In Foxworld, there are people who believe they can be happy
and prosperous by letting the government take care of them.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Sunday, March 29, 2015
The School Chidren of Foxworld
In Foxworld, all American children worship and believe in the same God.
Therefore, it is important that the Government helps us indoctrinate them all.
Monday, March 23, 2015
My Cousin Got Trapped In The Gap
I was sick recently. It started with losing my dinner rght before work one Friday night, and over the next two nights, I had body aches and fatigue, and a headache that wouldn't go away. Finally, on Monday morning, I felt so bad that I had Gaby take me to the emergency room. A couple of days ago, I got the bill: $8,040.25, of which my insurance covers all but $991 of, and that will probably be covered in its entirety by my HSA. I am so glad that we both have health insurance. Without it, I figure I'd be paying this bill off for the next forty months.
Monday afternoon, I had a chance to visit briefly with a cousin of mine, Steve, and the stream of the conversation led to him talking about his own health care situation. He works for a large company and makes a decent living, but he works contracted labor, so his employer doesn't provide health insurance. He's looked into buying it himself, but since he's a diabetic, the cheapest policies he can find would cost over $20,000 per year. He makes too little money to qualify for the subsdies from the ACA, and since our Governor has decided to put politics above the well being of the people of the state, he makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid. So, he, a diabetic, has to do without, and hope that nothing serious happens to him in the five years till he can qualify for Medicare.
Thing is, the Affordable Care Act was written in such a way that Steve should never have had to worry about this. The plan was that people who make 133% to 400% of the federal poverty level would be provided help in paying for their health insurance, while those making under 133% would be covered under Medicaid, which is a state sponsored program. The states would not be out any money for the expanded service because the Federal Government would provide 100% of the funding for the first three years, and then scaled down to 90% by 2022.
But in 2012, the Supreme Court decided that states did not have to expand their Medicaid program if they didn't want to. As of October 2014, 23 states, including Oklahoma, have not done so. This has created a coverage gap that is not provided for in the ACA, and in most of those states, the maximum income to be eligible for Medicaid is set so low that anyone with any kind of job could not qualify. Furthermore, childless adults in all but one of those states are not eligible for Medicaid at all. In Oklahoma, that leaves 104,000 people without any kind of health coverage, 88% of which are childless adults. Steve is one of them.
I had started to write on this subject almost a year ago when a friend of mine posted a meme on Facebook about the Georgia legislature making a rather dubious vote to go against Federal law. Not the first time for that state, of course, but it interested me because my brother had just moved to Georgia, and he, at one time, was telling the family that he would be dependent on the ACA to enable him to buy insurance.
Then, shortly thereafter, the story came out that rural hospitals in Georgia were closing because, by not expanding Medicaid coverage, the state had also rejected 14.5 billion in Federal funds, while denying health care coverage to 646,557 people. This is not a problem unique to Georgia, but the solution to the problem proposed by the Governor was appalling.
Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which said that Emergency Rooms could no longer reject patients based on their ability to pay for services. Governor Nathan Deal decided that the way to fix the problems of closing rural hospitals in his state is to repeal the 1986 law. His critics, naturally, describe his position as If we kill off all the poor people, we won't have to pay for taking care of them.
(Sidenote here: Back during the 2012 Presidential Election campaigns, Mitt Romney said the ACA was unnecessary because the uninsured could just go to emergency rooms. Seems Governor Romney and Governor Deal were at cross purposes.)
Not that people wouldn't be dying in his state anyway as a result of his failure to expand Medicaid. The peer-reviewed medical journal Health Affairs estimated that between 501 and 1176 people per year in Georgia alone could die a "needless death" simply because of what is essentially partisan politics.
Here in Oklahoma, of course, we've got exactly the same thing. Governor Mary Fallin decided not to expand Medicaid coverage, turning away billions in Federal funding, saying it was "unaffordable." Personally, I don't understand her math, or why she thinks the state would be better off with more people in the state having no access to health care or dying needless deaths. Seems to me, she's taken the more expensive route.
When you stand against something, you should also be aware of what you're standing for.
Last Thursday, the front page of the Daily Oklahoman had the headline "Shortfall's Dire Consequences," in which educational and health care officials explained to state Government officials how budget cuts would affect the state. Republicans have a super majority in our State Legislature, and Republicans in general are committed to the idea that tax cuts generate growth, and that cuts in spending will cover deficits. These ideas have never worked before, and they have no potential for working in the future, and furthermore, we have to look no further than our next door neighbor, Kansas, to see just how badly these ideas work when put into practice unfettered. Yet that will continue to be the policy here for the foreseeable future. Maybe all the poor people here will die off, too, and then we won't have to worry about it anymore.
Monday afternoon, I had a chance to visit briefly with a cousin of mine, Steve, and the stream of the conversation led to him talking about his own health care situation. He works for a large company and makes a decent living, but he works contracted labor, so his employer doesn't provide health insurance. He's looked into buying it himself, but since he's a diabetic, the cheapest policies he can find would cost over $20,000 per year. He makes too little money to qualify for the subsdies from the ACA, and since our Governor has decided to put politics above the well being of the people of the state, he makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid. So, he, a diabetic, has to do without, and hope that nothing serious happens to him in the five years till he can qualify for Medicare.
Thing is, the Affordable Care Act was written in such a way that Steve should never have had to worry about this. The plan was that people who make 133% to 400% of the federal poverty level would be provided help in paying for their health insurance, while those making under 133% would be covered under Medicaid, which is a state sponsored program. The states would not be out any money for the expanded service because the Federal Government would provide 100% of the funding for the first three years, and then scaled down to 90% by 2022.
But in 2012, the Supreme Court decided that states did not have to expand their Medicaid program if they didn't want to. As of October 2014, 23 states, including Oklahoma, have not done so. This has created a coverage gap that is not provided for in the ACA, and in most of those states, the maximum income to be eligible for Medicaid is set so low that anyone with any kind of job could not qualify. Furthermore, childless adults in all but one of those states are not eligible for Medicaid at all. In Oklahoma, that leaves 104,000 people without any kind of health coverage, 88% of which are childless adults. Steve is one of them. I had started to write on this subject almost a year ago when a friend of mine posted a meme on Facebook about the Georgia legislature making a rather dubious vote to go against Federal law. Not the first time for that state, of course, but it interested me because my brother had just moved to Georgia, and he, at one time, was telling the family that he would be dependent on the ACA to enable him to buy insurance.Then, shortly thereafter, the story came out that rural hospitals in Georgia were closing because, by not expanding Medicaid coverage, the state had also rejected 14.5 billion in Federal funds, while denying health care coverage to 646,557 people. This is not a problem unique to Georgia, but the solution to the problem proposed by the Governor was appalling.
Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which said that Emergency Rooms could no longer reject patients based on their ability to pay for services. Governor Nathan Deal decided that the way to fix the problems of closing rural hospitals in his state is to repeal the 1986 law. His critics, naturally, describe his position as If we kill off all the poor people, we won't have to pay for taking care of them.
(Sidenote here: Back during the 2012 Presidential Election campaigns, Mitt Romney said the ACA was unnecessary because the uninsured could just go to emergency rooms. Seems Governor Romney and Governor Deal were at cross purposes.)
Not that people wouldn't be dying in his state anyway as a result of his failure to expand Medicaid. The peer-reviewed medical journal Health Affairs estimated that between 501 and 1176 people per year in Georgia alone could die a "needless death" simply because of what is essentially partisan politics.Here in Oklahoma, of course, we've got exactly the same thing. Governor Mary Fallin decided not to expand Medicaid coverage, turning away billions in Federal funding, saying it was "unaffordable." Personally, I don't understand her math, or why she thinks the state would be better off with more people in the state having no access to health care or dying needless deaths. Seems to me, she's taken the more expensive route.
When you stand against something, you should also be aware of what you're standing for.
Last Thursday, the front page of the Daily Oklahoman had the headline "Shortfall's Dire Consequences," in which educational and health care officials explained to state Government officials how budget cuts would affect the state. Republicans have a super majority in our State Legislature, and Republicans in general are committed to the idea that tax cuts generate growth, and that cuts in spending will cover deficits. These ideas have never worked before, and they have no potential for working in the future, and furthermore, we have to look no further than our next door neighbor, Kansas, to see just how badly these ideas work when put into practice unfettered. Yet that will continue to be the policy here for the foreseeable future. Maybe all the poor people here will die off, too, and then we won't have to worry about it anymore.
Monday, March 16, 2015
The Gun Owners of Foxworld
In Foxworld, guns are being taken away from law-abiding gun owners, leaving them helpless against gun-toting bad guys.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Stuff That Needs To Be Said
Weapon Of Choice: An Open Letter To Christians Who Believe That Sexuality Is A Decision by John Pavlovitz
History is no guarantee of legitimacy.
Thinking sustained over time doesn’t always equal Truth. Sometimes it just equals tradition.
Just because many religious people get something wrong over and over and over again, doesn’t eventually one day make it right.
In fact, when it comes to things that we come to believe corporately as a people, sometimes history and tradition and religion are the enemy of progress. We become intellectually lazy; wrong but comfortable in that wrong-ness and unwilling to dig deeper.
Ever since Christians have been talking about homosexuality, many have been trying to begin with an assumption that is simply incorrect and dangerous, that it’s something that all gay people choose.
Here’s part of a conversation between myself and a blog reader, a straight Christian man who was repeatedly, rather matter-of-factly, and quite judgmentally telling gay people that their sexual orientation was simply a choice; a willful decision, (and because of that he reasoned, a decision to sin).
It’s an all-too familiar song sung to the LGBT community by the religious community.
He did what so many well-meaning but misguided straight people of faith do: try to tell a gay person how their hearts work.
On a comment thread where literally hundreds of people had previously talked about their own experience as LGBT, many of them Christians; (trying for decades to deny and change and pray away what was so clearly inherent in them), this man simply refused to listen. I don’t think he was doing this to purposefully hurt them or shut down the conversation, he was simply trying to protect a part of his faith that was being threatened by actual people’s experience to the contrary.
After watching the discussion devolve into a series of predictable religious sound bites, I jumped in and we shared this exchange:
Reader: Sexuality is a choice.
Me: When did you choose heterosexuality?
Reader: I made my choice as a teenager when I started to date girls.
Me: Were you ever sexually or physically attracted to boys, or are you now?
Reader: No, never.
Me: Not really much of a choice then, is it? A choice, implies different possible options. But dating guys wasn’t ever really an option for you, was it? If you had been attracted to men, but began dating women anyway, then your sexuality would have been a choice. As it is, you simply went with what felt completely right and natural, rather than with what would have been disgusting and distasteful to your sensibilities. It was a consenting to instinct, not a decision in opposition to it.
I went on to share with this man, a devout Christian, what I want to share with those of you who echo his views on sexuality as a choice; with as much compassion and care and understanding as I can:
I feel for you, and I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong.
I’ve been a pastor for 18 years, and been shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face with thousands of wonderful, God-loving men and women, who were and are living an inherited lie: the lie that gay* (or straight) people can choose the objects of their affections and the inclinations of who they love.
You may not believe me when I tell you this, but I understand.
I know well, the difficult spot that you’re in as a believer.
I know that if you can believe that homosexuality is indeed a choice, it can allow you to feel negativity or judgment or disapproval toward gay people without guilt—but for the vast majority of people who identify as LGBT it isn’t a choice, but simply an acceptance of what is most real and most true.
As a straight person, you can disagree with that statement if you’d like, but know that when you do, you’re not being honest with how your own heart works and how you yourself have experienced attraction, and affection, and love, and the desire for intimacy with another.
I know as a Christian, how hard you’re straining to believe this old lie, and the tug-of-war that is happening in your spirit as you fight for an idea you may not quite have peace with anymore.
I know that you’re desperately holding on to a damaging prejudice, despite so much evidence in the face of it, because you really need that prejudice to reinforce the faith perspective you’ve grown-up with and grown comfortable with; and the one you feel you need to keep in order to please God.
To abandon that assumption, would threaten the huge house of cards that would get exposed to the breezes of a billion follow-up questions in its wake.
I understand this, I truly do.
But this idea of anyone choosing who they love, an idea that so many Christians hold so tightly to;
It’s simply not real.
It’s a fake truth dressed up as religion.
It’s a counterfeit license to discriminate in the name of God.
People are lives, not lifestyles.
There is no such thing as a “gay lifestyle”, any more than there is a “heterosexual lifestyle”. (Other than romantic/sexual activity, just how do you define the lifestyle you lead as a straight person?)
In this world, there are only people; there are simply human beings, some who are straight and some who are not.
It’s just the simple, stark, unadorned truth of our shared humanity, regardless of how it messes with our religious convictions or makes us uneasy.
Many people are not made heterosexual, and they can’t be made into one.
Each of us has within us, desires to be known and cared for and loved, that are all far beyond what we can steer or alter. You know this, because you’ve experienced it all yourself. To tell a non-heterosexual person that they could and should somehow be convinced to choose the opposite of what their hearts say, would be to suggest that you, a heterosexual person; with enough pressure and cajoling and therapy, could possibly be convinced to be gay. (I imagine this would be an insulting proposition to most of you).
Straight, Christian friend, you can feel any way you care to about those who identify as LGBT, but you’ll need to develop your faith perspective in light of this truth about them. You can build any case you want against non-heterosexual people, but you simply can’t have choice as a weapon in your arsenal.
If you argue that gay people are making a decision regarding their sexuality, you’re essentially not accepting the logic of your own journey and history, and you’re expecting them all to make an emotional sacrifice that you haven’t ever had to make.
That’s a problem.
That’s not loving your neighbor as yourself.
That’s not the Golden Rule.
I’m pretty sure that’s not of Jesus, either.
But don’t take my word for it. After all, I’m still just another straight Christian guy talking about gay people, and that’s definitely not the solution here. We’ve had far too much of that, for far too long in the Church.
Here’s a suggestion: The next time you encounter another adult who tells you that they’re not heterosexual, ask them whether it is their choice or not, and however they respond, have the decency and respect to believe that their understanding of their own heart, is more trustworthy than your evaluation of it from a distance.
If they tell you it’s a choice, then for them, it’s a choice—but not simply because you would like it to be. If they tell you they’ve felt this way since their earliest memories, trust that they know better than you about their reality.
Millions of LGBT people, many of them just teenagers, are being damaged, wounded, and some are quite literally dying, trying to bear the oppressive heaviness of this assumption of choice that we’ve placed on them. Frankly, I think the Church needs to own this, and do some of the “loving of the least” we hear Jesus calling his people to.
I know this message may anger you or frustrate you, or make you want to dig your heels even more deeply into the assumptions you’ve lived in for so long, but I pray you won’t. I pray you’ll ask some really tough questions about what you’ve believed about sexuality, and what you know about your own experience.
And I hope that you won’t just accept the answers you think you know.
We Christians talk about “speaking the truth in love” an awful lot, and even though you may not believe it, I can only tell you that I share this truth, with all the love I have; for you who are trying earnestly to reconcile a faith that you care so deeply about, balanced with the love I have for the LGBT community, who are trying to live authentically and peacefully alongside you in community—and being injured by you.
They are testifying with their words and their hearts, that they did not ask to be born compelled to love as they do, anymore than you or I did. I think they deserve to be heard and listened to; not preached or shouted at.
One of the easiest and least compassionate things we can do in this life, is to assume that the way we experience the world, is the way that everyone else does, or should.
We need to do better as a people of faith, at seeing gay people (and all people for that matter) as they are, not as we desire them to be. Our faith after all, claims that all people are made in Gods image, not in our own.
Christian, maybe you’re right; maybe love is indeed a choice, but just not in the way you’ve always thought.
In a very real and tangible way, you may need to choose who and how you love.
History is no guarantee of legitimacy.
Thinking sustained over time doesn’t always equal Truth. Sometimes it just equals tradition.
Just because many religious people get something wrong over and over and over again, doesn’t eventually one day make it right.
In fact, when it comes to things that we come to believe corporately as a people, sometimes history and tradition and religion are the enemy of progress. We become intellectually lazy; wrong but comfortable in that wrong-ness and unwilling to dig deeper.
Ever since Christians have been talking about homosexuality, many have been trying to begin with an assumption that is simply incorrect and dangerous, that it’s something that all gay people choose.
Here’s part of a conversation between myself and a blog reader, a straight Christian man who was repeatedly, rather matter-of-factly, and quite judgmentally telling gay people that their sexual orientation was simply a choice; a willful decision, (and because of that he reasoned, a decision to sin).
It’s an all-too familiar song sung to the LGBT community by the religious community.
He did what so many well-meaning but misguided straight people of faith do: try to tell a gay person how their hearts work.
On a comment thread where literally hundreds of people had previously talked about their own experience as LGBT, many of them Christians; (trying for decades to deny and change and pray away what was so clearly inherent in them), this man simply refused to listen. I don’t think he was doing this to purposefully hurt them or shut down the conversation, he was simply trying to protect a part of his faith that was being threatened by actual people’s experience to the contrary.
After watching the discussion devolve into a series of predictable religious sound bites, I jumped in and we shared this exchange:
Reader: Sexuality is a choice.
Me: When did you choose heterosexuality?
Reader: I made my choice as a teenager when I started to date girls.
Me: Were you ever sexually or physically attracted to boys, or are you now?
Reader: No, never.
Me: Not really much of a choice then, is it? A choice, implies different possible options. But dating guys wasn’t ever really an option for you, was it? If you had been attracted to men, but began dating women anyway, then your sexuality would have been a choice. As it is, you simply went with what felt completely right and natural, rather than with what would have been disgusting and distasteful to your sensibilities. It was a consenting to instinct, not a decision in opposition to it.
I went on to share with this man, a devout Christian, what I want to share with those of you who echo his views on sexuality as a choice; with as much compassion and care and understanding as I can:
I feel for you, and I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong.
I’ve been a pastor for 18 years, and been shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face with thousands of wonderful, God-loving men and women, who were and are living an inherited lie: the lie that gay* (or straight) people can choose the objects of their affections and the inclinations of who they love.
You may not believe me when I tell you this, but I understand.
I know well, the difficult spot that you’re in as a believer.
I know that if you can believe that homosexuality is indeed a choice, it can allow you to feel negativity or judgment or disapproval toward gay people without guilt—but for the vast majority of people who identify as LGBT it isn’t a choice, but simply an acceptance of what is most real and most true.
As a straight person, you can disagree with that statement if you’d like, but know that when you do, you’re not being honest with how your own heart works and how you yourself have experienced attraction, and affection, and love, and the desire for intimacy with another.
I know as a Christian, how hard you’re straining to believe this old lie, and the tug-of-war that is happening in your spirit as you fight for an idea you may not quite have peace with anymore.
I know that you’re desperately holding on to a damaging prejudice, despite so much evidence in the face of it, because you really need that prejudice to reinforce the faith perspective you’ve grown-up with and grown comfortable with; and the one you feel you need to keep in order to please God.
To abandon that assumption, would threaten the huge house of cards that would get exposed to the breezes of a billion follow-up questions in its wake.
I understand this, I truly do.
But this idea of anyone choosing who they love, an idea that so many Christians hold so tightly to;
It’s simply not real.
It’s a fake truth dressed up as religion.
It’s a counterfeit license to discriminate in the name of God.
People are lives, not lifestyles.
There is no such thing as a “gay lifestyle”, any more than there is a “heterosexual lifestyle”. (Other than romantic/sexual activity, just how do you define the lifestyle you lead as a straight person?)
In this world, there are only people; there are simply human beings, some who are straight and some who are not.
It’s just the simple, stark, unadorned truth of our shared humanity, regardless of how it messes with our religious convictions or makes us uneasy.
Many people are not made heterosexual, and they can’t be made into one.
Each of us has within us, desires to be known and cared for and loved, that are all far beyond what we can steer or alter. You know this, because you’ve experienced it all yourself. To tell a non-heterosexual person that they could and should somehow be convinced to choose the opposite of what their hearts say, would be to suggest that you, a heterosexual person; with enough pressure and cajoling and therapy, could possibly be convinced to be gay. (I imagine this would be an insulting proposition to most of you).
Straight, Christian friend, you can feel any way you care to about those who identify as LGBT, but you’ll need to develop your faith perspective in light of this truth about them. You can build any case you want against non-heterosexual people, but you simply can’t have choice as a weapon in your arsenal.
If you argue that gay people are making a decision regarding their sexuality, you’re essentially not accepting the logic of your own journey and history, and you’re expecting them all to make an emotional sacrifice that you haven’t ever had to make.
That’s a problem.
That’s not loving your neighbor as yourself.
That’s not the Golden Rule.
I’m pretty sure that’s not of Jesus, either.
But don’t take my word for it. After all, I’m still just another straight Christian guy talking about gay people, and that’s definitely not the solution here. We’ve had far too much of that, for far too long in the Church.
Here’s a suggestion: The next time you encounter another adult who tells you that they’re not heterosexual, ask them whether it is their choice or not, and however they respond, have the decency and respect to believe that their understanding of their own heart, is more trustworthy than your evaluation of it from a distance.
If they tell you it’s a choice, then for them, it’s a choice—but not simply because you would like it to be. If they tell you they’ve felt this way since their earliest memories, trust that they know better than you about their reality.
Millions of LGBT people, many of them just teenagers, are being damaged, wounded, and some are quite literally dying, trying to bear the oppressive heaviness of this assumption of choice that we’ve placed on them. Frankly, I think the Church needs to own this, and do some of the “loving of the least” we hear Jesus calling his people to.
I know this message may anger you or frustrate you, or make you want to dig your heels even more deeply into the assumptions you’ve lived in for so long, but I pray you won’t. I pray you’ll ask some really tough questions about what you’ve believed about sexuality, and what you know about your own experience.
And I hope that you won’t just accept the answers you think you know.
We Christians talk about “speaking the truth in love” an awful lot, and even though you may not believe it, I can only tell you that I share this truth, with all the love I have; for you who are trying earnestly to reconcile a faith that you care so deeply about, balanced with the love I have for the LGBT community, who are trying to live authentically and peacefully alongside you in community—and being injured by you.
They are testifying with their words and their hearts, that they did not ask to be born compelled to love as they do, anymore than you or I did. I think they deserve to be heard and listened to; not preached or shouted at.
One of the easiest and least compassionate things we can do in this life, is to assume that the way we experience the world, is the way that everyone else does, or should.
We need to do better as a people of faith, at seeing gay people (and all people for that matter) as they are, not as we desire them to be. Our faith after all, claims that all people are made in Gods image, not in our own.
Christian, maybe you’re right; maybe love is indeed a choice, but just not in the way you’ve always thought.
In a very real and tangible way, you may need to choose who and how you love.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
The Democrats of Foxworld
I have friends who find this funny because they believe it to be true.
I find that it fails the Jerry Seinfeld test on every point.
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