Another terrific initiative from the Bush administration to rally behind--seriously. Assuming that you can ignore the gay angle, this sounds like a terrific program.

[Thread title modified to correct typo. - Outsports moderator]

[ January 16, 2004, 07:32 AM: Message edited by: m1 ]

Maybe they could get Bush supporter Britney Spears to do ads/commercials for this campaign.

[ January 14, 2004, 06:48 AM: Message edited by: RazorbackTX ]

The only thing I can hope from this is that bush is doing this to appease the far right and will not come out in direct support of a constitutional amendment.

Regardless of his intentions, it's well needed. Low-income people need all the help they can get to break out of a cycle of having kids on their own, being unprepared for what it takes to raise a kid successfully, relying on govt assistance instead of family planning, etc. And for all their talk about the sanctity of marriage and its wealth-building function, it's about time that they used it to help people instead of just using it to knock down gay marriage. Again, this ignores the gay marriage angle in the article.

You must be joking. Correct me if Im wrong but didnt the republican party use to be the party of "less government", keeping out of peoples private lives ect...

And didnt the republican party at least try to act as if they were the party of fiscal responsibility? Cleary they are not as they are the ones always breaking deficit records but come on $1.5 BILLION on this??

I agree that low income families need more help than this government is offering them...but God knows that divorce, drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, and teenage suicide aren't part of middle and upper class families. Bring on another tax cut! WOO-HOO! Why do I get the feeling that this idea as well as all of these other pandering "wonderful" ideas we've heard this week are going to be history after election/Osama-unveiling day?

No thanks, I'm opposed to healthy marriages.

Spending to fix a social ill is sometimes needed. Welfare destroyed marriage in a segment of our population. This is designed to fix it. Thinking about having a kid? Get married, plan for it, rely on each other to raise your children, don't rely on welfare to fill the gap. You keep hearing about what a drain these types of people are on the govt and the taxes we pay. I don't mind them investing in doing something about it.

Clearly spending is often necessary, but to blame welfare for having "destroyed marriage" is overly simplistic - the current welfare system began in the 30s, yet the divorce rate nationally did not start climbing until the 40s, and was a direct result of WWII and women's newfound independence.

As for the breakdown in traditional families in low-income areas, there are numerous factors, not the least is fathers abandoning their children. To say every low-income person should just get married and the world will be rosy (which is what the people Bush is pandering to with this initiative believe), is overly simplistic.

Certainly everyone can rally behind healthier marriages, but if people in the inner cities are still left with no job skills and no job opportunities, and the welfare system still benefits single mothers, you are not going to see a big uptick in marriages, and those new marriages that do happen will likely result in even greater poverty.

Admittedly, I'm such a sucker for overly simplistic approaches to fixing the problems poor people have. Don't have kids out of wedlock, don't rely on welfare, save money and aim to buy a home instead of renting, make sure your kids do well in school, etc. I love that stuff.

$87 billion for Iraq....
Hundreds of billions of dollars for Mars.
1.5 billion to convince people to marry...

Hey, why not, that credit card doesnt have any spending limits does it?

http://www.northbaydean.org/img/republicard.jpg

Bush to Andy Card: "Print up some more money, 'Merika is gonna need it...and get me another cheeseburger!"
Andy: "Mr. President, printing money won't solve the deficite problem we are creating."
Bush: "Like hell it won't, boy, now, after you get me a burger, you get your ass over to the treasury and get to printin'!"

Bzzzzt. That won't be part of the plan.

I don't laugh out loud very often, but this made me chuckle. Twin, do you mind if I adopt the "bzzzt" sound when telling people they are wrong?

[ January 14, 2004, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: araanib ]

All this reminds me of a book I recently read: Random Family, a non-fiction account about poor Bronx residents that details how and why the impoverished are so helpless in improving their plight. An absorbing, matter-of-fact domestic drama that covers over a decade of unwed pregnancies, drug dealing, jail time, and the elusive search for love and financial stability, it's essential reading for those who simple-mindedly blame the poor for all their woes. For example, Coco, a young mother of five, wants her tubes tied but the procedure is not covered under welfare health care; however, she's eligible to receive more state money if she has more children. Now, why is that?

Link to Random Family on Amazon

Healthy marriages. Jeez. Whoever heard of such nonsense?

Ugh, you made me buy another book I'll never read. That sort of stuff normally depresses the hell out of me. Too bad it's not in comic book format: Coco Wants To Get Her Tubes Tied. Anyway, I promise I'll give it a chance when it comes.

This thread reminds me of something I saw in court several months ago. We had a juvenile judge who would encourage unmarried couples who had children together to marry, and of course the ones he would tell this to were the poor and unrepresented. One day I was waiting for my case to be called while the court dealt with a case of spousal abuse. The guy was basically beating the hell out of the woman on a regular basis and finally when she ended up in the hospital the state brought an abuse charge against him. They had kids together, very poor, a really sad case. After the woman finally finished describing to the court the hell she had been living in for about a year, the judge leaned over his bench and asked "Why in the world did you marry this guy?" And she said, "Judge, we were here about a year ago when I was asking for child support, and you told me to marry him, so I did."

There is no easy answer to the problems of poverty and one-parent families. I actually think the push for more marriages is a good one if the government would also educate on personal responsibility, the meaning of marriage, and on birth control. The problem is that Britney Spears and "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" demeans the institution so much more than any governmental push can help. Do we really want to get people who may not be compatible, or even have a volatile and abusive relationship, to marry "for the sake of the children?"

... or his brother, Neil.

Actually, I don't think this is the most terible idea, particularly if it keeps the conservatives distracted from the gay marriage issue for a while. There's nothing wrong with having strong marriages, provided the whole initiative isn't some stealth attempt to further inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

Twin, yes, this would be a lot more credible if it came from a pro-choice administration.

Wow, now how many times has W said that one!

I think Neil is busy working on the anti-herpes campaign. Maybe Britney could pair up with Newt Gingrich, he's had alot experience with marriage.

People, you guys must read the papers. TomFord only posted PART of this story. The Far Right definitely is pushing W to include the anti-gay marriage bit as part of this, and are getting quite worked up that he's waffling at all.

NY TIMES: Bush to spend $1.5 billion to promote marriage

Yes, I edited that quite well, didn't I? ;>

"Low-income people need all the help they can get to break out of a cycle..." (TomFord)

While I do think it is important to educate people in general 'bout the positives of Marriage... I get an uneasy feeling that Bush is directing this 'program' at low-income folks.

You do realise Tom that 33% of ALL born-again people who marry will wind up divorced! That's one out of every three born-again marriages. Is this program targeted towards them?

The truth will set you free! eek!

Click me!


.

Yeah, you could be one of Bush's filters.

Assuming we can ignore his policies, the Usurper's a really great president.

You woulda been invaluable in the Kremlin, TF.

I was thinking about the poor. Cause I'm soft like that.

Yes, it's a long, exhausting read, but somehow never depressing. Maybe that's due to the absence of any self-pity among the young men and women in it.

(And, BTW, I thought I'd mention that Coco was pregnant with her fourth child -- Pearl, a 32-week preemie with breathing problems -- before her twentieth birthday. And Pearl's father Frankie is only one out of the FOUR fathers to Coco's five children. Now, how is abstinence-only education gonna help this family? And should I mention that Jessica, Coco's sister-in-law, also has five children? [Cesar, Jessica's brother who's serving ten years for the accidental manslaughter of his best friend, is the father of two of Coco's kids.] Jessica's five children have "only" three fathers, but perhaps that's due to two sets of twins - one pair conceived with a guard in a federal prison where Jessica was serving nearly ten years for non-violent drug offenses. Boggles the mind.)

Now, how and why should Coco and Jessica marry any of these fathers? Some are dead, others are imprisoned or completely out of the picture. Serena, Jessica's eldest whose father is murdered by a rival drug gang, is pregnant at sixteen by the end of the book. Should she marry the father, another teen who's not even able to grow a beard? What good could possibly come from that?

[ January 14, 2004, 08:49 PM: Message edited by: FeverDog ]

Sorry; you'll have to buy the CD.

Oh, what the hell; I don't own it. It's my present to the world.

Well, one could say that at least the folks in the book aren't getting abortions, anathema to conservatives, and they are being fruitful and multiplying, as the Bible commands, so they can't be faulted completely.

I hope W enrolls his brother Neil in whatever marriage training program comes along. I'm not sure about you guys, but I don't think getting herpes from extramarital assignations, screwing whores while on overseas trips, hooking up with married women and destroying two marriages simultaneously, and then lying about all of it to your wife constitutes a "healthy" marriage. Or maybe since he's rich it's okay.

I think when a republican does it it's called a "youthful indiscretion", no matter what age the person is. (See Henry Hyde)

Come on now. Does anyone REALLY think this is about helping poor people? Tom, are you really asking us to take W's utterances at face value? I think we can both agree that we should judge him by his actions, not his words.

When it comes to social spending, the emerging pattern is that W. will praise this program or that--& then turn right around & propose to cut funding for it. After all, there's not a dime in the treasury for this marriage thing anyway. The poor--well whatever help they might need, I trust that you don't think it should come from the government. Give 'em some chapter & verse. Whip 'em with the Word. The poor don't need any social spending. They don't need health insurance & job security & a living wage. They just need to get married. And work harder. And accept JC as their savior. Compassionate conservatism, eh?

As it pertains to gay folks, I guess we'll just have to stay tuned. It requires only a touch of cynicism to see that this is basically pabulum for the bible belters, like the folks in the S.C. mill towns who have lost their factory jobs but will still vote for Bush in '04 anyway, if they vote at all. If it doesn't include a push for the Marriage Amendment, then I would take that for what it's worth & be happy. We know that the Bushies will have to throw a bone or 2 to the fundies, but if this is it, then we could count that as win, of sort, for us. Because what we have now is just alot of words, whereas a constitutional amendment would do real & permanent harm to the lives of all gay people in the U.S.A., not to mention to our collective heritage of liberty (to think that we would actually consider amending the constitution to RESTRICT rather than expand rights).

But either way, it is important to bear in mind that to the Republicans all this fuming about gays is just a sideshow. The real business is cutting taxation & regulations for the corporate elite, ending social spending as much as possible, privatizing everything & in general governing unapologetically in the interest of wealth & property. True, they don't give a damn about me & my rights, but by now I am confident that gay-bashing is not one of their priorities. If it is a net vote-gainer, then sure, they will deploy it, especially if it is needed to "fire up the base". But at the same time, it is kind of unseemly &, well, lowbrow, & if featured too prominently it can provoke a backlash, as it did in '92. Thus they would probably use it in a limited fashion, in targeted regions, & preferably not have it linked too closely to Bush himself. But if this is all there is to it--just a little waxing on the virtues of marriage--then I would breathe a huge sigh of relief.

[ January 15, 2004, 06:20 PM: Message edited by: BillyBones ]

I still think Bush supporter Britney Spears would be a great spokesperson for this campaign, I read this quote of hers in the paper this morning:

"I do believe in the sanctity of marriage, I totally do."

(Maybe Bush will get his filtered down to him after his nap today)

That's an expensive bit of pabulum. I do think he cares about the poor. Doesn't everyone? Actually, I was thinking more about marriage and blacks when I first read that article. The following is from a Detroit Free Press article that I can't find the link to now:

My pet cause is (one day) working to fix some of what ails the black community (which is why I ignored the gay marrige angle in the Times article), and I think what Bush is proposing will certainly help. B_man? Fantomas?

Of course this idealogically themed stand by Shrub does offer nothing to gays and lezbians.
OH THE HYPOCRISY!!!

Oh, I'm sure he's got lots of healthy alternatives for that lot. Besides, 2003 'year of the gay' is over.

I thought repugs were against "social engineering"
but of course I also thought they were against:
nation building
massive deficits
runaway spending

Who knew?

Sometimes you need a little social engineering to get people off welfare. Cause apparently that's where all our taxes go.

Welfare is where "all our taxes go?"

Just wondering...whats your source for that tid bit 'o info?

[ January 15, 2004, 08:16 AM: Message edited by: RazorbackTX ]

I was kidding you nonce.

Not sure if this belongs here, but I saw the funniest bumper sticker this morning while waiting for the bus.

"Somewhere a village in Texas is missing it's idiot!"

That is funny, TonkaMan, though I hope the bumper sticker writers realize the irony in their mistaking "it's" for "its"! (It's = it is; its = belongs to it)

Back to the topic: the Right Wingers aren't happy with W's marriage plan, because they want the anti-gay element to be at the forefront:

NY Times: Bush's push for marriage falls short for some conservatives

According to tv commercials I see I think they have meds for that now, good luck.

Fantomas, it looked like one of those home made bumper stickers. Maybe they saw a real one and wanted one of their own! wink There is a website that lets you design your own bumper sticker. I don't remember what the URL is though. frown

Heh, reminds me of that Cards fan:

Words are cheap.

You mean they don't have spell check on hand lettered signs? Who knew?

Re: this stupid media ploy by Karl Rove.

It's just another effort to destroy the church/state separation. The Ruling Junta want nothing less than a theocracy in this country.

Considering the chilly reception this has got from both sides, perhaps in the State of the Union Address W. will propose to evangelize Mars.

The words "Healthy Marriage" comming from the mouth of shrub makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up like the scruff of an angry German Shepherd. There is so much more to this than has reached the surface. WE are the ones who need to be in suport of healthy marriages! We need to be the ones saying "Yes, we do need healthy marriages, they are a good thing! Now let us get married in a healthy way!" Healthy does not mean restricted to a man a woman. Healthy does not mean being forced to marry when a child is concieved. Healthy does not mean a couple has to be married in a church. A healthy marriage is a union between two loving, consenting adults who are willing to sacrifice for one another, listen to one another, and grow with one another. Those things have nothing to do with race, sexual orientation, social stratification, or religion. It is so vitally important that we assure the right wing and shrub that no one group holds the ownership of "healthy marriages".
We need to use this subject as a positive in the next election! Gay men and women need to unite (excuse the pun) on this subject. Yes to marriage, but no to the right wing influence!