her eyes again. “What are you planning to do with it once you write it down?”

“I think we experienced the best focus group on the election that I’ve ever seen. I’m going to offer it as part of our political coverage of the debate.”

“So you’re fine with telling the readers of that fine publication that you endured an evening in jail for the story?”

“Some of the best people have spent time in jail – Gandhi, Martin Luther King.”

“John Gioti, Eliot Spitzer, David Berkowitz.”

Poking her gently with her pen, Andy replied, “Don’t be pedantic.”

Miranda reached over and held the hand that held the ballpoint. “Do you intend to write the story tonight?”

“Yeah, I should be able to get most of it blocked before bed.”

“Well, I should tell you that I intend to go directly upstairs when we get home and shower off the stench of incarceration. I will remain naked as I slide into bed.”

Andrea shivered and turned her hand to entwine their fingers. “Naked?” she whispered.

“As God made me.” She looked at Andrea with a predator’s gleam in her eyes. “Do your work but don’t leave me waiting. You know how much I hate that.”

“Yes, Miranda.” Andy imbued the word with all the faux submissiveness she could muster.

“Now, that’s what I like to hear.”

They shared a secret smile, united in this adventure called love.

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Go Purple on October 19 for #SpiritDay

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Anti-Bully

 

What is Spirit Day?

An annual day in October when millions of Americans wear purple to speak out against bullying and to show their support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth.

How do I get involved?

It’s easy! Simply take the pledge to “go purple” on October 19th as we work to create a world in which LGBT teens are celebrated and accepted for who they are. You can also download the Spirit Day resource kit (http://glaad.org/spiritday), which has ways you can turn your community purple. Spirit Day participants can also spread the word and tell their friends that they’re standing up against bullying.

http://twibbon.com/support/spiritday

Find more ways to spread the word and graphics to download at http://glaad.org/spiritday/spreadtheword and http://facebook.com/glaad 

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Victory for Edie Windsor!

18 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Marriage Equality, Mary Griggs

Thea Spyer and Edith Windsor met in New York City in the 1960s, fell in love and lived together as partners until they married in Canada in 2007. Thea died in 2009 and willed her estate to her wife.

New York recognized Edie and Thea’s marriage, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, the federal government has refused to treat married same-sex couples like other married couples.

Under federal law, estates inherited by the surviving spouse are not subject to the estate tax. Because of DOMA, the federal government required Edith to pay an estate tax of $363,053 — the “gay tax,” Edie Windsor calls it — upon inheriting her partner’s wealth.

“Thea and I shared our lives together for 44 years, and I miss her each and every day,” said Windsor. “It’s thrilling to have a court finally recognize how unfair it is for the government to have treated us as though we were strangers.”

The district court had ruled that DOMA was unconstitutional on June 6, 2012. After oral argument in September, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act today as unconstitutional and a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution in a 2-1 decision.

The court decided that when government discriminates against lesbians and gay men, the discrimination should be presumed to be unconstitutional and the government has to have a very good reason for the discrimination. According to the ACLU, this is the first federal appeals court to decide that a higher standard of review applies to sexual orientation discrimination.

As the court also noted, attorneys hired by House Republicans to defend the law had argued in court that the government did indeed have legitimate interests, among them “the encouragement of ‘responsible’ procreation” and the preservation of traditional marriage.
The court did not find such arguments convincing. As the ruling pointed out, “Incentives for opposite-sex couples to marry and procreate (or not) were the same after DOMA was enacted as they were before.”

Four DOMA challenges, including Windsor, have been petitioned for review by the Supreme Court. The ruling from Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, who was appointed by President George H. W. Bush, is another win for marriage equality advocates and another loss for the House Republicans in their effort to defend DOMA in court.

Here is the decision: windsor decision 10.18.12

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Saying “Whoa” To the Slippery Slope

17 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Marriage Equality, Mary Griggs, Rant

(c) by Mary Griggs

The National Organization for Marriage released an ad saying that allowing gay couples to marry would be akin to legalizing pedophilia and incest. Here it is:

They are not alone in making this argument. In fact, Justice Antonin Scalia warned of this in his dissent to the 2003 Supreme Court decision of Lawrence vs Texas which struck down Texas’s law against sodomy. He wrote (and read from the bench in its entirity): “State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are … called into question by today’s decision.”

You expect ignorance from a group like NOM but a Supreme Court Justice should know better. As Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal has written:

The problem with “slippery slope” arguments…is that they assume that society and the law can’t make distinctions between situations that are different from one another. But we can tell apples from oranges. For example, that women got the right to vote does not mean that infants are next.

I will use this blog to refute the equation of legalizing marriage equality with starting us down the slippery slope to incest and pedophilia.

Let’s start with incest. Much of the info used in this section came from the FindLaw Forum.

Incest in this country is regulated through two parallel sets of laws: marriage regulations and criminal prohibitions. Marriage laws prohibit unions of parties within certain relationships of consanguinity (by blood) or affinity (by marriage). They declare such marriages void from the start.

Criminal laws prohibit marriage and sexual relationships based on the same ties (with the necessary consanguinity and affinity usually defined the same way as in the marriage laws). They penalize those who disobey with fines or imprisonment.

Every state prohibits marriages between parents and children, sisters and brothers, uncles and nieces, and aunts and nephews. Some prohibit all ancestor/descendant marriages, regardless of degree. Four states extend the prohibition to marriages between parents and their adopted children.

The argument for incestuous marriage is predicated on the notion that private consensual activity between adults should not be criminalized. However, in 2004, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that state interests in preventing incest — even among adults or step-relations — were perfectly legitimate.

I won’t be so bold as to say that such marriages will never be legal, especially in regards to cousin marriages (as a point of fact, most other countries permit first-cousin marriages without restriction, and the rate of cousin marriages in some parts of the world is as high as 60 percent of all marriages). However, the risk of producing genetically damaged offspring will keep society from ever accepting incestuous marriages.

Now, let’s discuss their second point:

Legalizing same-sex marriage does not logically entail that pedophilia (or bestiality, as others have argued) will become legal, too. Sexual abuse is not equal to loving, committed sexual unions.

The concept of the inability of children to give consent dates back centuries in the Common Law of British and American courts and it is the basis of all statutory rape laws. In the United States, under-aged youth are not legally allowed to marry.

The basis for saying it’s illegal to become sexually involved with person’s below a certain age is that quantifiable harm is done to the underage person by the physical, educational, and psychological consequences of sexual relations at a young age.

The harm includes interruption of education, limiting the fitness of a young person for later life, the psychological damage that sexual activity at a young age can cause, the physical damage that early childbearing causes, the increased likelihood of a complicated pregnancy and maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, the immaturity of at least one parent, which results in less effective parenting.  There is objective evidence that, in our society, the average adolecent or teenager is not equipped for marriage and childbearing and parenting and that very early marriages are more likely to end sooner.

This decision comes not from religion but from the practical, observable considerations that it is better for society if those who marry are competent adults.

In short, there are compelling reasons that society bans incestuous and paedophillic marriages, including genetic concerns about the children of incestuous marriages and the importance of preventing coercion and abuse. There are no such similar reasons to ban same-sex marriage between consenting adults.

As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance to name a few. Specious arguments about what might (however implausibly) result should marriage equality be the law of the land are not sufficient reason to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

There is a terrific graphic found here: Explaining Gay Rights To People Who Make the Huge Leap That If We Legalize Gay Marriage It Will Open the Doors To All Sorts of Ridiculous Things Like Marrying Your Toaster, Children, the Dead or Your Dog

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HALLOWEEN TRIPLE TREAT AUTHOR SIGNING!

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Mary Griggs, Publishing

JM Redmann and Greg Herren, editors of “Night Shadows: Queer Horror” and
Mary Griggs, author of “Crash Stop”
will be signing their books on
Saturday, October 27 from 6 to 8 pm at
FAB – Faubourg Marigny Art & Books
600 Frenchmen Street, NOLA
http://www.fabonfrenchmen.com/
Contact: fabotis@yahoo.com 504.947.3700
Night Shadows Description:
What scares you the most? An impressive lineup of the biggest names in gay and lesbian publishing come together to share tales of things that go bump in the night, murder and revenge most foul, and dark creatures that will haunt your dreams, while putting a decidedly queer twist on the literary horror genre. Edited by award-winning authors Greg Herren and J. M. Redmann, the stories in Night Shadows are masterfully told, disturbing tales of psychological terror that will continue to resonate with readers long after they finish reading these delightfully wicked stories. Don’t read these stygian tales when you’re alone—or without every light in the house burning!

Crash Stop Description:
She didn’t want a workplace feud, but Gail Joiner isn’t going to let Lily Rush walk all over her. When pushed, she pushes back.

Their hostilities evaporate, however, when a shipping accident traps Gail’s daughter and Lily in a wrecked warehouse. Incredibly, Sierra escapes unscathed, but Lily’s injuries are severe.

Recuperation allows Gail and Lily to uncover common ground, but what-might-be is interrupted by a threat on Lily’s job as distribution director for the large tea importer. Gail, as human resources director, finds herself caught between Lily, their CEO and the new vice president who seems determined to oust Lily for reasons of his own.

Two women struggle to make peace and find love amidst the corporate intrigue and life-changing challenges of the beautiful San Francisco Bay.

I hope to see folks there!

If you can’t make it but would like to purchase a copy, visit Bella Books – http://www.bellabooks.com/9781594933080-prod.html

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Politics in the Workplace

15 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Elections, Human Resources, Mary Griggs, Rant, Voting

(c) by Mary Griggs

Central Florida billionaire, David Siegel, the founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, sent a memo to over 7,000 of his employees which stated if Obama is re-elected, it would mean “fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.”

Arthur Allen, head of ASG Software Solutions, emailed his employees and urged them to vote for a “new president and administration” if they hope to “remain independent.”

Koch Industries, the company run by the billionaire Koch brothers, sent a voter information packet to 45,000 employees of its Georgia Pacific subsidiary earlier this month. In it was a letter from Koch Industries president Dave Robertson implicitly warning that “many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences” of voting for President Obama and other Democrats in the 2012 elections.

Are these examples of voter intimidation?

It may be pretty shitty, but it isn’t intimidation. In most cases, unless the employer actually threatens to fire people for how they vote, demands financial contributions for their continued employment or restricts employees from voting, they haven’t broken the law.

There are many employment laws that prohibit discrimination or unlawful termination on the basis of race, sex, age and certain other protected characteristics, but most federal statutes do not protect political expressions or activities. The National Labor Relations Act does protect employees’ rights to engage in protected concerted activity, though. In a Memorandum issued in 2008, the NLRB General Counsel stated that political activity related to employment concerns that occurs during non-work time and in non-work areas generally is protected if it does not disrupt the employer’s work operations or interfere with the employer’s ability to maintain discipline in its workplace. The General Counsel also stated, however, that political advocacy that occurs during work time is subject to restrictions imposed by lawful, neutrally-applied work rules.

State laws that do offer some protections to employees in their exercise of their political rights. For example, while Louisiana does not guarantee time off to vote there are two statutes protecting political rights –

  1. When there are at least 20 employees, employers can’t discriminate, threaten, or discipline to influence how, or whether, an employee participate in politics (La. Rev. Stat. §23:961);
  2. Workers (no matter the size of the employer) can’t be fired because of their political opinion and that their boss can’t try to control how, or if, they vote (La. Rev. Stat. §23:962).

While it may be legal for the above CEO’s to try and influence the election, is it a good idea?

My answer, as a Human Resources professional with almost 20 years management experience, is no.

Diversity of opinion and ideas is a good thing at work and in politics. In fact, treating every employee with dignity and respect (no matter their political opinion) is crucial to avoiding unwanted conflict and preventing acrimony. Imposing particular viewpoints in a diverse workplace can be detrimental to morale.

Managers and supervisors need to be aware that promoting a particular political position at work can open them to liability for lawsuits arising from creating hostile working conditions. Most companies and organizations have policies prohibiting harassment, discrimination and retaliation. Managers who bully employees for their political views can be subject to criminal penalties in addition to subjecting the business to civil liability.

Further, failing to be neutral on political issues can have major ramifications regarding union organizing. For example, permitting the use of e-mail or work time for political campaigning while prohibiting such use for union-related purposes could violate the NLRA.

On the other side of the equation, employees also need to be very careful about talking politics at work. In the first place, there is no absolute constitutional guarantee of free speech in a private workplace. That right is only guaranteed and applicable in public places and not privately owned businesses.

All employers have a legitimate interest in preventing any non-work activity from interfering with the efficient operation of their businesses. If political discussion impairs productivity, management can (and should) intervene.

Employers are entitled to enforce rules of conduct and to discipline employees whose actions disrupt the workplace, even if those actions are politically related. Employers can implement dress codes that prohibit employees from displaying political items at work, such as hats, pins, t-shirts, etc as well as restrict company resources, including computers, internet and e-mail to business purposes only.

Any adverse action must focus on the employee’s disruptive behavior and not on the opinions expressed by the employee and that any discipline is applied uniformly.

Frankly, it is best when we ALL leave our political activities for after work hours. You want to get the best out of your employees and coworkers? Create an environment that is comfortable and productive and don’t assume that everyone believes what you believe.

Here are some articles that might be of interest:

  • http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/09/12/why-you-shouldnt-talk-politics-at-work/
  • http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/30/living/talking-politics-workplace/index.html
  • http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-03/where-free-speech-goes-to-die-the-workplace

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National Coming Out Day 2012

11 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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LGBT Equality, Mary Griggs

I’m a lesbian and celebrating National Coming Out Day today. I’m coming out for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality because too many lives have been damaged by anti-LGBT bullying, bias and harassment. I live my life to show that a queer life is possible and worth celebrating. Come out and live in joy.

 

Read more about the history of the day on the HRC Website.

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Come Out and Be a Better You!

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

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LGBT Equality, Mary Griggs

(c) Mary Griggs

Coming out is an intensely private act made public. It is a process that might start with just telling one person and, once you realize that they still loved and accepted you, might have gone on to include everyone else in your life.

Some people are bullied for their sexual orientation before they even know themselves what the words gay and lesbian mean. The It Gets Better Project was set up to help those who are suffering in hostile environments to learn that circumstances can change and time can heal. The collection of videos from people who have come out, survived and thrived are incredibly powerful to watch.

Every person who comes out makes it better for the next person. A 2007 Pew study found that as more LGBT people come out of the closet, the more accepting their friends and relatives are. In fact, people who have a close gay friend or family member are more likely to support gay marriage and they are also significantly less likely to favor allowing schools to fire gay teachers than are those with little or no personal contact with gays, the poll found.

As Harvey Milk so famously said in his speech on Gay Freedom Day on June 25, 1978:

Gay brothers and sisters… You must come out. Come out… to your parents… I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives… come out to your friends… if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors… to your fellow workers… to the people who work where you eat and shop… But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.”

“That’s What America Is”

Those youngsters he spoke of are still struggling today. They need positive examples of healthy and whole LGBTQ persons. Role models may be family members, movie stars or musicians and they may even be athletes.

It can be incredibly empowering for a young lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person who has taken refuge in athletics to see someone in their sport who is also honest and open about their sexual orientation.

The Olympic games were held this year and the number of openly gay and lesbian athletes at the London Summer Games was the highest ever. There were 23 openly gay and lesbian London Olympians, plus two coaches. There are also two gay Paralympians. This compares with 11 in Athens and 10 in Beijing,

In even bigger sports news, Puerto Rican featherweight boxer Orlando Cruz came out. Cruz is the first openly gay man in boxing history.

“I’ve been fighting for more than 24 years and, as I continue my ascendant career, I want to be true to myself,” said Cruz. “I want to try to be the best role model I can be for kids who might look into boxing as a sport and a professional career. I have and will always be a proud Puerto Rican. I have always been and always will be a proud gay man.”

What might be even more important than finding positive LGBT role models in sports, especially in an election year, is having candidates on the ballot who bring the same honesty and openness to their campaigning.

This year, we will see the first openly bisexual candidate, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and, hopefully, our first openly gay senator, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

In the House, eight openly LGBT candidates are running as major-party nominees for the House of Representatives. Two are incumbents who are favored in their races (Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado and David Cicilline of Rhode Island) and there is even one gay Republican in the group, Richard Tisei of Massachusetts.

“People know that bigotry is bad politics,” said Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who is trying to oust one-term Republican Nan Hayworth from New York’s 18th District in the Hudson Valley. Maloney went on to say, “There is a real power in being yourself. When you’re not afraid, when you live your life with honesty and integrity, it makes you a better parent, a better colleague, a better friend and a better candidate.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

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Pride in Their Ignorance

08 Monday Oct 2012

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Mary Griggs, Rant

(c) by Mary Griggs

Representative Paul Broun (R-GA) gave a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet last month in which he said:

All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.

“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.

Broun is a physician, with an M.D. and a B.S. in chemistry and he serves on the House Science Committee, which came under scrutiny recently after another one of its Republican members, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses against pregnancy.

Why is it okay to have at least two people on the United States House Science committee who either don’t understand science or are utterly opposed to its understanding of the way the world, or indeed, universe, works?

Would we have this discussion about a member of the Armed Services Committee who is utterly opposed to the use of military intervention anywhere, anytime?

There is such a thing as truth. Truth is not relative. It’s not subjective. It may be elusive or hidden. People may wish to disregard it. But there is such a thing as truth and the pursuit of truth: trying to figure out what has really happened, trying to figure out how things really are.

To believe in a 6 to 9,000 year old earth, means ignoring evidence from nearly every corner of the sciences. As Theodosuis Dobzhansky stated: “Nothing in biology makes sense without evolution.”

A few thousand years simply is not enough time, for example, to explain the amount of sediment at the bottoms of rivers. Even stronger evidence for an older earth is available today from continental drift and radioactive decay rates. Essentially all the earth’s helium, for instance, comes from the radioactive decay of heavy elements with half-lives of millions of years; if the earth was only thousands of years old, then virtually none of these atoms would have decayed yet. In biology, the great age of the earth is demonstrated by rates of change of DNA. Historical linguistics shows that many modern languages evolved from a smaller number of parent languages, and the rate at which languages change is too slow to allow this linguistic evolution to have occurred within 6000 years. There is also a great deal of astronomical evidence. Measurements of the rate of cratering in our solar system show that the moon must be billions of years old.

Evolution can be easily observed in the laboratory, for instance when bacteria evolve resistance to a particular antibiotic or plants evolve due to selective breeding (see corn). The fossil record shows, for example, how birds evolved from dinosaurs. The hypothesis that present-day forms evolved from a common ancestor or ancestors is corroborated by DNA studies.

The word “theory” doesn’t just mean “what some person thinks.” The word is generally used in science to mean a powerful, rigorous framework that is based on a large body of evidence, has made many predictions that have been verified, and has withstood vigorous and skeptical examination.

Even the Catholic Church recognizes the scientific basis for evolution. In 1996, Pope John Paul II wrote:

Today, almost half a century after the publication of [Pius XII’s] Encyclical, fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.

Belief is for faith and for religions. Scientists accept that a particular theory adequately explains the facts and evidence acquired so far, and look for other tests that will either confirm or refute the theory.

Too bad politicians aren’t so rigorous when they are contradicted by the facts.

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Telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act

04 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Tags

Elections, Mary Griggs, Rant, Voting

(c) Mary Griggs

ImageYou know the scene from A Few Good Men where Tom Cruise’s character baits Jack Nicholson’s character into spitting out, “The truth! You can’t handle the truth!”?

I kept expecting Col. Nathan Jessup to step out from behind the curtain during last night’s debate and begin lecturing us on how we’re not entitled to honesty from our politicians.

We are witnessing a presidential campaign that has abandoned all interest in truth and fact. There is a pattern of lying to the voting public that is almost becoming commonplace in the Teapublican Party. From Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s gross lies at the GOP convention to Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition sending out several million, ostensibly “non-partisan” presidential election voter guide that contains an accusation about Obama supporting tax-payer funded abortion (the Affordable Care Act contains NO government funding for abortion) we have seen truth being cut to fit the aspirations of politicians.

There are those who claim that the United States is in decline because we expanded equality to include African Americans, women, the LGBT community and immigrants. In my mind, the worst kind of cultural decay comes from not valuing truth.

One of our greatest presidents spoke about the importance of trusting citizens with the truth. Abraham Lincoln said,

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Both candidates prepared for last night’s debates by honing their talking points for weeks and even months. The result of all their hard work was plenty of distortions of the truth but also an appalling number of outright lies.

The subjects of last night’s debate was taxes, jobs, health care and the economy and Mitt Romney lied about his tax plan, his deficit plan, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. He failed to deliver the specifics that voters deserve to hear and repeated his support for the same failed policies that have hurt the poor and middle class and that will worsen our economic crisis.

I’m not letting President Obama off the hook – he inflated the number of jobs added and about the deficit reduction. However, Romney repeatedly and blatantly lied to the very people he expects to vote for him. While much of what Barak Obama said was graded mostly true, much of what Mitt Romney said was determined to be mostly false. A complete listing can be found at Politifact.com and FactCheck.org

It may not be pretty, but we need to hear the truth if we are to best make a decision on November 6th. I think a little truth about politics, about our actual condition as a country and how we can fix it is not too much to ask from the candidates and their surrogates.

If a candidate won’t tell the truth before he takes office, how on earth are we going to know what they will be doing in our name once they are elected?

George Orwell wrote: “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

I hear the fife and drums. Do you?

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A Quandary For Catholics

02 Tuesday Oct 2012

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Faith, Marriage Equality, Mary Griggs, Rant, Women's Rights

(c) Mary Griggs

There have been several pronouncements recently from American Catholic bishops on the upcoming election. As moral leaders, they do have an obligation to promote virtue and to prevent vice. But when they present their political views as grave matters of faith, however, I believe they are going beyond guiding their flock and getting dangerously close to violating the separation of church and state.

It started last year when Minnesota’s Roman Catholic bishops took the unusual step of urging parish priests across the state to form committees to help get the proposed marriage amendment passed by voters in 2012.

“It is imperative that we marshal our resources to educate the faithful about the church’s teachings on these matters, and to vigorously organize and support a grass-roots effort to get out the vote to support the passage of this amendment,” Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt wrote in a letter to his priests dated Oct. 4, 2011.

Then, Catholic Archbishop John J. Myers of New Jersey released a pastoral letter reminding the faithful that “we cannot define and redefine marriage to suit our personal tastes or goals.” He called gay relationships “degrading” and suggested that Catholics who support marriage equality should refrain from taking Communion at Mass, as they are “unable to assent to or live the Church’s teaching in these matters.”

During the Democrat National Convention, there were two separate statements:

In a column and video posted by the official newspaper of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki called out the Democratic Party for temporarily removing God from their platform, supporting abortion and recognizing that “gay rights are human rights.”

“There are many positive and beneficial planks in the Democratic Party Platform, but I am pointing out those that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils,” the bishop explained. “My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have a duty to speak out on moral issues. I would be abdicating this duty if I remained silent out of fear of sounding ‘political’ and didn’t say anything about the morality of these issues. People of faith object to these platform positions that promote serious sins.”

This is an interview with Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia:

We’re speaking on the night Barack Obama is delivering his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Let me ask flat-out: Do you believe a Catholic in good faith can vote for Obama?


”I can only speak in terms of my own personal views. I certainly can’t vote for somebody who’s either pro-choice or pro-abortion.

I’m not a Republican and I’m not a Democrat. I’m registered as an independent, because I don’t think the church should be identified with one party or another. As an individual and voter I have deep personal concerns about any party that supports changing the definition of marriage, supports abortion in all circumstances, wants to restrict the traditional understanding of religious freedom.”

Over the next few weeks the Catholic Bishops of Illinois will be distributing four bulletin inserts to provide guidance and reflection points for Catholics exercising their right to vote in the upcoming 2012 election. Here is what they have to say about it:

For the weeks of October 14 and 21 we will write one insert about the importance of evaluating a candidate’s position on public policy issues. The moral imperative to respond to the basic needs of our neighbors – such as food, shelter, health care, education, and meaningful work – is universally binding on our conscience, but may be legitimately fulfilled through a variety of means. Catholics should seek the best methods to respond to these needs. However, candidates who promise ways to address these important needs, yet at the same time gloss over their support for “intrinsically evil” actions such as abortion, will not receive the support of a person with a conscience well-formed by the Catholic faith or human reason.

Baltimore archbishop William E. Lori, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new committee on religious liberty, at the Knights of Columbus annual convention in Anaheim, CA, advised Catholic voters: “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.”

*

I’m not going to get into how much some of these bishops have abdicated their moral high ground with their failure to fundamentally change the structure of a church that rewarded covering up the sex-abuse scandal over protecting their parishioners.

I will point out that I’m not the only one who thinks the focus of the bishops on the above examples shows pretty skewed priorities on their part. That their “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign to protest the Obama administration’s contraception mandate took place at the same time and in direct contrast to the Nuns on the Bus nationwide bus tour that focused the Catholic Church’s Gospel-driven mission of standing up for the poor only highlights the difference between those crusading for social justice and those who substitute papal edicts for the commands of Christ to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, tend the sick and visit the imprisoned.

Considering that U.S. Catholics support legalizing same-sex marriage at a higher rate the general population (and higher than most other religions) and that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control during their reproductive years, it seems to me that the bishops actions are going to lead to some pretty empty pews and to an increasingly disengaged congregation.

I’m not the only one who thinks the bishops have become the “cafeteria Catholics” that they rail against. I fear they are shrinking the broad catechism of the Church to narrow pelvic politics that do not reflect the essential teachings of Christ. Don’t take my word for it – read the final interview of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini for a high ranking leader’s critique of the church.

I implore the bishops to redirect the energy they spend obsessing about sex toward other grave social issues, such as war, poverty, health care access, economic justice, etc that inflict serious harm on the faithful.

Oh, and leaving the partisan campaigning out of the pulpit would be a good thing, too.

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