Category Archives: Social Causes and Morality

Five Weeks and Counting

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It has been five weeks now that I have gone without watching any NFL games and I’m at the point of not being able to care less. But I do care about what many players are doing to divide this country.

When Colin Kaepernick started his “protest” last year by kneeling during the national anthem, he said something to the effect that he doesn’t feel proud of this country when there is police brutality against blacks and racial injustice when white police officers are not going to jail for shooting and killing unarmed blacks. Soon after these comments were made many players followed suit and joined him in kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before games.

Most fans of the game saw this as disrespectful toward the flag, the national anthem, the country and especially toward those who serve and have served in the military. Common sense doesn’t seem to get through to these players as they claim they’re not doing it to show disrespect but to protest certain injustices, as well as President Donald Trump.

Whether or not they see it as such, it’s blatantly and undeniably disrespectful. It is a lie to suggest otherwise.

When I see entire teams taking part in this “protest,” I can’t help but think that many if not most of these players just simply don’t know the facts or they’re just going along to get along. But by kneeling during the national anthem, not only are they showing disrespect, they’re alienating fans and costing teams and the league an enormous amount of revenue.

With the platform NFL players have, they could easily form a coalition and conduct a press conference to address their grievances, no matter how misguided they are, and start a proper discussion about what they’re concerned about. The media would surely give them ample airtime and valuable print space.

I’m open to a national discussion on police brutality and racial injustice. I think the country is also open to it. Prove to me that police brutality and racial injustice are systemic in America and I’ll be on your side. But if you can’t prove it, you run the risk of showing your ignorance, losing credibility and further dividing this country.

 

Tom Folden is a political strategist, conservative thinker, and Editor of RightWingWriter.com, a website for conservative viewpoints. A human rights activist, he is a firm believer in the Constitution and the rule of law. He is also a singer/songwriter and recording artist. For interviews and/or appearances, please contact him at spencergroup@hotmail.com.

Making the Abnormal Normal

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Call you Caitlyn? Uh, no. I prefer to call you Bruce. You were born a male and you still are a male. It doesn’t matter that you prefer to be a woman. It also doesn’t matter if you feel deep down in your heart that you are a woman, you’re not. You’re still a man. But you’re a man with a serious mental disorder and that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

There is no room for joking about this, really. People still do, unfortunately. Let’s realize, however, that as unreal and absurd as it looks on the surface, deep down inside Bruce Jenner is hurting. So much so that he went to the extremes of taking physical altering medication he has no business taking and underwent surgical procedures that in the long term will affect him physically as well as psychologically. It probably already has.

All this has been praised by the mainstream media as courageous. Little do they care how deviant this behavioral condition is because in this age of social defiance the trend is to make bad good, make wrong right and make abnormal normal. It is a deliberate rejection of morality, social or otherwise.

 

Tolerance is a Two-Way Street

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The religious left is at it again. With Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) recently enacted, and promptly revised at the behest of some intolerant folks, came the inevitable backlash from those who want to force their beliefs on everyone else. Forcing someone to accept a different lifestyle is not a right but freedom to refuse to do something that violates one’s religious beliefs is. Yet those who yell and scream and throw temper tantrums the loudest seem to get their way.

It’s not that gay people and homosexuals want equal rights, they want people of faith and religion to fall in line with their agenda. They don’t want people to just coexist with them, they want people to accept them. Still, they don’t just want people to accept them, they want people to accept their behavior. Finally, they don’t want people to just accept their behavior, they want people to condone their behavior. In doing so they are essentially trying to force people of faith and religious beliefs to forfeit those beliefs and cater to their agenda and lifestyle.

If that means a baker is forced to bake a cake for a gay couple’s “wedding,” so be it. If that means a florist is forced to provide flowers for a “gay wedding,” so be it. And if that means owners of a pizzeria are forced to provide catering services for a “gay wedding reception,” so be it.

The quotations around the words wedding, gay wedding, and gay wedding reception are there to indicate that such is an impossibility. As I wrote back in June 2013 in my article You Can’t Change the Unchangeable:

Marriage, by definition, is the union between one man and one woman. It is not the union between two people regardless of gender. Marriage is reserved for one man, one woman groupings, no other combination, whatsoever.

The definition of marriage is unchangeable. It is what it is and cannot be added to, expounded upon or amended. It is nobody’s place to do that, not even the Supreme Court’s. Those who want to redefine marriage have complete disregard for the sanctity of marriage.

The key to understanding this issue is to understand the definition of marriage as being unchangeable.

Gay people can’t get married because it simply doesn’t make sense. Most people who oppose “gay marriage” are not trying to keep gay couples from being together. They just don’t want them hijacking the definition of the word marriage and trying to rearrange what the institution is: a sacred union between a man and a woman.

A man can form a civil union with another man and a woman can form a civil union with another woman. But that civil union cannot be called a marriage. The word marriage has its own definition and cannot be changed. Furthermore, there is nothing hateful or bigoted about that. It is just how it is.

This is the reason most people who oppose so-called gay weddings don’t want their freedoms infringed upon and don’t want to be forced to comply to an agenda that goes against their beliefs.

What’s fair is fair. If gay people want to be treated fairly, they must be willing to treat those who don’t hold their beliefs fairly. That means understanding that people have a right to disagree with their choice of sexual orientation. It also means respecting the freedom others have to not share their beliefs. It means not forcing a baker to bake a cake for a gay couple’s civil union celebration if that goes against that baker’s faith and religious beliefs. It also means not forcing a florist to provide flowers for a gay couple’s civil union celebration if that is contrary to that florist’s faith and religious beliefs. And it means not forcing the owners of a pizzeria to provide catering services for a gay couple’s civil union celebration if the owners feel it violates the tenets of their faith.

The point here, as Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) pointed out so eloquently before he caved in to the gay lobbyists and others, is that tolerance is a two-way street. If gay people want others to be tolerant of them, they, too, must be tolerant of others.

You Can’t Change the Unchangeable

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The Supreme Court’s recent decision on the oxymoronic phrase “gay marriage” tells us a few key things. First, it tells us that Obama should have been voted out of office in 2012. Better yet, he should not have been voted into office in 2008. Of course, that is my opinion for a number of reasons and many will strongly disagree with me.

Second, it shows what happens when proponents and opponents of an issue are unwilling to engage in an honest and open debate. This is the case with many issues. It happened with Obamacare and it is happening again with the current proposed immigration reform bill.

Third, it tells us that just as our country is divided on certain issues, so is our Supreme Court. But my guess is that the Supreme court does not truly represent the values of Americans as a whole. The majority of them ignored the principle of the issue and the will of the people.

The will of the people is for the definition of marriage to be respected. Most Americans don’t want the definition of marriage tampered with. As such, most Americans don’t feel it is the role of government to meddle into the lives of its citizens and proscribe values for them. That should be left to each individual, so long as it does not harm another individual.

It is not out of hatred that the majority of Americans want to keep same-sex couples from using the institution of marriage for their civil unions. Understand that most people have nothing against gay men and lesbian women. Most couldn’t care less if same-sex partners want to be together, live together, have long-term commited relationships, and partake in everything that entails. There should be equality for everybody.

But gay people not being able to marry does not mean they are not equal. They are. Nothing about not being able to marry a partner spells inequality. Those who think this are either willfully ignorant, ill-informed, indoctrinated or all of the above.

Marriage, by definition, is the union between one man and one woman. It is not the union between two people regardless of gender. Marriage is reserved for one man, one woman groupings, no other combination, whatsoever.

The definition of marriage is unchangeable. It is what it is and cannot be added to, expounded upon or amended. It is nobody’s place to do that, not even the Supreme Court’s. Those who want to redefine marriage have complete disregard for the sanctity of marriage.

The key to understanding this issue is to understand the definition of marriage as being unchangeable.

Let the people decide

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I’m always amazed at how our leaders make decisions that completely go against the will of the people. Too many bills get passed without being properly debated. Our elected officials will take a bill, dress it up and make it look nice on the surface, but it will wreak havoc on the inside.

Why do bills like that even make it through Congress? Because our congressmen and women are not listening to us. If they were they would let us in on the debate. Politicians don’t want an open debate, though, because then they would be forced to hear the truth, and they’ll have no choice but to understand the opposition to these crazy bills that are passed. That is, if they’re competent enough to understand.

But when they don’t listen, we the people end up with some awful piece of legislation the majority of us didn’t want. How is that “the consent of the governed?”

The short answer always seems to be “Well, the people do have a voice…with their votes.” So how has that worked out for us? It hasn’t. The people vote in those who look good, say all the right things and promise change. And when they get to Washington, they eventually become politicians along with the rest of those who gave in. And the people end up losing.

Take Obamacare

One of the things Obama and the left wanted to achieve when he was elected was to enact a state-run healthcare plan for the entire country, whether the entire country agreed with such a plan or not. The left already had most of their plan in place from the days when Hillary Clinton tried unsuccessfully to implement one. Thankfully, we had a Republican House and Senate that said “Oh no you don’t.”

Fast forward about 15 years and Obama enters office with a Democratic House and Senate to work with. A huge, monstrosity of a healthcare bill is compiled, some 3,000 pages of unread rules, regulations and mandates, and it gets forced through Congress with nary a debate over it.

The deceit was obvious and the arrogance blatant, but that didn’t stop the left from having their way. To them, the end was more important than the means. Now they can say they did something. Problem is, they did something really bad.

Same with immigration reform

In 1994, when Californians still had the courage to fight for their state, they passed Proposition 187 by a vote of 59-41 percent. Prop 187 was called the “Save our State” act and sought to eliminate services that illegals help themselves to. But pro-illegal alien groups, along with school districts, deemed it unconstitutional because it disabled illegal aliens from obtaining services like education and healthcare. In reality, what they essentially said is that illegal aliens should be given services that Americans pay for.

What an insult. There’s nothing unconstitutional about restricting services to those who do not belong here. And there’s nothing wrong with having the opinion that illegal aliens shouldn’t have rights that Americans worked for.

Shortly after its passage, Prop 187 was challenged with lawsuits. A federal court, unfortunately, ruled most of the new law unconstitutional. Years later when Gray Davis became Governor, he refused to appeal the federal court’s decision and that was that.

California’s leadership should have put its foot down when it had its chance. Failing to do that has only sent the message that California is an “anything goes” state. It’s exactly the kind of state special interests groups like to operate in.

With immigration, there is an eagerness among many in Congress to find a solution when a solution already exists. The solution they seek, which really equates to amnesty, goes against so much of what makes America who she is. Those who really know something about this issue are the ones who aren’t being heard. The elected leaders who get to decide the fate of this country don’t know much about illegal immigration and haven’t experienced the realities of the devastation it causes. More emphasis is placed on the plight of the foreigner than on the hardship of Americans who are affected by this illegal act.

We are, for some reason, entrusting our elected leaders to handle this very sensitive potential piece of legislation, one that will affect America and what she becomes in a most profound way, without a proper discussion about the horrendous effects on a massive scale it will have. On such a monumental issue with monumental consequences, shouldn’t we have an open debate, one that is not controlled by the media, so that every side is allowed to be heard fairly?

Another California law overturned

In November 2008, Californians passed Proposition 8, defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. The bill passed, which means that it becomes law, correct? Well, not according to those on the losing side of the issue. They complained about it and appealed it. A decision is set for June 2013.

Why do we allow this to happen? Why do we not demand an open discussion about bills that will have a major impact on Americans? Let’s have a congressional hearing on every major piece of legislation proposed. If it has to be a dog and pony show, then so be it. This needs to be done. All sides need to be heard. The American people especially need to be heard. Objectivity needs to prevail and real experts, not supposed experts, should testify and present facts for all to see.

How is it fair to be forced by government mandate to purchase healthcare insurance? That is not the government’s role. How is it unconstitutional, on the other hand, to demand that we don’t spend taxpayer money on illegal aliens? That is something that makes total sense. How is it unconstitutional that we ensure that the definition of marriage not be tampered with? We have let the few and the loud walk all over the many and the silent. The voices of we the people don’t matter much unless they’re exercised. It’s time for the silent to exercise their voices and be heard loud and clear.