Bob Costas was right

December 4, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

Let me start by saying I don’t want to take away everyone’s guns. I’ve been target shooting and had a good time. I approve of hunting as long as the hunter uses the animal for more than a trophy.

But the United States has an appallingly high murder rate and it’s because guns are so readily available.

Someone who has had domestic violence charges against him (or her) should not have a loaded gun in the bedside table drawer. Someone who has committed a violent crime of any sort should not have access to a gun.

For someone with anger issues, a gun is just too handy, and Jovan Belcher’s actions followed the classic profile of an abuser. He snapped, killed his girlfriend and then felt so guilty he killed himself.

According to the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, there are 16,800 homicides and 2.2 million (medically treated) injuries due to intimate partner violence each year, and the cost is $37 billion.

According to the Violence Prevention Center, “an analysis of female domestic homicides (a woman murdered by a spouse, intimate acquaintance, or close relative) showed that prior domestic violence in the household made a woman 14.6 times more likely, and having one or more guns in the home made a woman 7.2 times more likely, to be the victim of such a homicide.”

In other words, if abusers didn’t have guns (and federal law prohibits anyone with an order of protection filed against them because of domestic violence to have a gun), the murder rate among women would go down dramatically.

I’m really, really tired of hearing that guns don’t kill people; people do. People with ready access to guns kill some 10,000 people in this country every year. The only countries that rank higher in gun deaths are South Africa, Colombia and Thailand. Even Mexico ranks below us.

The United States leads the world in gun ownership, with 88.8 guns per 100 people, and 34 percent of Americans owning guns. That includes collectors, many of whom own antique guns that no longer work. But it also includes people who think they need an arsenal of guns to battle the United Nations’ black helicopters.

In terms of gun homicide rate (per 100,000 population), only eight nations — Colombia, Guatemala, Paraguay, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Costa Rica, Belarus and Barbados — beat the United States, which registers 2.97 homicide gun deaths per 100,000 people.

Most other developed nations run just a fraction of our per capita gun death rate:
Switzerland (0.56), Canada (0.54), Germany (0.47), Finland (0.43), Ireland (0.32), Denmark (0.26), England (0.12), Australia, Japan, Korea? way, way below us, and Singapore at 0.02 and Hong Kong at 0.01 barely even register.

We need to have a conversation. This is not about Obama coming to take your guns, it’s about making guns a little less available to people who use them to kill other people. It’s not about whether Bob Costas was out of line when he talked about the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide, it’s about starting a serious conversation.

We don’t need assault weapons. We don’t need guns that shoot a hundred shots a minute. We don’t need guns in every home.

Bob Costas was talking truth when he quoted Fox News columnist Jason Whitlock. And since Costas often offers up commentary during football halftime, his words were not inappropriate.

The National Rifle Association has turned the conversation from responsible gun ownership and reasonable regulation to advocacy for a free-for-all that’s just short of anarchy.

It’s time to steer the conversation back to a reasonable course. Remember, the Second Amendment talks about “a well regulated militia,” not about every home having an unregulated cache of assault weapons.

 

One last plea against Amendment One

May 7, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Tomorrow is Primary Day here in North Carolina, and the most important item on the agenda is Amendment One, or The Amendment.

Its supporters tout it as a ban on same-sex marriage, but what it really does is attack families, gay and straight, young and old, adults and children. It takes family benefits away from people who rely on them, including survivor benefits, and worst of all, health care benefits.

Take, for example, my friends Mike and Elizabeth, who have a young daughter. They’re a strong family; they adore each other and their child. Like any other couple, they struggle to make ends meet. But because Elizabeth has a chronic illness that absolutely requires medical care, she and Mike can’t get married; if they do, she loses her health care and likely will die from complications. She wants to work and contribute to the family, but if she does, she loses Medicaid and likely will die from complications of her illness.

Now, to add to the indignities they endure, Mike could lose all rights to his daughter because of the amendment. Mike will have to choose between the life of the woman he loves and the rights to the child he adores.

What kind of society is this that calls itself Christian and pro-family and then proceeds to demolish families?

In another twist, the amendment will take away domestic violence protections for people who are not legally married. A woman wouldn’t be able to get an order of protection against her boyfriend. I guess that’s punishment for not being legally married.

Ohio passed an anti-marriage law that’s less restrictive than North Carolina’s, and it has helped batterers get out of jail because they weren’t legally married when the abuse took place. It has made orders of protection unenforceable.

Because this is an amendment to the state constitution, courts can not overturn it, and they can’t change it. North Carolina courts won’t be able to choose whether to apply the anti-gay constitutional amendment to domestic violence cases.  A constitution, whether federal or state, is supreme law. If a court thinks that there is a conflict, the Constitution controls and the court will limit the reach of laws accordingly.

In other words the amendment would rewrite the Constitution, which would nullify all the state laws protecting victims domestic violence unless they are married legally, potentially undoing all the work that the General Assembly have done to protect domestic violence victims.

Perhaps some who want to vote for the law want to punish people who aren’t married legally because they want their so-called Christian values enforces no matter who gets hurt.

But overall, I think most people just don’t know how many families will be damaged or destroyed by this amendment.

Let’s not kid ourselves, people will die because of this. Some will die because they lose access to health care, some because they lose the protection of domestic violence laws. Do we really want to be responsible for those deaths?

Please, no matter what your views on gay marriage, vote NO on Amendment One. Gay marriage is already illegal in North Carolina; we don’t have to institutionalize it.

Single motherhood is abuse? Really?

April 10, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

The GOP in Wisconsin has introduced a law to classify single parenthood as abuse.

Where are these people coming from?

Before women gained control over their reproductive organs, we were forced to stay in marriages that all to often were unhealthy or downright abusive. We couldn’t find work that paid us enough to live on if we did leave, and men were very adept at not paying child support.

That is not an understatement or a lie; it is true. I knew women who were battered and unable to leave. It’s only been in the last 30 years that public opinion on domestic violence has changed to recognize that it’s not the victim’s fault, at least until these clowns got into positions of power and started turning back the clock on women’s rights.

Once we were able to leave, controlling men hated it. They had no way to keep women as their personal housemaids and sex slaves.

Now they want to regain control by denying us access to contraception and making single parenthood a crime.

Well, it is not a form of abuse.

I was a single mother for several years, and I can tell you it’s hard as hell to be both parents to children, especially when he absent parent (most often, but not always, the father) doesn’t pay his (or her) share of the child-rearing costs.

After work, I picked up the kids, went home and fixed supper as the kids played or watched TV. After supper, it was homework time as I cleaned up. By the time that was done, it was bath time, then bedtime. I never could take them anywhere that cost money because I had none, so we went for picnics or hikes when the weather was good.

My children would have been deprived of Disney World had it not been for their father, who could afford such things. The only reason there was a television in their room was because their father bought it after I asked him not to. They had to suffer through eating home-baked snacks instead of Twinkies or Little Debbie cakes. They had to eat supper at home instead of McDonald’s.

So, were they abused? If you asked them at the time, they probably would have said they were because of the home-baked snacks and my aversion to theme parks, fast food and consumerism.

But they both grew up and moved out and realized I had been right about some things. They both developed a good work ethic and became honest men.

Being the sons of a single mother, they both had to help with household chores. They learned to do laundry and cook, sew on buttons and clean their rooms. They became more resourceful than kids whose mothers did everything for them, and they learned to respect women.

So, why would one want to criminalize single parenthood?

I think it comes down to control. These men who support such laws (and they are overwhelmingly men) don’t want women in control of their own destinies. They don’t want to have to share in the duties of keeping a home and raising a family, they want to be in charge of every aspect of our lives, and God forbid we should produce more strong, Democratic men.

 

 

Please vote against hate

April 9, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

I’d like you to meet my friends Amy and Lisa and their four kids. They work hard to make ends meet and raise these kids. They fuss over what to watch on TV, try to keep the house in order — pretty much everything a straight couple does.

But if The Amendment passes in North Carolina next month, they will never be recognized by the state as a family. If Amy gets sick, Lisa may not be able to have a say in how she is treated.

The Amendment, as it is called on the ballot, would insert discrimination into the state’s constitution.

It also would affect heterosexual couples who have chosen not to marry legally — something several couples I know have chosen to protest discrimination against gays and lesbians. They could lose domestic partner benefits.

What’s even scarier is that it would make domestic violence laws more difficult to enforce, as has happened in Ohio. Women who are battered by their boyfriends are less likely to be able to prosecute under domestic violence laws. They can still file assault charges, but there are fewer protections for them. It is a huge step backwards.

North Carolina already has a law against same-sex marriage, but opponents — who overwhelmingly object on religious grounds — want to make it even harder to repeal the ban.

I believe Amy and Lisa have a right to be married legally and have the same legal benefits and protections I do. Marriage is a legal contract and it should be nothing more than that to the state. To bring religion into it violates the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which supersedes the state’s. It’s none of my business whether a couple is gay or straight; the only marriage I should have any say in is my own.

Early voting begins next Thursday. Before you vote, please consider the harm this amendment would cause to gay and straight couples and their children. It’s morally wrong and it needs to be defeated.