3 posts tagged “political”

I am not one of those people who vote on one issue alone, but this afternoon I gave some thought and research to the subject of abortion.  If I were to vote according to this one issue, where would my vote go?  Where do the candidates stand on the issues when it comes to the issue of protecting the life of the unborn?

Predictably, Republicans McCain, Romney and Huckabee believe that Roe V Wade should be overturned.  Obama clearly states that the government should not make abortion choices for women; the mother and her community are best suited to make those difficult decisions.  And Clinton supports making abortion safe, legal and rare. 

These are complex issues.  I agree with Obama that the government should not be in the business of telling birth families what choice is right for them since the government can not foretell the situation a woman finds herself in.  I agree with McCain that the government should not be providing funding for abortion services.  I agree with Huckabee that parents should be notified when an underage girl chooses to abort her baby.  And finally, I agree with McCain, Romney and Huckabee that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban should be supported.  And I'm impressed by Clinton's long record of successful proactive work to reduce and prevent unwanted pregnancies through education.

I would like to see more women chose adoption over abortion and I believe that adoption should be part of the abortion debate.  It's not just a question of whether or not to have an abortion - it's a question of what is best for the child.  I think the government should support both the birth parents and the adoptive family in the choice to adopt.  Given the rates of infertility in this country, having a proactive approach to adoption is simply good politics and very much an addition to the “right to life” debate.   

I am glad that Clinton has supported making the adoption credit increase permanent and has also worked to increase adoptions from foster care.  McCain, who has an adopted daughter, has also voted to make the adoption credit increase permanent.  Romney is in favor of making the adoption credit increase permanent, and is working to raise awareness about embryonic adoption, or snowflake babies.  In a world where every little bit counts, these are fantastic! 

I think Clinton has taken the edge off of her full tilt pro-abortion stance through her record on proactive measures to reduce the number of babies potentially aborted through education as well as her record on increasing adoption from foster care.  Her actions and her words agree, she wants abortion "safe, legal and rare." 

Huckabee is the candidate of the religious right, and is “actively and aggressively pro-life” but a full tilt anti-abortion stance is incomplete without proactive measures to reduce unwanted pregnancies in the first place.  Saying “don’t have sex” just doesn’t work.  What is missing in his campaign material is his full support for the adoption option so a child can find his or her forever family.  It is not enough to tell a country that there will be no more abortions and then do nothing about the alternatives to abortion. 

Various candidates make a number of mistakes in my opinion.  I understand Obama’s nuanced views on abortion but I believe his mistake is the omission of adoption from his plan.  And Clinton and Huckabee overshoot the issue with Clinton’s plan to make Roe V Wade into federal law and Huckabee’s plan for a right to life amendment to the constitution. 

After weighing the pros and cons of abortion politics in the current race - I think McCain or Romney have the most moderate and well reasoned stance on this issue.  And if I were to vote on this issue alone, either of these men would have my vote.  Which is interesting because that is not what I would have said before I did the research.   

Have you done your research?

I started here:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues/issues.abortion.html

And also visited:

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=4891

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/family/

http://obama.senate.gov/issues/

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/95b18512-d5b6-456e-90a2-12028d71df58.htm

http://www.mittromney.com/News/Press-Releases/Romney_Agenda_10.26.07

http://www.mikehuckabee.com/?FuseAction=Issues.View&Issue_id=11

Well, I started this vox account to talk about politics.  I’ve often had the feeling that if people really knew about my political thoughts they would think I’m really weird.  Of course the truth is that I think I am weird.  And other people have often happily confirmed that impression.  For example: I’m a pacifist in a world that was all gung ho about invading Iraq only a few short years ago.  I won’t bother with any sort of “I told you so” because at the time with all the fever pitch media reporting I didn’t utter a peep other than around close friends and family.  Who wants to be the lone voice saying “oh leave him alone” when the world is crying “crucify!  Crucify!”  I still remember an interview with Saddam Hussein that I saw briefly before the invasion.  He said there were no weapons of mass destruction and chuckled at reports that there were.  What kind of strange irony proves that man to be the truthful one?  Yeah, and things went down hill from there, big surprise.

The thing is, I’m a business woman and I don’t want my business to suffer because of my unpopular opinions.  So I’m uncertain about where to draw the line.  I once had a group of women in my gallery and each one in the group had picked out a piece of jewelry with a price tag of around $100.  Someone in the group complemented a painting of a group of donkeys under a tree.  It was an excellent art piece, very well done and beautifully framed by Elaine Hurst who is an excellent pastel artist.  Well, I made some passing comment about that piece being a reflection of my politics, and every single one of those republican women put down the jewelry that they were carrying around and walked out without spending a dime.  It took me a moment to realize what had just happened.  I was absolutely shocked.  If I had kept my mouth shut I could have made somewhere around $600 from that group.  But I got nada!  My car with two political bumper stickers was always parked near the entrance of my gallery.  The one says “War is a failure of imagination” and the other says “I didn’t vote for his daddy either.”  I’ll never know if those two bumper stickers lost me money or not, but there were times when people mentioned them when they came inside and we would talk about politics for a while.  I guess there is a chance the people who share my perspectives might purchase my work out of solidarity.  I don’t think my work really needs a sympathy purchase, I generally thing it is valid in its own right, but hey, a sale is a sale. 

I actually find myself envying people who have an unusual perspective who really put themselves and their opinions out there.  However ill considered they are from time to time.  I actually heard a woman once argue that we didn’t need to keep the Sabbath because between the time of Jesus and our time someone certainly got it mixed up on which day was actually Saturday.  Hey, I thought that was one of the strangest things I’d ever heard, but she was very audacious with it.  There are charming little shops all over the place with a full tilt witchy vibe, run by women in overtly spiritualistic attire and jewelry.  They are audacious about their beliefs and apparently they don’t mind that there is a whole segment of the population who would not make a purchase from them on religious grounds and would also cross themselves after leaving a shop like that.  LOL!  I do find it very interesting what people are willing to be evangelists for.  Yet I’ve been pretty low key about the things I believe and I’m not entirely sure why.

Maybe I’ve become a wimp.  I don’t mind shocking people and enjoying an interesting argument as a result, but I don’t always have the energy for that.  I’d probably put my own perspective out there more if I weren’t such a wimp.  And with close friends we discuss politics, religion, art and deeper things at length (but most of my friends are as weird as me or weirder.)  I think it’s hard enough to get through life some days which some of my own unique quirks, why not be a little choosy about my battles?  Is it disingenuous to withhold information to avoid an argument?  I love peace, I love quiet, and I love to create and sell my artwork.  I basically want to be left alone.  But I also am finding that I really want to speak out about issues that are really important to me as well.  Not because I think I’ll change anyone’s mind, but more because I want to know I tried and was successful at effective communication on a number of important issues.

What about becoming more of an integrated person?  What if I didn’t segment off these little parts of my life?  What if I put my political opinions and my artwork on the same website and allowing people to know the artist and the work, side by side?  On the web that is different than it is in a bricks and mortar type store where you are actually risking overt rejection.  So maybe this is the time to try this on for size and see what happens.  I don’t know.  Is it even safe?  Is it a bad idea to have my name and phone number out there where people can put my politics and my artwork together with a phone number fairly easily?  I once got a call from an old boyfriend, one who had excelled in cruelty.  It was very easy to google my unique name and arrive at a phone number.  Oy!  Is it even safe to have one’s work, political views and contact information so readily accessible on the net?

How about you?  Do you make purchases at stores who show a specific political agenda or spiritual bent in the way they present their corporate image?  Would you ever avoid purchasing something from a place that had a different perspective on an issue that is important to you?  Have you ever purchased an item out of solidarity with the person who was selling it, especially something you would not have otherwise purchased? 

     This summer is the of the almighty paradigm shift all across the board in my life.

     We moved in January, so we are still settling in at the new place.  Renovations continue, the first garden in years.  Red ripe cherry tomatoes from vine to mouth – now that is livin!  Yummmmmmm!  Hubby has ended one job and will start the year at a new school very very soon.  (To soon!)

     One paradigm shift involved becoming more politically active.  I’ve been quiet for a long time, and just listened to my friends go on an on about politics, mainly because I didn’t want to fight with people I love, but happen to disagree with.  I write my representatives, congressmen and president, but that isn’t enough.  Secondly, the political situation has significant potential to change drastically with the next election, which I see in a very hopeful light.  I just want to see a change for the better, these days of torture, rendition, gitmo and all that other stuff – oh it makes me so mad – not because it’s all so horrible – though it is… but because the people who are advocating these injustices are people who speak of Jesus in the same paragraph.  Ok, most of the world can see what a crock that is, but for one neighborhood of politics - that’s just a blind spot about the size of a Jupiter!

     Another paradigm shift for me right now is what I want my career to look like, how I want to do business.  The old paradigm of the sole proprietor gallery is over, sniff sniff.  Those were the days, LOL!  No really, I loved what I did.  And I want to go back, but I’ve learned some things along the way about being a business owner.  I won’t repeat what I did before and consider that enough, it wouldn’t be.  This time it’s going to be broader, bigger and generally MORE, and it’s going to require a real honest to goodness staff.  I’m a private person, I work alone, but I’m going to have to just plain get over that because business growth will always be limited to what I can produce.  I’ve learned to think bigger.  There are some pretty big hurdles, and I’m not entirely sure how to walk through some of those, but in time it will all be clear.  It’s all about the French fries, I’ve just got to take one at a time and try not to focus on the potato so much that I just get completely overwhelmed.  French Fries!!  Yeah, pass the salt.

     Finally, I think one of the paradigm shifts of the summer has to do with church.  I have at some points of my life been very involved in church.  Between hubby and I the ministries we’ve started or led, or committees we’ve been a part of is a pretty long list.  Retreats, conferences and seminars can be fun also.  But in my more recent years of getting a temporary separation from church, I came to realize that kingdom ministry was my passion, not church ministry.  And in case that sounds small and easy – think again.  So I guess the biggest aspect of that paradigm shift is to save my energy for the real thing and not allow my time to get sucked up with church activity.  So as much as I like church, I’m going to be checking myself from getting sidetracked there.  Actually, I go to church, tolerate it most of the time, and enjoy it for fleeting moments here and there.  But it still doesn’t do what we think it does, or that is the conclusion I’ve arrived at.  I think this was brought home to me with a thud when we visited our old congregation and it had gone on without us quite nicely.  And I realized that my most fruitful contacts for the Kingdom hadn’t been in that place, rather, it had been in the context of marketplace ministry.  There had been some coooool kingdom things in that place though, it was good.

     With all these paradigms shifting in my life this year there have been some really dark times.  I was in some pretty serious depression for a while as I mourned over closing the shop.  It was my choice to do so and it was the right choice.  But man was it hard.  Amazing opportunities stretch out before me, and I’m trying to pay attention, listen deeply and see where this narrow little path leads.  But to be honest I don’t think anyone has been this way for a long time except maybe the wild things, so for all practical purposes I’m just pushing through tall grass and brambles.  Again.  Go figure.  Some things really don’t change.

     Constant change is here to stay.  The cliché of the day.  And the theme for my summer.