And an Update...

Me and my puppy, MacDubh, right after  I got home from the hospital...

I had my left hip replaced on July 9th. It went very well - I was up walking the day after the surgery, and they kicked me out of the hospital and let me go home a day early. I am off painkillers now and walking with a cane, and have just been released to drive. I still get tired easily, and I have to be careful, since although the surgery incision is healing very quickly, it still takes the bone 3 months to heal and I need to be sure I don't do anything to pop the new hip back out of joint. Its still sore, no doubt about it, but I am doing very well. And there should be some more blog posts now that I have gotten the narcotic pain killers out of my system!

Blessed Be, folks!

Blog post from Left Cheek - Galileo:King of Insight

I found myself quoted today in a friends blog, The leftcheek blog, in his post "Galileo: King of Insight". This is  quoted from a comment thread where a friend and I were discussing Chick Fill-A's anti GLBT stance. My friend is not a rabid fundamentalist, but she is questioning and thinking through the conservative view points she was taught all her life. I made a fairly impassioned plea from the Christian perspective (remember, being Episcopagan - a member of the Episcopal church and a pagan priest still leaves me being Christian as well as Pagan!). The left cheek blog picked up my comment when I shared it further, and has posted it as a blog post! Really, really neat!
Here is what he posted (and I originally wrote):


"The following beautiful response was written by a friend, artist Cameron Webb, to another friend. It is quoted with permission. Please feel free to share:

All of the things that create a marriage, that sustain it, that make it holy - loving, caring, sacrificial giving on both sides as Christ loved and died for us - egalitarianism, nurturing, honoring, cherishing - all these things are what God ordained.

None of those things have anything to do with the race, gender, sexual orientation, able-ism (and handicapped people have been denied marriage rights in the past, and discriminated against in this same way, and in areas, still are today). God created this world with infinite variations. Male penguins and sea horses that care for the young, creatures that procreate in ways that blend gender and sex roles. There are animals that will literally change sex, in certain instances. There are instances of homosexual couples in thousands of animals - a natural variation of the infinite incredible world that God has created. Humans are no exceptions.

We are created just as varied. An infinite, complex diverse God created and ordained uniqueness that is so complex that each individual's combination of gender identity, orientation and sexual formation is unique to each and every one of us.

Heterosexuality is by far and away the dominant variation, just as many other variations are dominant throughout creation. But given the variations of all the infinite creation, we have enshrined heterosexuality, paired it with a narrow definition of what gender traits must go with what, and we have made it an idol to be worshiped, to the exclusion of and condemning all of the rest of God's creation.

Remember, there was a firm belief in the middle ages that the earth was center of the universe, and the sun revolved around it - a belief held based on Biblical language. We know today that the poetic Spirit-breathed words of scripture of the universe do not, on the surface reading, explain the fact that the sun is in the center and the planets orbit it, as God ordained.

The upheaval of that realization left ruined lives due to the church's violent opposition. It was not until the 16th century that a fully predictive mathematical model of a heliocentric system was presented, by the Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus of Poland, leading to the Copernican Revolution. In the following century, Johannes Kepler elaborated upon and expanded this model to include elliptical orbits, and supporting observations made using a telescope were presented by Galileo Galilei.

All three men faced disdain, persecution by the church.

Copernicus waited until his death bed to publish his scientific findings for fear of the church; Galileo was threatened with torture and exiled to permanent house arrest for the remainder of his life for advocating the beautiful heliocentric solar system that today we praise God for.

Today, science is turning up more and more and more evidence faster and faster that substantiates the infinite and beautiful variations of human sex, orientation, and gender created so complexly by our Incredible creator.

The Bible is misquoted, mistranslated and out-right ignored and used, as it was used on Copernicus and Galileo, to support HUMAN prejudices and idolatry, all the while ignoring not only his infinite complex creation, but the true heart of marriage - to love, honor, cherish, and love as Christ loved us. Our marriages fail, because we do not nurture, cherish, honor and love one another as Christ loved us and died for us, as He loves and nurtures us still.

And as long as we focus on human prejudice - hatred and destruction of relationships - and refuse to honor God and all his stunning creation, we will live with this idea that marriage has to do with anything, but what God intended: to love and honor one another."


I am so honored that something I have written has been shared and may hopefully be used to help clarify issues for others! What an incredibly great thing! Please check out my friends blog, and browse - its a really good blog!

May my words further the Light!

Some times we MUST share!

Dreamweaver, after reading my blog post from last night, posted some thoughts of her own in a post titled "Dreaming the Dream and Weaving the Path", on her own blog, The Back Burner. Its great! Go read it! I love this woman!

The Silence of the Blog....

Well...I see that my last post was in February. That would be the result of life suddenly running over me and leaving very large tire tracks up my back. I think that it might be a good thing to try to catch up. Because if I wait for it to slow back down, to catch my breath, I'll still be sitting here looking at a blank blog post with my brain churning. 

I know there are people who follow my blog posts and read what I write - those of you who do, please accept my apologies. You have to be wondering if I fell down a deep dark hole. The answer is yes, almost. It has sometimes felt like that. 

Just after my last post, the following happened - all in a one thing right after another blur, no time to stop and think...

-  in February, I abruptly came Out to my Mom, after years of being in the closet as a gay and transgender. 

- almost immediately thereafter, my beloved Dreamweaver was devastatingly diagnosed with Chronic Hepatitis B, or rather, it was identified, so to speak. 

- and immediately after that I had major oral surgery, which you don't want to hear about and I don't want to talk about. Suffice to say, that flattened me fairly nicely for a few weeks. 

- And my left hip went out. I mean it...went...out. As in, I went to the emergency room because I thought I was walking - if that's the term - on a broken hip. Which I was not, but you could have fooled me! 

- and as a result of said hip going out, I am now on medical leave from Graduate school, awaiting hip replacement surgery. Like, next month. 

All of the above happened between the end of February and the beginning of May. Its sort of been, "Wait, what???" in the extreme! So now, I am trying to figure out how to do this and get back in the rhythm of writing, because blogging is very important to me. Of course, any one of the events of the past basically 3-4 months listed above is a blog post unto itself. Long ones. A few of those qualify for several long blog posts. (Except for the oral surgery one we're not discussing - lets just say there were a few weeks where food was a distant memory, and I couldn't have written anything through the haze of prescription of Lortab anyway, and let it go at that...really! There, see, one thing off the list already!) 

I guess, to twist the old quote, I should "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.", as the King said to the White Rabbit in Wonderland. I guess looking over the events listed above, I have my next few blog posts lined up. And I think I will begin with the event that was perhaps the hardest one to grasp - Dreamweaver's medical diagnosis. 

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is my wife, my lover, my best friend. We have known each other since 2000, and were friends for years before we ever fell in love. We have been together as a couple for nine years come this August. It has been quite a roller coaster ride, with unexpected twists and turns every step of the way...and we have come through every single up and down, storm and disaster, still together, still in love, still death do us part, and beyond, if we have anything to say about it. 

We were friends before we ever fell in love. We were both in relationships with other people, way back then. We both survived the crash of relationships that we believed at the time were forever. We went through a break up of our own early on, and both realized that we didn't want to live without the other in our lives. We've been inseparable ever since. She's the fiery, passionate one, I'm the laid back easygoing one - we form an amazing whole - we remain two strong independent individuals that together have formed something that is far greater than the sum of its parts. We're still ridiculously in love heading into our 9th year. She's held the heavy, difficult, burden of being the breadwinner, mostly, due to the fact that when the economy began its downhill slide, my art business dried up and vanished. I've picked myself up, and with her encouragement and dreams, gone back to school to forge a new career. She has seen me through medical issues, as I have had my right hip replaced, and I've been there for her as she also returned to school for a second - or perhaps third - career herself. We find joy everyday in each other's company.

And there have been things she has struggled with all these years we've been together that have indicated, subtly, that something was wrong. Fatigue, aching, bone jarring chronic fatigue. Constant struggles off and on with diarrhea, with insomnia, irritability, susceptibility to illness and the flu, and muscle aches and unexplained nausea...all of it subtle, all of it off again and on again, good years and bad years. She's struggled with having any energy at all, with having virtually no social life because she just hasn't felt up to it. We've never had an explanation for it, never put all the pieces together. And in late February/early March of this year, she mentioned to the Doctor on staff where she works about the fatigue, inquiring if maybe she had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, perhaps related to a major illness when she was a teenager. Further inquires turned up that no, not Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - rather she had been diagnosed back then with Mononucleosis and Hepatitis B and hospitalized, weak and jaundiced, only hours before she would have died of an enlarged spleen about to rupture. Her story is a complex and often horrifying one - her mother was a Paranoid Schizophrenic with Hallucinations, who ignored and neglected her daughter all through Dreamweaver's childhood and teenage years. Medical neglect nearly killed her that time, and further cost her ability to graduate as she continued to be weak, jaundiced and struggled to simply rise from her bed over the following year. No one seemed to understand what was going on...but it was the 80's, and Hepatitis B was assumed to be something you caught and got over, not like the dreaded Hepatitis C, that is chronic and fatal. 

Unfortunately, Hepatitis B CAN BECOME chronic, particularly in company with Mono, and other complications, and if it is chronic, it becomes in many ways indistinguishable from the Hepatitis C version with severe quality of life issues and an eventual 40% mortality rate. Her Doctor at work took one look and after much discussion, scheduled tests for her liver and other things, fearing major damage. Liver cancer is a real risk for people struggling with Hepatitis, and he was very alarmed, given that she clearly has the Chronic variety of Hepatitis B. Every symptom I listed above, that has plagued her and exhausted her? All are symptom's of Chronic Hepatitis B. 

We were stunned. We were frightened and scared and completely rattled. I remember getting off the phone with her at one point shortly after the Doctor had put together what was going on, and just sitting here with tears running down my face, and my heart breaking. I felt totally helpless and totally stunned. 

We struggled to be strong for each other, we turned to our faiths and our friends for support. We ran through every emotional gamut you can think of, waiting for those tests to come back. Its a chronic illness they tell you - you can live 20 - 30 years with difficult symptoms and quality of life issues, yes, but you can live - the fatal complications tend to kick in at the end, they say...DREAMWEAVER'S ALREADY HAD IT FOR THIRTY YEARS! We were severely spooked. Her fatigue and exhaustion and the rest of the symptomatic bucket list (plus a few I didn't add) up there have been getting worse and worse this year. Damn it, we intend to grow old together, not have our time together cut short by something like this - the plea, the terror, the darkest fear of any couple who are one heart, one soul, in two bodies, one flesh in marriage and love. 

And after about 3 weeks or so of endless agonizing, nail biting anxiety, the tests came back in with good news. Dreamweaver certainly has the chronic quality of life issues, but her liver and other concerns, with some small abnormalities, fall within the range of normal and no major damage at this point in her life. The relief was almost as stunning and hard to wrap our brains around as the possibility of major moral damage and threat. And left us washed up, after much rejoicing, thanksgiving and relief, on the odd shores of "NOW what do we do?!?!?" 

What can we do? There is no real cure for this stuff - there is a treatment - hideously expensive treatment that can put it in remission, that you aren't eligible for unless you are in a last ditch tail end situation, and the treatment is almost as bad as the illness in terms of side effects and dangers. So that's out, she's no where near in bad enough shape to justify that, we have no insurance and frankly, the treatments as scary as the Hepatitis is. We have found that there are things we can do in terms of diet that can help - which we ironically had already instituted unknowing, when months ago, we changed how we were eating and got off the fast food, etc. Thank goodness for that! 

And it has helped to put a name to it, a face. We know now that there is a real Problem. That the fatigue and nausea, and irritability and exhaustion, and insomnia and depression all have a very real medical reason. Its no longer some unexplainable shadow we could not understand. And that has given us the ability to cope, better. We try to protect Dreamweaver's times to rest, we can now say to friends, sorry, there's a real reason, we, or she's not going to make it to whatever's going on. If we do decide to do something, we make sure there is rest and recovery time. When she struggles with depression and irritability, we now know WHY some of it is occurring, and can cope with it, lessen it, do things that ease it. Its still not easy. We're still only just beginning to figure out how to live with this, how to cope, how to rise above it, in real and meaningful ways. 

We have our goals, and a future in mind, a home someday in the Pacific Northwest, with perhaps an orchard and chickens and goats - making our own goat's cheese and harvesting apples and pecans. That dream more than ever now is not on hold - we are organizing and working towards it with all our dreams and talents, and vision. We have been brushed by a shadow...and it is the shadow that comes to all, who dare to love what death can touch. We managed to move forward, and despite complications and quality of life issues, we intend to LIVE! 

And I love her more now than ever before, seeing her strength and courage as she gets up everyday in the face of this. I do everything I can think of to help her, to ease her, to carry as much of the load as I can (which is not near as much as I dammit, want to, due to my own current physical limitations!). She is my heart, and I treasure every moment with her, every heart beat, every breathe we take together in this life. And I always have, and I always will. 

So that was one of the main things that knocked me off my balance at the beginning of the year...and for me has been perhaps the biggest, scariest one. And it was hard to try to sit down and even begin to write about it, it was too close, too big, too scary while it was going on. For awhile there, there were no handles to grab to get a grip and try to process it, to find the brakes on it...and my blog fell silent. 

Just in time for the next crisis in that list at the beginning of this blog post to hit. And the next...and the next. 

I think you can see why I've been away for a bit. 

Its good to be back. 

I'll write some more tomorrow. 

Blessed Be! 

Update - The Georgia Case and the Judge's Ruling...

In my last post, I vented - rather a lot, at length and probably over much about Orly and her attempt to have Obama declared ineligible to run on the ballot in GA.
I was very steamed over the fact that this made it as far as it did in the court and in the end, the judge did rule that Obama was indeed *oh duh* a United State's citizen and threw out their case. I totally wish that he had not let it go even that far. It gave a sense of "legitimacy" by allowing them to subpoena the President.

There is no question that the President - ANY President - of any party at any point in America's history or future has been and should be subject to the same laws that govern us all. However, subpoenaing a President for crack pot theories, nuisance suits and political machinations is NOT something that any President can allow to occur. Responding in any other way than how the lawyer representing Obama in this case did - a letter stating their position, and that this was the extant of their response - would open up  a legal can of worms. Anyone in the highest office in the land would be constantly tied up in courts and suits rather than governing and doing their job. And anybody who had a crack pot case such as this, or who saw the ability to manipulate the system by tying up the President in constant court battles would not hesitate to do so.

Obama is not a perfect, nor is he the Anti-Christ. He has done things I do not agree with. He has also accomplished much in office that is good. There have certainly been worse Presidents. But we need to remember, that however we may feel about our Presidents, the proper place to express our opinions is the voting booth. Respect is owed the office irregardless of who sits in the chair. I'm not always able to maintain this attitude myself - but it is what I believe and I do try to let my actions express this.

Hopefully this will help establish precedence and prevent any further attempts by "Birthers" to continue to pursue this particular lunacy in legitimate courts.

Nah...what am I thinking?
Its a crazy world out there.

Channeling Mo - *Or my "I have finally lost it!" political rant!

All right. For a blog with so much activism going on in it, I rarely really crank up with a political rant or post. Tonight, however...
Meet Mo - pictured here to my left. Mo is the central character in a cartoon series by Alison Bechdel, graphic comic artist and author of the comic series Dykes to Watch Out For (which maybe found here in her Archives. Shameless plug aside ( I really, really LOVE Alison's work, seriously) her character Mo has this habit of going off on political rants in fury at the stupidity of the establishment. And I have been channeling Mo since last night. Settle in for a long post - with fireworks - that goes down several different but inter-connecting paths. Go get your popcorn.
It all started when we were listening to Dreamweaver's favorite alternative radio program Phoenix Rising and he brought up whats going on in the Georgia court system right now. Basically, there have been several attempts via the court system to establish that Barrack Obama is not eligible for re-election for President and to therefore exclude him from the ballot.

(Now. Caveats. Before I go another step with this post. Obama is not perfect. Neither is he Satan incarnate. This is not a blog post about Obama. This is a blog post about some frighteningly scary ignorant politcal maneuvering by persons or people that I am going to *TRY* my best not to use foul language about in the course of this post. I cannot promise to succeed. I have no problems with you, gentle reader if you are not for Obama. But seriously - whats going on here folks is insane. Be forewarned. I will seriously police comments on this post, something I have never done before. All honest opinion welcome, even if it differs from mine. If you're trolling, your comment will be removed - as in take off and nuke it from orbit removed - its the only way to be sure. We now return you to this post. I really am in a mood. Sorry folks.)

So, when I heard about this court case, I went and looked it up, wondering by what technicality they thought they had grounds for this case. OK, yes, I am naive. I'm cute, but naive. In the extreme. Remember - well, its never gone away, but - remember the whole "Birther" movement, wherein President Obama's birth certificate and citizenship came into question?
During the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential primaries, anonymous e-mails from supporters of Hillary Clinton surfaced that questioned Obama's citizenship in an attempt to revive Clinton's faltering primary election campaign. These and numerous other chain e-mails during the subsequent presidential election circulated false rumors about Obama's origin, religion and birth certificate.
Jim Geraghty of the conservative website National Review Online may have sparked further speculation on June 9, 2008, when he asked that Obama release his birth certificate. Geraghty wrote that releasing his birth certificate could debunk several false rumors circulating on the Internet, namely: that his middle name was originally Muhammad rather than Hussein; that his mother had originally named him "Barry" rather than "Barack"; and that Barack Obama, Sr. was not his biological father, as well as the rumor that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen.
In October 2009, anonymous e-mails circulated claiming that the Associated Press (AP) had reported Obama was "Kenyan-Born". The claims were based on an AP story that had appeared 5 years earlier in a Kenyan publication, The Standard. The rumor-checking website Snopes.com found that the headline and lead-in sentence describing Obama as born in Kenya and misspelling his first name had been added by the Kenyan newspaper; and did not appear in the story issued by the AP or in any other contemporary newspaper that picked up the AP story. And so the snowball rolled until it became an avalanche of rumor, counter rumor, debunking sites, "Birther" sites ("Birther" being the term for those who believe that President Obama was not born in the United States.) and endless conjecture.

Now, we - Dreamweaver and I have done some serious research on this. Every single rumor, photo-shopped foreign "birth certificate", fake news story and claim has been debunked. Over. And over. And over. And still the Birther movement will not die. Its worse than trying to stake vampires! This by the way affects me personally - my beloved Father, whom I have such a loving but tangled relationship with is a Birther. He loathes Obama and believes every negative rumor ever put out there. So this hits me very personally. My dad and I are at the point where we are very careful to talk about the weather and neutral subjects. Or at least I am, and try very hard to keep him off politics. Even he has been proceeding more gently with me on it. I think he knows on a certain level how painful it is for me to hear all this coming out of him, even if he doesn't understand why. And given how hard headed he is, that's saying something!

Scanned image of Barack Obama's
birth certificate released by
his presidential campaign in June 2008.

What this all leads up to is...when I checked on the news story about the court case in Georgia subpoenaing Obama regarding possible ineligibility, I - naively - was looking for something new, given that the Birther   stuff has been so incredibly discredited. I mean - President Obama released his birth certificate on June 12, 2008, responding to the rumors by posting  an image of Obama's birth certificate. As if it hadn't already been settled at the very beginning before any of this started by the rigorous back ground checks that occur when one seeks the office of President. Gah! So...what do I find when I go to check on the Georgia court case????

Oh yes...the Birthers are at it again. Did I mention I am naive? My jaw dropped. Here's the story -  a Georgia resident made the complaint, which is intended to keep Obama’s name off the state’s ballot in the March presidential primary. The reason - oh yes - the tired old thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory of President Obama not being a US citizen.  The kicker is the lawyer they retained to represent them...Orly Taitz. Oh. My. God. Orly Taitz is a Moldavian emigrant to the US who became a naturalized citizen in 1992. She has a law degree from Taft, and was admitted to practice law in California in December 2002. She also speaks five languages: English, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian and Spanish, as well has having a dental practice. So she obviously is intelligent. She also claims that she lost relatives in the Holocaust and that her grandmother witnessed the Kishinev pogrom.

None of which prevents her from being, insofar as I can tell, crazier than a bedbug, evidently.

Along with spear heading and leading the Birther movement, and claiming that President Obama is not a US citizen and a Radical Muslim (which is he is not - he is a Christian, albeit progressive and pluralist) she also claims such things as a number of homosexuals from Obama's former church have died mysteriously (which has what to do with what???), that a person who was cooperating with the FBI in connection with Obama's passport died mysteriously, "shot in the head" (didn't happen); that a Kenyan birth certificate with the name "Barack Obama" is authentic (and we're coming back to that one, in a moment folks!), that her life and

Orly Taitz

property has been threatened and vandalized by the government, that internment and labor camps are being built for "anti-Obama Dissidents" - they're not - and that Osama bin Laden was killed years ago, with his body kept on ice, and the announcement of his death was timed to divert attention from an upcoming court case she is litigating challenging Obama's citizenship - oh my aching head. Really? Seriously? She also has other theories such as a strain of bird flu deliberately developed to kill people, PayPal attacks, the deletion of her Wikipedia entry (which was right there when I went to look for it) , and Google's flagging her webpage as an attack site and suppressing search results for her name - which is a joke because she's all over the damn internet in all directions...as in, oh, about 713,000 results when I last checked. Its called a persecution complex at the least. And by all means - go look at her suppressed, flagged, non-existent Website, please. 

Anyway, she's the lawyer representing the case in Georgia. She's already tried this in Alabama, New Hampshire - both of which were thrown out by the way - as well as litigation for military personal who challenged orders implementing his voluntary deployment to Afghanistan because of his claim that Obama is not a legitimate president and thereby could not order his deployment. She has numerous other cases - all of which have been dismissed and thrown out, and she has been sanctioned and fined 20,000.00 dollars for for deliberate misconduct in court. 

Now, remember the "Kenyan Birth Certificate" I said we'd get back to? Here's the icing on the cake. In 2009 Orly presented a photograph of Barrack Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate.

 

This turned out to be a proven forgery of an Australian man's certificate of birth posted on an ancestry research site that was lifted and photo-shopped. It had so many glaring errors on it that it boggles the mind that anyone could take it seriously or think they could prove it genuine - errors such as incorrect ages, questionable birth locale, and unbelievably and most glaringly, the use of the term "Republic of Kenya", when actually at the alleged date of issue on this document, it was actually known as the "Dominion of Kenya" on official documents. Orly Taitz is too smart - one would think - to weaken her position as champion of the Birthers by attempting to present such a weak forgery, particularly when a few minutes of research would have turned up the discrepancies before attempting to go public with it. Evidently intelligence was not enough to prevent out right idiocy on this one. 

Now, having pretty much - I sincerely hope - proven my point on Ms. Taitz, which is that she's approaching delusional in this mess and should not be taken seriously....

Here's where my jaw hit the floor last night and put me into a serious rage. So, we were listening to the radio show last night, found out that Orly Taitz is at it again in Georgia...attempting to legally keep President Obama off the ballot for re-election, and attempts to subpoena him...AND THE JUDGE UPHELD THE SUBPOENA AND ENFORCED IT. 

A lawyer representing President Obama's interests submitted a letter - they probably have a form letter file a mile long by now to deal with Orly - stating that Obama's legitimacy has been clearly proven legally at the highest level, and they would not be responding to this nuisance case, etc. And the Judge upheld the subpoena ruling anyway and filed for Taitz and crew! 

What. The. Hell?!?!

Phoenix, our radio dude went on to point out to his listeners that this could seriously become major trouble, because just as obviously as the President cannot respond to nuisance lawsuits, particularly ones that have about as much legal precedence as a snowball in hell, if the judge upheld the plaintiffs side, it becomes a Civil Rights/States Rights issue and the rallying cry from that could become very ugly indeed. At the very least, if it truly carried all the way through, it would set a precedence of excluding President Obama from the ballot which would spread from state to state in the Deep South and that could result in the government stepping in, civil unrest and possible riot and mayhem. 

Pepper spray during Occupy Protest

Still with me here? Because we're about to take another turn down how my night went last night. Having heard the above, I became sincerely upset. Um...actually, in a furious rage to be honest. How dare such idiots play this kind of game with political due process in such a serious situation! You think I'm exaggerating? You think Phoenix is exaggerating? Remember, we've just seen the Occupy Movement get gassed, discredited and smashed into the bedrock by what amounts to brownshirt goons - you really think this could be an exaggeration? Let me go one step further. 

I was very upset last night about this whole thing. Sleep kind of went out the window, and I was sort of compulsively patrolling the internet chasing random searches on all this mess. So having thought about the States Rights thing, and gone chasing down several related posts to those things, I went and looked at THE main back history to the whole idea of States rights in America - The American Civil War of 1861–1865. Or as I grew up hearing it referred to - and I am NOT kidding - The War of Northern Aggression. 

Confederate Flag on t
he Capitol Grounds. 

I was raised in the deep South. I am by birth South Carolinian. I grew up with Rebel Battle Flags EVERYWHERE...including the one still flying on the capitol grounds today. I was taught that the Civil War was about STATES RIGHTS...that the Federal Government wanted to take away our freedoms, that slavery was not nearly as bad as it is fictionally portrayed (Really. I was taught that.), that freeing the slaves actually did them harm and that the war was never about slavery - that was just an issue introduced half way through as an emotional rallying cry. The phrase "The south will rise again" was not uncommon, Sherman's name is still hated here, and the phrase "damnyankee" was one word. And the Klu Klux Klan was just there to protect the women and children. All the classic cliches that you think could not be true about Southerners....well. They are. They were. That's what I grew up in and around the first half of my life. How in God's name I escaped being an emotionally blind bigoted bastard I will never know, but thanks be to God - and I MEAN that - somehow I did. I was taught to be proud my state fired the first shot that started the whole freaking blood bath. And it was a blood bath - that war produced about 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease. It accounted for roughly as many American deaths as all American deaths in other U.S. wars combined. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males in the United States aged 13 to 43 died in the Civil War, including 6% in the North and 18% in the South. (Don't know what the figures would be if other races and women and children were included in that.) 

Its funny how when you're sure of what you think you know, you never really dig in and look at it until something else knocks the blinders off. Now, I was already totally disgusted with the whole "slavery wasn't all that bad, and emancipation actually harmed the slaves" thing...Naive I may be - Stupid I am not. But I did believe that the Civil war was about States Rights, and the evils of the Federal Government.  Its what I was taught in school and at home and at church and rubbed off on me at social gatherings. What else was I to know, when that was all I had ever been taught. Until last night, sore and angry and worried about my country's troubles at the hands of some crack pots and conspiracy theorists, I turned and did some true unbiased digging for the first time ever about the whole States Rights "movement" that arose out of the Civil War.

Rare 1863
photograph of a slave 

Oh, yes, it was about States Rights alright. The right to own slaves and continue the furtherance of slave ownership into newly opened territories of America after slavery had already been declared illegal everywhere except the specific slave states and the actual slave trade coming over seas had been criminalized. And for THIS my ancestors rose and fought one of the bitterest, most brutal wars ever, brother against brother, that generated the hatred, prejudices and resentments that still burn today in the deep south...for the right to own and enslave their fellow human beings. And because of this cultural myth that still is alive and well today - that the Federal Government is out to "get us" Southerners - we're primed for it already. Armed conflict and rebellion is romanticized in the name of that lie still. And when this legal circus that is being driven by the Birther's disproven fraudulent claims  to exclude Obama from the Presidential ballot in the states gets tossed out and quashed like it should be...its not impossible that civil unrest and blood could erupt in the streets.

Oh yes. If this Birther movement to exclude Obama from the ballot continues, with the Occupy debacle behind us - and the Occupy movement will be cranking back up when warm weather gets here, is my bet - it could well explode. I am not being paranoid. You saw the news this summer with the Occupiers being beaten, dragged off, pepper sprayed and gassed. We're poised over the edge. And the Deep South is where this will erupt if it does and we're living smack in the middle of it. God help us.

I guess the final reason for my severe rage was that every single conspiracy theory, crack pot claim, and bitter foul lie about President Obama that Orly Taitz is pushing or has created, I've heard from my father's lips as gospel truth. And he knows, despite my care not to start anything or even get involved in any political discussion with him, he knows that I disagree with him on this subject. And he thinks I am blind to reality and that he knows it all. It hurts. Orly Taitz's single handed insanity has brainwashed my dad into twisted knots of conspiracy theories and hatred and there is nothing I can do about it. Not one thing. I asked my dad what he thought, the day President Obama's birth certificate was released, and he said as far as he was concerned it was a fake, the man was no US citizen, but a Kenyan born Muslim who should be run out of the country and that even if he held Obama's birth certificate in his hand, he still wouldn't believe it, period. And this is why, perhaps I am so blazing mad. These lies have come close to destroying my relationship with my father, and have twisted what should be golden years for him into something filled with fear and hate because he is afraid of change and its easier to hate than think. It breaks my heart and has made me angrier than anything has in a long time. I am trying not to misuse that anger and succumb to hate myself. So I'm venting about it, and trying to wrestle with it and win through to being better than this.

Two final points. Orly Taitz is working on running for Senator for the state of California. Oh no. Hell no! Please God, no. She has to be un-electable. Unfortunately, her being born somewhere other than the USA doesn't preclude her from holding any office except the presidency. How ironic.

Secondly, today in court instead of tossing out the case in Georgia, the court stunningly refused to rule, meaning he did not toss them out on their asses - yet. Instead,they are to present their evidence, and he will make a ruling by February 5th, and where this will lead next, who knows. Hopefully he will toss it out. We'll see. I can't imagine he wouldn't. Here's hoping.

These are my honest thoughts. Perhaps venting here will give me the ability to see clearly and not be so blind furious. Perhaps the future will be better than my fears, will instead, be the future of my hopes. Such are my prayers this night.
May God give us grace. All of us.

Martin Luther King Jr. - the Force of the Soul

I Have a Dream is the 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. The speech, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of theAmerican Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters, the speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering "I Have a Dream"
at the 1963 Washington D.C. Civil Rights March.