It's one of those nights ... the kind of night where I'm reading the news and Facebook declarations and becoming more and more disillusioned with the bulk of humanity. Now maybe the fact that my back pain is pretty intense is making it worse, or as I tell my husband, maybe it's just making it harder for me to hold it in. Remember a couple of posts ago when I mentioned the backlash against intelligence, and dare I say, commonsense that was running rampant. I feel like I'm wading through it tonight.
Let's start with that county clerk in Kentucky who is continuing to refuse to issue marriage certificates to anyone in her county so she doesn't have to give them to gay couples, even though the Supreme Court has ruled to allow gay marriage and every other appeal she's made has either been over ruled or denied. I don't care that she has bad hair (you're welcome to question my own choices). I don't care that she's been married four times. I don't even care that she took over the position from her mother who had it for 37 years and that she also has her son working for her. She's an elected official who swore an oath to uphold the duties of her post. She doesn't get to use her religious convictions to determine how to do her job. I'm 100% sure that's not in the job description. She can use her moral compass when interacting with those around her. She can be a beacon of her faith, so that others might be helped by it. But she can't fucking use it to decide the operational principles and practices of her position. If her job has changed, and she no longer feels comfortable doing it, either due to her faith or the requirements, then leave. It happens all the time in every other job on the fucking planet. If your job was breaking the law, you have avenues you can pursue, but if your job is telling you the rules have changed, you change or you leave. All those people standing outside the courthouse supporting her and egging her on would be singing a different tune if she said her religious convictions told her she shouldn't issue licenses to Gentiles ... or to renters ... or to poor people. If she was a business owner in Kentucky, there are no laws on the books against discriminating against sexual orientation. She could decide to not serve them and face no recrimination, but as an elected official she's not covered by the same rules. She has to do her job. Can we all recall the concept of separation of church and state alluded to in the first fucking Amendment of the Constitution which Article VI specifies that "no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Secondly, if I see one more human state that all people on welfare need to be drug tested, I'm going to lose my fucking mind. This is a useless and expensive proposition that is undertaken to make poor people who need help feel like criminals, and it lines the pockets of the companies that supply the drug tests Here's some info on how it worked out in Arizona:
http://mic.com/articles/122607/arizona-drug-tested-welfare-recipients-here-are-the-shocking-results
And Maine:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/maines-welfare-drug-tests_55ce1b56e4b0ab468d9d266f
And a bunch of other states:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-drug-testing-states/
Yes, we all work hard. Yes, we want to make sure that the monies we hand over in taxes are spent correctly. But why are you more pissed off about whether or not the poor person who uses their slim SNAP benefits might possibly have used an illegal substance (which we've just learned that for the most part they aren't), but you're less concerned that the military industrial complex is rolling around naked in the bulk of your money. This is all done to tear us apart, to argue about petty crap instead of work towards honest change in our country. The Republicans use it to froth the part of their base they want riled up into a frenzy, and the Democrats point to the frothing as a way to rile their base, too. This way both sides get us slashing at each other's throats instead of asking our elected officials to do their jobs (see above).
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