Social Justice vs. Family Values...just a rant

[Saffy]

I just need to get this out of my system. Please forgive, it may be a little long.

I was paying for gas at the local mini-mart, and happened to run into a young man I'd recently run into at HRDC. He was trying to put in an application for low-income housing while I was appying for energy assistance.

Anyway, he's a single father at the age of 21 (mmom left the scene right after their daughter was born), and he had his 18 m/o daughter with him and was getting her a little treat. He introduced us, and she was amazingly well spoken for her tender age, and just as adorable as can be. We say our goodbye's and I notice him walking over to a semi-permanent motel next to the gas station. It's very run-down, has absolutely no place for kids to play and has been the cause of more than a few drug-busts reported in the local paper.

Maybe it's the time of year, maybe I'm still just a little too raw from the recent election fiasco, but I walked back to my car and promptly burst into tears.

After the tears, I began to feel rage. The Section 8 housing program in my state, as well as many others, has closed its doors to new applicants. Those already in the program are not currently in jeapordy (yet) but funding for new apps has stopped under the Bush administration.

And so, here we have a major conflict of interest regarding the often touted "family values" of the republican platform and the often slandered "social justice" issues of the dem platform.

Just how in the hell is this 18 m/o little girl, and the approximately 15 million other children living at or far below the poverty level, supposed to understand or even appreciate "family values" when their poverty stricken parent(s) must work 2 or more jobs just to afford a sub-standard motel room?

And, how in the hell are these parent(s) supposed to have the capacity to instill such family values when they're at the mercy of low-income child care providers (providing they're fortunate enough to afford even that!) to raise their children? Not to mention the sheer exhaustion they're under during the small amount of time they do have with their children?

I just don't understand why the republican party doesn't have the foresight to see how detrimental it is to these children to remove even those few ill-equipped programs that would've otherwise given them a fighting chance.

I'm trying to think of something I could do, personally, for this one little girl, even though technically my own family is below the poverty level. But, though poor, we have a home and food and a great network of friends and family. Do you think it would be too presumptious of me to send them an invitation for Christmas brunch and give her a stocking of goodies? I don't necessarily want to involve myself with her father as any sort of 'savior' b/c I'm in no position to be that. Nor, do I want him to think I take pity on him as it seems he's really doing the very best he can under the circumstances.

Sorry this was so long. Perhaps it should've been two separate posts: one on social justice vs. family values and the other on this personal situation. But, I wasn't able to separate them in my heart.

[sariku]

1. I think your heart is in the right place

And I don't think it would be presumptuous to invite him for Christmas brunch AND give the girl a stocking. I would imagine that the father, who seems to have been able to take a good stock of his situation and already knows he needs some help, won't be offended by it.

[KDLarsen]

2. This is why I really can't stand the Pro-life crowd..

.. they're all gas blue in their head when the fetus is still inside the mother, but once the baby is born, they couldn't care less about it.

This is why I like my little socialist heaven (to a certain degree) here in Denmark. The government makes damn sure that it's citizens are looked well after from womb to tomb.

[Saffy]

3. No logic, is there?

There's just no logic to taking away a woman's reproductive rights, thereby forcing her to give birth to children she may not be equipped to raise, then also taking away the social programs that might actually help her to raise these already at-risk kids.

I honestly don't get it.

Of course, there's much about the republican platform that doesn't make any sense to me, i.e., remove programs that might help to offset poverty, but make semi-automatic weapons available to all. Semi-automatic weapons that have absolutely nothing to do with the ability to hunt wild game, and no viable calling for an organized political militia at this juncture in time. In this twisted game of capitalistic have's and have not's, WHO exactly do they think is going to most attracted by such weaponry? And, for what purpose?

And, if these "family values" are the result of so many moralistic church-going folks, where's the rationale behind bringing unwanted children into the world only to then close their eyes to the plight of the ongoing survival of these same kids? Maybe, just maybe, the pubs figure they'll all kill themselves off with semi-automatic weaponry before they reach voting age. FUCKING REPUBLICANS!!!!

[The Straight Story]

4. trying to sort this out really, all a little weird

If a christian believes we should use your money to help unwed mothers (fathers even) would we reject this due to seperation of church and state? Where do we draw a distinct line between a philosphy and a religion, and how it all pans out in the constituional way we have often cited?

If someone from the right wing christian view said we should outlaw abortion but increase funding to help those who didn't know better (ie, they did not know that sex could lead to babies) would we be for more funding or against it because of those proposing it and why?

The right-wing view is (from what I can tell): you know where babies come from, so if you know that and still have sex and get pregnant live up to your responsibility and have the child and work to make the life of said child better. If you 'loved' her enough to have sex, then marry her, get a job, support the child, and make a life. If you don't love her that much than think twice about having sex.

In the scenario you mentioned we have someone who is trying their best given the situation. How much should you and I have to help out - versus how much should we help out on a personal basis (ie - should we take money from others and give it to people who acted in a way they should have know better or should we leave such charity up to people to decide?)

Christians I know are all for helping people, who help themselves. Been there myself. Made a lot of mistakes, and have been helped through them by caring brethern. Was it the government's job to help me? I doubt it. This, to me, is where we bring in charities.

And who has a good track record of helping others? Christian based charities. Why not humanist or buddhist? Why not jewish?

We bash christians regulary on this board, but my experience is that they have been there for me when I needed them. In my days that I was poor, unable to work due to injury, no one helped me except the christian charities. Not the jewish ones, not the buddhist ones, not the humanist ones. Where were they????

I made my own mistakes back in the day. No one else forced me into them. Sure I was screwed over at times by companies, but I had kids young without a thought to their future. I was the problem.

In the case you mentioned - what is the duty of government, and what is the duty of the people involved? The mother in the case you cited seems to be the real problem. Why did they have kids in the first place? Why should I, or you, have to have our paychecks penalized so that they can live as they wish and have all that they desire (ie why should I have to pay for their mistakes?). The same is true, to me, of corporate america where idiotic corporations do dumbass things and expect us to bail them out.


Here is the scenario: Man and woman meet, they have sex, they have a child. They don't really love each other but needed a good screw. Now there is a kid in the picture. They decide to allow said kid to be born, but they want to go off and screw others and make a new life. So they look to you and me to support their problems they made. Why? So that they can go and do the same again.

[Saffy]

5. Posted by The Straight Story:

"The right-wing view is (from what I can tell): you know where babies come from, so if you know that and still have sex and get pregnant live up to your responsibility and have the child and work to make the life of said child better. If you 'loved' her enough to have sex, then marry her, get a job, support the child, and make a life. If you don't love her that much than think twice about having sex."

Right, but isn't it also the Christian right that wants to keep sex education out of the public school curriculum?

Again, I'm at a loss to explain or even understand the basic tenets off the Christian right/moral majority/Republican party (which have become, unfortunately, rather interchangeable).

As far as I can tell, these seem to be those tenets:

DON'T educate your children on the how's, why's and consequences of sex.
DO admonish them for exploring it on their own.
DON'T offer preventative, reproductive support, in the form of birth control.
DO offer further admonishment and criticism if unintended reproduction takes place.
DON'T offer emotional or financial support for abortion.
DO offer financial support for the unborn fetus, and emotional support to the mother as long as she abides by your rationale.
DON'T offer emotional or financial support once that fetus is born.
DO collect your self-righteous free pass to heaven because you saved a fetus, but
DON'T collect your humanitarian award, because you just helped bring one more struggling child into a world without offering further assistance to that child, or it's parents.

And by all means,
DO make sure you tell all your friends, family and congregation of your support in the "right to life" campaign, but just be sure you
DON'T try to sell it as a "right to a decent life" campaign.

[Saffy]

6. Just one more:

"In the case you mentioned - what is the duty of government, and what is the duty of the people involved? The mother in the case you cited seems to be the real problem. Why did they have kids in the first place? Why should I, or you, have to have our paychecks penalized so that they can live as they wish and have all that they desire (ie why should I have to pay for their mistakes?). The same is true, to me, of corporate america where idiotic corporations do dumbass things and expect us to bail them out."

Why is the mother the real problem? Because she ignored her maternal responsibilities? Perhaps. I'll give margin for that. But, what about the many, many fathers that do the same thing? Are they also a "real problem"?

My guess as to why they had kids in the first place goes back to my previous post. I didn't put this young man through an inquisition, but given that he's from Montana, my guess is that neither he nor the mother were offered adequate sex education. And, on the chance that they did, they probably weren't offered birth control.

And, just for the sake of arguement, let's say they had been educated and managed to secure birth control, but happened to be that 1 out of 100 that still managed to get pregnant. That's 1 out of 100...otherwise known as 1%. (Current U.S. population is 294,906,900. 1% of that is 2,949,069 people.) 1% is astronomically large!

So, IF these two young persons happened to be fortunate enough to have ALL of these preventative measures- which is unlikely given our geographic location- yet still managed to carry on the cycle of life, is it justifiable to sit back and allow their unintended child to be raised with so few opportunities? Sub-standard housing? Inadequate nutrition or child care?

I can tell you first hand that families utilizing tax-based social programs DO NOT "live as they wish and have all that they desire". In fact, most of these programs are inherently flawed to the degree that they don't allow room for financial stability at all. But, when I look at the flaws of these programs vs. the excesses of the many other tax-based programs that do nothing for these under-priveldged children, I find myself in support of the programs, flaws and all.

[WCGreen]

9. For that matter

Why should we protect companies that have made huge financial mistakes? We bail them out through the legal protection we have set up that favors property rights.

What about the superfund and pollution? Shouldn’t the companies be held responsible for their deeds....

And what of the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980's when all the good republicans used the safety net of the federal government to run up extravagant costs while selling non existent investments to a gullible and uneducated public?

Where does personal responsibility begin for the right? Where does it end for the left....

I think, personally as someone who has been around the block a time or two, that there has to be a safety net, something out there that provides some protection without skewing the operation of the markets.

Hear me out. It really all depends on if you think every decision you make is based on the profit motive, of what's best for me. Then you believe as the right does. Right on up to and including the war in Iraq, it's all about a profit motive for these people......

That's what is so galling to me. That these Christians, who profess to believe in the teachings of Christ, would not recognize that when they devolve everything to a selfish motive, what's in it for me, then there is no room for Christ in your heart.....

[The Straight Story]

12. Thank you

Where does personal responsibility begin for the right? Where does it end for the left....

That in a sense is what I was trying to get at in a long winded half intoxicated way :)

That these Christians, who profess to believe in the teachings of Christ, would not recognize that when they devolve everything to a selfish motive, what's in it for me,

While I do understand what your getting at part of my point was regarding laws/legislation/et al on a governmental level and the mixing of church/state. If I as a christian were to propose that we have free medical care for all pregnant women and that the child gets free medical care up until X age and I proposed such based on my religious beliefs would the left support it? I would guess they would - but why?

It comes down to the big tent thing. We all have common values, which we all seem to get from different places (bible, philosophy, et al) and we all justify as being the right ones. I hope in the future we can better lay out all we have in common and how it all ties together and discuss more openly on it's merits and how it relates to defined goals.

While my post may have seemed acidic or harsh it does touch on things which have a deeper relevance. People, and companies, make mistakes. A company can affect the lives of many people (the workers) so the right seems more inclined to help them first (thinking that if you save the jobs of hundreds of people by bailing out a company you are doing the best thing for all). The right sees things in a block, one chunk of money helps many people. The left sees individuals being just as important but it is harder to pin down a block type or to influence a change (ala the company which can change leadership and hope that the problem won't occur again).

We attempt to define blocks in all this though, minorities, the poor, indians, women, disabled, and so on. I am talking more here on how we fund things (only so much money to go around). I think at the deeper level our search has found a more core like problem in how society (our company) works at the govermental level (our board of directors if you will). We want to solve problems from the root on up, where the right seems to want to ignore the root (the individual) and work on the larger groupings which are 'fed' by the root. Not the best of analogies to be sure :)

I think too we want to do both. Where we have a big difference with the right is in core beliefs of humanity. They believe a company will do it's best to keep things flowing towards the best result whereas they see individuals as wanting to get what they can and have only self interest above community.

[WCGreen]

16. The point I was trying to get across was

how the right, Christian or otherwise, views everything we do, every step we take as though we all run everything through a cost benefit analysis.

That, in essence, dehumanizes everything, including morality.

Think about the way they speak of personal responsibility: in this case, the process of impregnating. Because most unwanted pregnancies occur, I would imagine, not from a rational though process leading to a risk analysis, but in the heat o the moment, driven by passion and not reason.

Most people make decisions based on passion. Hell we wouldn't have a consumer based capitalistic society if passion wasn't the rule rather than the exception.

So my point lead back to where does personal responsibility begin and where does it end...

A very thorny issue that has perplexed mankind since Moses came down from the mount with the first written laws that pronounced passion is problematic. But passion drives religion and patriotism, two key blocks in the right's coalition....

Where does that leave this discussion?

Who knows? All I know is that this is the type of discussion that must be had, a rational discussion about passion.

[azoth]

10. Huh?

Who said anything about religion? You're making a lot of assumptions, I think, in your response - namely about lots of things that weren't mentioned in the original post.

First, what if this young man in question *isn't* a christian. It does happen. He sounds like he's trying to be responsible - but what if he doesn't have any "brethren" to help him? It's ludicrous to suggest that people turn to religious organizations for their charitable assistance. Now, I do know that many people have received tons of help from religious organizations but the bottom line is that not everyone *belongs* to a religious organization. And perhaps christian charities have a longstanding record because, assuming you're in the US, that is your experience. I'm quite sure that temples and mosques have extensive assistance organizations. I've read that Hamas does quite a bit of social assistance work - and yet they are responsible for heinous acts of terror. *shrug*

Next, as for the helping of those who help themselves - it sure sounds to me as though this young father is trying to do just that. I don't know how your spin on liberalism reads but in my Liberal Universe, a person like that is to be valued and treasured for trying to do the right thing. It would be callous, cold-hearted, and positively conservative to suggest otherwise.

And finally, the original post asked many questions about the *child* in this situation. Do you not see that by stepping around the parent of said child, you are condemning that child to live a substandard existence - totally behind the eight ball from the get-go? It's easy to say "gosh, you knew what could happen when you had sex" but this obviously young couple chose to have their child. The father seems to want to make the best of the situation. How shitty is it to say "sorry - you should have known better" or worse yet "hey kid, your folks should have known better. Have a nice life."

Yikes. I prefer my liberalism thankyouverymuch.

[skygazer]

13. What is the duty of government

In my opinion, it is not the duty of government or individuals to attempt to judge the motives, or the actions of the people who are in need. You make a lot of assumptions about the above scenario - that's not particularly realistic because you have no way of knowing what the situation may have been.

But the reality is there are people who need some assistance and it is to the good of both government and society to try to provide some sort of framework to help them get into a position in which they can contribute to said society and government.

Nobody seems to mind spending billions of dollars to build more prisons but when you want to put in place programs that will likely keep people out of prison in the first place, you get arguments like yours - that it is personal responsibility and they ought to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and it's not the government's responsibility.

To me, it makes more sense to provide that young man with some help, give him some job training, some child care allowances, some decent housing. In that way, he will be better able to help himself - not collect handout and "go do it again" but to take decent care of his child thereby keeping the both of them off the street and headed toward a positive future.

To simply leave people like that out to dry creates far more of a drain on society than funding the programs would. They become more hopeless and poor, drift into crime and substance abuse and eventually she'll wind up a pregnant teenager and her dad might be in prison. I'm not saying that has to happen but it's far more likely if they are just left to drift.

Yes, there are some fine Christian charities out there but it is not enough. There are far too many people in need and there needs to be a concerted and organized effort to move them into a better position. This, to me, helps all of us.

To me, it is not about the individual so much as the whole body. What benefits society as a whole? Not what benefits me. I am willing to spend some of my money to help others acheive more and in this way, maybe all of us can move forward together rather than some doing phenomenally well and others being on the fringe. I would rather more of my money went to pay for that than for the billions of dollars we spend on war.

[WCGreen]

7. Talk to him

Explain your situation and say that we have to stik together so it doesn't seem like you are patronizing him...

Invie him over for a dinner before the holiday and feel out what it is his family is doing for christmas....

Then offer.....

[GingerSnaps]

8. I read in the paper recently that * raised the rents of section 8 families

He also cut funding down for the energy assistant program. They will never talk about it on the corporate news but you can find the article buried in the back of the newspaper by the obituaries.

There are so many men that would walk away from being a daddy especially at his age. Could it also be possible that he is lacking a deposit for an apartment?

Do you live in a small town or a big city? I do volunteer work at a womans shelter for abused woman and the waiting list in my state for a section 8 has been closed indefinitely.

I wonder if he could possibly find a two room rental in someones house that is in a safe area. If he could hook up with an elderly lady that might be willing to watch the little girl for some odd work around her house it would be better than living in an unsafe motel with drug dealers and possibly the lowest form of life molesters.

If I were you I would play Santa and try and help them find another place to stay. There are so many seniors that are alone that would enjoy the company of them being around. He could probably work out a deal where he does a little work on the house, goes to the grocery store and run errands in exchange for some babysitting and rent.

The republicans don't care about the child or her father they only care about the all mighty dollar. :hug:

[azoth]

11. I don't think it's out of line at all.

Isn't that the way life is supposed to be? A hand reaches out to help another so that, in turn, they may do the same some other day?

Good for you for finding a place to begin to make a difference.

[baldguy]

14. "And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?"

"And Cain said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?"

[ikojo]

15. Fighting for social justice IS a family value

Since when are "family values" defined as turning one's back on the poor? Allowing people to go hungry in one of the richest countries on the planet? Cutting off section 8 funds while giving money to build sports stadiums and for corporate welfare?

What we need is not for the pugs to see the error of their ways, because that is not going to happen. They are too entrenched in supporting selfishness. What we need is an OPPOSITION party to CHALLENGE the pugs on the class war. Because that is what it is, a CLASS war.

Sure would be nice if the Democrats, in searching for "moral" values would call the pugs on the immorality of cutting funding for Section 8 housing while calling for even MORE tax cuts for rich folks. The Dems need to call the pugs on the immorality of 45 MILLION Americans wiithout health insurance while Halliburton continues to get millions from the taxpayers.

The pugs don't have a lock on "family values". The Dems could sew that one up easily if ONLY they had a SPINE.

Any chiropractors or orthopedic surgeons out there who want to take on the challenge of spinal repair for a political party?