What Does This Mean?

On Sunday morning I discovered that someone had removed a bumper sticker from the back window of my mini van while it was parked in my driveway. Rude!

Considering what it was for, I started thinking about the type of person that might do this. It read “Restore Marriage, Yes on 8.” So the person that removed it is most likely a Vote No on 8 person;  Why else would they bother pulling it off? Isn’t the big message of that campaign tolerance?  So, they’re all for tolerating other points of view… as long as you agree with them? Hmmm

For the record, I do not agree with the popular definition of tolerance. Tolerance has come to mean acceptance. I am tolerant of this group, but I do not accept their lifestyle. I feel that gays and lesbians are children of God and I have no feelings of hatred for them; however, I also believe that the lifestyle they live is immoral and should not be granted the right to marry. It still boggles my mind how the No supporters can justify their stance when marriage rights have been refused to many groups already. For example: a polygamist, or cousins, or a brother and sister, or minor and adult, or owner and pet…  All can say that they love each other and deserve the right to marry. Do No supporters really believe that allowing this right to every group of people is the best idea, or is it because the homosexuals have become popular that they deserve it over all of the other “alternative” lifestyles? —OK, I’m done, but whoever removed my bumper sticker started it 😉 —

Lucky for me I had another bumper sticker and stuck it right back where the first one was.  Anyone want to take bets on whether my house gets egged when I put a sign in the yard?

Read More

Many Thanks

Thanks to Auntie Korby who sent the kids an Unbirthday package in the mail.  We opened it yesterday! What a fun idea you had and they all loved their gifts.  Hannah and Sabrina watched the Barbie Diamond Castle movie and the Strawberry Shortcake Spring movie back to back and are still talking about them.  Hunter has been making floam creations nonstop.  He has always loved that stuff, but had to buy it with his own money, and never managed to get it yet.  Emma loves the outfit for her Emily doll and got her all dressed up in the new clothes and then did her hair to match. Thank You!

Thanks to all who sent Emma birthday gifts this year!  Auntie “J” (or as Hannah calls you: Aunt Annette) the purple butterfly shirt is hip yet beautiful and Emma looks beautiful in it. And to Nana and Papa: Emma is so excited to have a cool bag for carrying Emily’s wardrobe when she goes to play at friends’  houses.  And the purple plaid skirt is super cute, along with the rest of the outfit! Aunt Erica and cousins: Emma has already watched Princess Diaries 2 twice, and then we just had to rent the first one because she couldn’t remember it. It was the perfect movie for her. Emma says, “I love them, and I’ve had lots of great fun with them!”

(I have pictures, and will add them as soon as I can.  I always put off sending thank yous because I want to get a picture with it, and then the thanks get lost in the shuffle, so I’m just getting this out now.)

Read More

A Positive Reality Show

I have had my fill of most reality shows.  I stopped watching Dr. Phil years ago because it was just too sad to see all of the messed up families and individuals on the show.  And last time I saw part of Wife Swap it was all about creating conflict and peeking in on dysfunctional families. I think partly because I studied human development, but mostly because I have a family of my own, I am excited about this new show that airs for the first time on September 28th.  It will focus on real families and real problems, and provide some real answers to help us as we try to raise our family to be happy and successful.  If you get KBYU check it out and let me know what you think.

Real Families, Real Answers

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU4MTl4FN84

Read More

My Little Ones

When Hannah was at preschool, Sabrina and I were playing in the backyard playhouse.  I was crouched over in a little chair listening to her chat away on her play cell-phone.

“Who are you talking to Brina?”

“Hannah”

“Oh”

“How is your school?…. Oh, I just playing Barbies with Mommy… Have fun time, I love you… bye!”

Earlier today, the little girls were having a cute exchange about their names:

“I Brina Bel, and you Hannah Brook-in”

“Yes, I’m Hannah Brooklyn, and you Brina Bel. Nana told me my name.” (Over a year ago my mom had a discussion with Hannah about how she got her middle name.  She was named after the place both of my mom’s parents were raised, Brooklyn, NY.)

Moments like this are what makes parenting so wonderful.

Read More

Protecting Marriage to Protect Children

This article written by David Blankenhorn (a democrat, by the way) appeared in the New York Times. I meant to just copy over the best points, but the whole thing is great, so most of it is here:

In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood…

…marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood — biological, social and legal — into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other…

…The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that “it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.”

…a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that “family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage…”

…children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right.

…For me, what we are encouraged or permitted to say, or not say, to one another about what our society owes its children is crucially important in the debate over initiatives like California’s Proposition 8, which would reinstate marriage’s customary man-woman form. Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them? Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another? Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children? How many parents per child is best? Do you think that “two” is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever? If you do, be careful. In making the case for same-sex marriage, more than a few grown-ups will be quite willing to question your integrity and goodwill. Children, of course, are rarely consulted.

The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?

Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution — marriage — that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing — the gift, the birthright — that is marriage’s most distinctive contribution to human society. That’s a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support.

Read More