Ummmm... I'm back!?
In all seriousness, I'm back to the blog, at least for now. I have a mega ("hot button issue") rant I'd like to get out of my head, so here I am. But first... holy crap has it really been almost a year since I updated this thing!!!???
Right, to business.
As we're all aware, I'm not a hugely religious person. I'm also liberal, gay and adopted. One of my biggest pet-peeves (aside from having wet hands and people adding a "t" to the end of "across", and a litany of other strange things) is people shoving their religious or political agendas in my face and down my throat. Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly OK with you wearing crosses or having political bumper stickers; reading your big black book in public is pushing it, but what the hey, it's freedom and seeing a book being read by someone else never hurt anyone. And I'm all for freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech and free press, freedom to protest and what-have-you. Thing is, when you take your freedom of speech and protest and you use it to push your ideals and religious teachings on unsuspecting, unassuming, non-offending passers-by, I will put my foot down.
This afternoon, on a quiet trip to the hardware store, I was witness (along with half the population of town) to about 100 local Christians (context clues lead me to believe Catholic or Baptist, can't be certain) holding signs along the busiest stretch of one of the main through-fares of town. Signs reading "Abortion Kills Children" and "Adoption is the Kinder Choice" and my personal favorite, "Abortion Hurts Women".
Allow me a snarky, petty response to each of these before I continue.
1. I can see how you believe that fetuses are alive from conception, but how does abortion of a fetus kill pre-existing children? It's a fetus, not a child, children are the ones that run around screaming and biting and such.
2. I actually agree with you here, only there's a problem with your theory: there's too many people having their own babies to adopt all the unwanted ones from accidental pregnancies and unprepared parents. There are simply not enough generous, financially and emotionally stable families available to take care of babies that are born to neglectful or families or parents below the poverty line who can't afford another child.
3. Where are you getting your information!? I mean sure there might be some phyisical discomfort after a woman receives an abortion, but I'm pretty sure that is she made the decision, she's not gonna be hurting too badly, she might even be better off, less stressed and free to resume life as normal. If I were talking to a person and not a ridiculous sign or, by proxy - the humanoid machine thing that wrote the sign, I wouldn't need to bring up abortion of offspring conceived by rape... but I will, just for giggles. In the case of rape, I think that baring and raising the child of the man who made you afraid of everything and completely destroyed any capability you had of trusting another human being, would hurt a woman more than the actual abortion. That fetus is not hers, its a monster's, and that child will likely live a miserable life.
Anyway, let's get back to the big picture here. I know people feel this way, and I have no problem with that. Until it leaks out of their churches or homes and into public streets and politics. Feel however you want to feel about whatever you want, but I don't feel that way, so don't push it on me. You go ahead and preach in your little circle about how every life is sacred and gay people are sinners trying to tempt you to hell, but I don't want to see it or hear it and I definitely don't want to have to vote on it.
OK I lied a little, I'm not 100% ok with people thinking like that, but when they line the streets with pink and blue crosses and make their children stand out in the cold to hold signs with them on a Sunday afternoon, I worry a little bit. I worry that this hatred and intolerance for anything that resembles moving beyond biblical times, this force feeding the"unenlightened", won't end with the older generation. I'm scared to see how those children holding signs this afternoon will turn out.Will they be carbon copies of their parents, or will they be so emotionally scarred from not being able to fit into the mold that's been laid out for them that they just can't handle the world ahead of them?
As far as my personal stance on abortion? That's up to the woman, her partner and her conscience, not any religious group or political party or government. Yes I was adopted. I'm very glad for that, for the life I have now. But if I were someone else right now and my bio parent's had aborted the thing that would have become me, I wouldn't have blamed them or called them sinners or told them they were wrong. They weren't ready to be parents, much less parents of two. I know I wouldn't have been ready for that at 16. They gave me a great life, giving me to parents that were prepared but unable to have children, but I'm one of the lucky ones. The economy is so bad, fewer and fewer families are able to provide decent lives for the children they have, much less bring new ones into an already over populated world.
If there was some under-population crisis, the human race was on the verge of extinction perhaps (if only) then I could see the government having the authority to say that a woman can't get an abortion. But as the world stands at this moment, there are more than enough of us and the only people that have a problem with abortion have no place in political policy, and no place on public streets, pushing their agenda.
I think that's all I have to say for now... I feel much better, and I'm being snuggle attacked by my kitten. :p
