I live a “heterosexual lifestyle”.  I dated and then married a man.  I gave him two children, a happy home, and homecooked meals every night.  The fact that I am heterosexual is present in my life, every day.  While I may not be fully aware of this fact, it colors how people relate to me and how I am percieved in society.

Fortunately for me, the average person has no innate bias against twenty-something young married mothers.  When I am in the grocery store, I am met with smiles.  People I have never met before (and may never see again) want to talk to my kids and pat them on the head.  My heterosexual lifestyle is a good one.

There are other sides of me, other “lifestyles” I’ve lived, that have had less fortunate consequences.  When I was sixteen I went on a bit of a terror, I dyed my hair vampire red, painted my nails black and borrowed my brother’s t-shirts.  I became one of those “creepy goth kids”.  The greater misfortune was that this personal transformation of mine happened in concert with such events as the Columbine school shootings.  It is rather unfortunate that a teenager who molds their physical attributes to reflect the internal isolation they feel is, in turn, isolated because of their physical appearance.  My friends that knew me well rolled their eyes and bore with me.  Strangers were terrified of me.

A few years later my “goth” look softened to a more all-around punk-rock fiesta, I had pink and blue hair and sometimes simultaneously pink-and-blue hair.  I patched my jeans with safety pins and bought my clothes solely at goodwill.  I wore beat-to-the-bone keds sneakers and carried my bible on my back in a hemp backpack that smelled faintly unpleasant.  My personal heroes were people like Jay Bakker, tattooed punk Christians that didn’t mind getting their hands dirty.

I, myself, was a tattooed punk Christian.  One could crassly call this a new “lifestyle” of mine, but I think that’s unfair.  I think that the “lifestyle” tag, when applied to any aspect of someone, is cruel.  Either someone is a certain way, as in I am a tattooed punk rock Christian, or they show behaviors, as in she goes to rock shows in bars and hangs out in tattoo parlors.  Neither of those things are a “lifestyle” either they are who I am or they are what I do.  Don’t underplay their value by making it sound as if it’s merely something I tried on at a certain time in my life.

After all- the fact that I have pink streaks in my hair or a ten inch long tattoo on my back (MISERICORDIA, the latin word for mercy) is not only an aspect of my appearance, it affects how people on the street percieve and relate to me.  It tells you something about who I am, if you care to listen.  And the fact that I married a man, have his children, live with him, have chosen to sacrifice personal goals in order to be a housewife- these things aren’t just a “lifestyle”, they are who I am.  They tell you a story about me and my priorities, my needs and my ability to love.

Now- think about the people we marginalize with labels.  We call someone an emo punk or goth, and we forget to think about who they are beyond what the label encapsulates.  We call someone a sinner, or lost.  We forget to think about every aspect of their life that moves beyond how we percieve their spirituality.  We refer to the homosexual “lifestyle” as if homosexuals somehow do not have relationships of value, need and sacrifice.  We talk about sexuality in terms of good or bad, forgetting the way it colors our lives.

We judge off of taste, appearance, short glimpses that do little to address entire realities.  Humanity comes in a myriad of shapes, colors, sexualities, needs, occupations, backgrounds, ethnicities, abilities and desires.  None of them fit neatly in labeled spaces.  Instead they jumble up against each other frantically, like a basketful of kittens each fighting for the superior spot where they can be seen and touched.

This week, forget labels.  Forget simplicity.  Talk to the kid with eyes lined in charcoal long enough to define them beyond your assumptions.  You may be surprised at what you find there.

Apparently a great deal of my readers are avidly pro-life, which comes as no surprise to me.

So on my last post I received a lot of comments reading, simply put: Abortion is murder.

Let’s imagine that tomorrow Abortion becomes illegal. What, then, would be the penalty to the doctor who performs the abortion and the mother who requests one? Shall they be given a life sentence? A manslaughter charge of ten years? Negligent homicide (which hardly seems appropriate, as it’s not negligence), a misdemeanor charge? If it is truly murder, a mere fine seems insufficient.

What do you think?

I am stranded somewhere between being pro-choice and pro-life. This is a tenuous position to be in, but there I am.

I had two unplanned pregnancies that ended in the light of my life and the breath in my prayers being born. The first pregnancy showed my husband being laid off from his job a little bit in, us having to scramble to find somewhere to live and some way to support ourselves. I won’t go into extreme detail as this is not a personal blog, but suffice it to say that we were strapped for cash, living hand to mouth, and bad off. Very bad off. The second pregnancy we were still in a transitory position when it came to housing. The husband was again without consistent work. Things were still hand to mouth (and still are). So when I see a statistic that says that over 90% of women who had abortions ascribed failure to provide for a child/pay for a pregnancy as their primary reason to abort, I sympathize.

It is terrifying to bring a child into this world, even more so when one asks “where is my next meal coming from” and “how much are diapers again?” Now add into that the physical and emotional rigors of childbearing, instability in intimate relationships- and what do you have? A cocktail for disaster. Any time I am asked I will be frank about the physical symptoms of pregnancy, the strain it puts on the father of the child as well as the mother, the fact that labor and delivery while not the end of the world are not easy. There is an insurmountable psychological impact to pregnancy and childbirth that MUST be observed.

That is why any time I hear someone say, “why can’t the woman just put the baby up for adoption” I cringe. Not to mention that women who are not Caucasian will have a harder time getting parents for their child, and women who have done drugs or drank alcohol before they were aware they were pregnant will also have a harder time finding a family for their child. Ask a poor black woman with no intimate family to afford her who innocently drank alcohol a few times before realizing she was pregnant to just “have the baby and give it up.” Have it? With whom footing the bills? And to whom shall she give it? The overburdened foster system? What if the baby has permanent defects from the alcohol? She’s got no way to know.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son my first thought was, “dear God just undo this.” I was in no emotional or economic shape to give birth to and take care of a child. I had no way to know if we’d have insurance to pay for my care, and we were still in the process of paying off our uninsured delivery of our first child. Have another baby? In my state? With the state of jobs in our area? With no home to live in? With no money to buy healthy food to eat?

There was no way that I would abort. I knew from the second I suspected a pregnancy that I loved this child- but part of the reason I DIDN’T want my child was my love for him. I didn’t want him brought into the kind of life we were struggling through.

And that is why I am pro-choice. Because unless YOU, YOU YOURSELF are willing to take a woman’s child into your own home and raise it yourself, you’ve no right to make that decision for her. Is the unborn child a real life, imbued with soul and breath? That is another thing to be argued about. But consider embryos that implant into a woman’s fallopian tubes. Those are aborted without a second thought, because there is no hope of them being viable. If the woman carries them past the first trimester she will die of internal bleeding. What about the amount of miscarriages that happen? Were all of those sacred life? And if so, why would God allow a God-fearing couple who desperately wants that child to endure such pain?

These are questions we MUST ask ourselves if we enter into the abortion debate. But the greatest question of all we must ask is whom shall we love? The unborn, or the struggling mother? Whom must we embrace? The unreachable, or she who stands outside our door? Whom must we pray for in whispers and moans? Those who are with Father God, or those who must remain on this planet, within our reach?

Ask yourself that. And ask yourself if you were with her, at her side, holding her hand, wiping her tears, and she simply could not bear the thought of bringing her child into this world of pain and distress- would you still judge?

Or would you land with me, somewhere in the gray land between choice and life, choosing to embrace the life that we can see and touch and bear with.

Labels make my head hurt, and thus I rarely use them on myself.  But I realize that it can at times be confusing for people reading my blog to get a clear read on who I am.  There are times where people state feeling confused by what appear to be contradictory views, or times when an assumption is made that I clearly am (A) when in truth I’m closer to (B).

So I will try to clear the waters.  Perhaps I’ll only muddle them.

In any case, I’ll try to be clear.

I am an Anabaptist Christian.  My parents were Mennonite, my grandparents a mixture of Mennonite and Amish and my family tree, tracing back, goes straight to the Anabaptist Reformation.  I am proud and jealous of my heritage and wouldn’t have anyone take it from me.  It does still apply to who I am- not just in doctrinal beliefs but in lifestyle.  While I as a person don’t dress the way conservative Mennonite women do, I still home cook meals, I stay at home with my kids, I keep a tidy house and my husband and I live very small and simply.  This is who I am.

I am politically Liberal, which may seem like a contradiction to the above.  Is it, really?  I don’t think so.  While I would caution Christians to live a lifestyle of holiness and righteousness (because of who I am religiously) I also believe that Freedom is the greatest gift of America, and I jealously guard that as well.  We are all afforded civil rights, and the government becoming overly involved in legislating personal behaviors is a dangerous and horrifying prospect.  I believe that women should be afforded choice, that gay people should be able to marry, and that industry should be regulated. Why do I believe these things?  Because while I may have a personal theology and morality that dictates my life and my choice, not everyone shares it, and those who don’t believe as I do should still be given autonomy so long as no one is hurt.  Laws are about protection and preservation- not morality.

I also believe that without the commons (those things that belong to everyone- police, fire departments, roads, security) society falls apart.  The taxes we pay are what make this great country possible.  I think that government has failed us, by and large, by not maintaining that which needs to be maintained and harboring false priorities.  Which is why I’m an independent voter- because neither party has been fully responsible or taken responsibility for their failings.  Both parties are guilty of back room politics and finger pointing and trying to shift blame, and neither can win my full affection.

So that is that.

Today I was listening to the radio when an odd guest came on- the leader of the KKK.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to hear most of the interview because it was lunchtime, and thus I was distracted with the kids and getting food on the table and making the day continue to run smoothly.

Yet, as in all times when my body is involved in routine movements, my mind disengaged enough that I started down this line of thought.  I thought, first, of a few days ago when in a conversation with my father he mentioned that the welfare system has “destroyed black society”, a statement which seemed so empirical as to give me no reply.  I don’t like entering into a debate in which I feel crippled by my own lack of information, so at the time I said nothing.

But my irritation with the statement hasn’t faded over time.  For one, the statement seems incomplete.  He meant “black society in America” and it’s obvious given the context in which it was made, but even so…  I think that people too often assume that the whole of the “black experience” (another phrase I find irritating) hinges on the black experience in America. That and they too often say “black society” when they truly mean the inner city- two things that are wildly different.  Not all black people live in the inner city and not everyone in the inner city is black.  So let’s please keep those things separate.

That isn’t the whole of my irritation.  The implications as well as the overall lack of information they portray is what truly gets to me.  So lets, just for “fun” (by “fun” I mean sorrow inducing meditation, but whatever…) go over the history of the “black experience” in America.  First, black people are brought over on slave ships to be exposed to conditions worse than what we put cattle through.  They are worked to the bone, beaten and raped, subjugated, barred from learning basic skills, starved, and have I mentioned the beatings and raped?  Women would stand up to defend a stray dog being stoned in the street, but not a black man.

When the obvious injustice of this treatment was recognized and black people were given personhood- and note, by personhood I literally mean being identified as people- what were they given to correct this injustice?  These people, battered and beaten, barred from ever having so much as learned to write their names, were given a donkey, some papers and some land.  How were they expected to start to mete out a living?  And do you think their neighbors, the people who had been beating and raping them a year previous, would give them a pittance of help?  Do you imagine they were given years of free tutelage, invited over for dinners, loaned seed crop?  Perhaps some of them were, but for the most part I am not surprised by the fact that they banded together in shared misery and poverty, desperately trying to make the most of their meager circumstances.  At least they had their freedom.

But look at their situation honestly- these black communities are desperate and impoverished.  They have little more than the clothes on their backs.  They are surrounded by white people who have inherited wealth and circumstance.  Even the poor bakers and blacksmiths have inherited their trade- they have something to build wealth on.  Black people have a mule and the derision of the white people who still, at that point, felt that something had been stolen from them.

That divide has yet to be closed.  I refuse to believe it.  One can say that the white people in America built what they had from nothing- but those people came into the states with their health, their determination, their personhoood, their education- whereas the blacks were starting at less than zero.  It is incredible that they were given as much as they were, considering the bitterness on the part of the south, but even so…

Can anyone say that it was enough- not enough to assuage our own guilt, but enough to birth equity?  I don’t think so.

Do you?

“So the church and state are separate… next thing you know they’ll be outlawing religion entirely.”

“So women want to vote… next thing you know they’ll have caucuses of crying babies.”

“So black people want civil rights… next thing you know we’ll be giving them to cattle.”

And on, and on, until, “so gay people want to get married. Next thing you know they’ll be marrying dogs.”

The sick and twisted irony of all of this is that the first one- outlawing religion- is one that is still felt oh so many years later. So I don’t doubt that when gay marriage inevitably is allowed, people will continue to fear that there will be framed marriage certificates reading “John Smith” is wed to “Fuzzy”- and it won’t be in an ironic sense.

There is a difference between redefining law and abolishing it completely. Saying that marriage can occur between two consenting adults of legal status instead of between any male and female of legal status is not the same as saying, “marriage is open! Call in the sheep! Anything goes!” Just as separating the church and state didn’t lead to the abolishment of Catholicism outright and women being able to vote doesn’t mean that ANYONE can and black people having equal rights doesn’t mean that dogs do, too.

I understand. It is uncomfortable thinking of law as fluid rather than rigid. The second we realize that law is fluid we start to feel the ground under our feet move. But we also have to understand that it is we as a society who define the land over which law flows. We, as a people, govern our nation. Remember that. So it is we as a people who can say, “okay, Jack and John but not John and Fido.”

And OUR word is law.

For people who believe that we as a society are evil I suppose that’s a scary thought. I, personally, don’t believe that I live in an evil society. Certainly there are problems and certainly there are times when I want to put a pillow over my head and sing myself to sleep, but ultimately I believe that given correct information, comfort, and enough time, all people are capable of doing the right thing. In this case I suppose I have a difference of opinion from a lot of Christians, because I believe the right thing is allowing people to be “affirmed” in their “sin”- but sin is a choice that we all can and do make, to varying impacts, every day. At least sin committed out of love has got one thing right: Love.

Just keep in mind that there is an insurmountable difference between two consenting adults who love each other wishing to be joined in a legally recognized and protected union, and having sexual relations with a beast. There is a difference, a huge difference. The difference is that any sane person can see that regardless of sex, affection between two humans is affection that can be returned in equal parts. Sex, as a result of affection, is not so different regardless of the genders engaging in it. And I do believe that most homosexuals do feel affection for their long-term partners. Sex with animals, on the other hand, is all about lust and control.

Homosexuality is NOT about lust and control.

If you, dear reader, disagree with me on that point I suppose there is no reason to continue the discussion. Just please, talk to a few gay people. Ask them about their hopes and dreams and expectations of life. Ask them the qualities they seek in a partner. See that aside from the gender issue, they aren’t so different from you and I.

Every time gay marriage is mentioned, someone eventually says something along the lines of:

“But think about the children!”

The nuclear family is eroding, family values are plummeting, one can only imagine how the next generation will turn out…

My inevitable response is, “yes, DO think of the children.”

Given the state of affairs in America, shouldn’t every single child that could have a loving family be placed with one? Shouldn’t gay people who want to be parents have that chance? What is better: that a child have no home, or two fathers? Personally, I believe that every family is flawed. Every parent has problems, every relationship has strain. It is impossible to raise a child in an environment where they will be exposed to no pain, no criticism by peers, no sin. There are going to be straight parents who fight and divorce, kids with two sets of parents, kids raised by people who are “less than seemly” to say it simply. Given that fact, I personally would say that anyone who loves a child and wants to raise it should be given the chance, assuming that there is no abuse or potential for deep harm.

I just don’t think that someone being gay is enough harm. What if the parent was straight, but a serial cheater? What if the parent was straight and left the mother of the child for a younger, sluttier model? Is modeling that behavior somehow WORSE than homosexuality?

So I say, please, DO think of the children. And ask yourself if the worst thing a parent does is love another person of the same gender, does that somehow disqualify them from parenthood? What if they love their kids, hold them when they can’t sleep at night, make them homecooked meals, send brownies to the teachers, do their homework with them, hem their pants, and also hold hands with another man? Does the last item make all of the others mean less?

I don’t think it does.

I feel really conflicted about abstinence only sex education.  I feel like young people, especially girls, should be educated about how best to protect their bodies and prevent unwanted pregnancy.  But I also realize the risks involved with sex and the fact that the only guarantee you won’t have a little seven pound “mistake” nine months later is abstinence.  After all- I myself conceived one child while on the pill and another through a diaphragm.  Those little nagging “.01″ percents do exist!

The biggest reason I dislike abstinence only education is that it does a disservice to all of the people out there who chose to abstain out of more than fear.  I believe that teaching abstinence is best is a good thing, but to cheapen sex itself and to make a mockery out of the choices kids should make is a bad thing.  By making it about fear, fear of pregnancy, fear of disease, misinformation in the name of safety… that’s just wrong. Kids shouldn’t make choices out of fear, and I truly believe that given all the right information in a supportive environment, most kids actually do have the ability to make good choices.

There are better reasons to wait to have sex than just fear.  For one, there’s the fact that there is a very clear line between virginity and sexuality.  Once sexuality is awoken, one can’t go back and see the world through virgin eyes.  I won’t go all Victorian on you and talk about the knowledge of the flesh, but there is a clear difference.  I can remember what it was like, to wonder about sex, to wonder about touching, to wonder how certain things would feel, what it would be like to be desired, all of those things.  Now that wonder is gone, and while I don’t miss it, I do think that I made the right choice by waiting for my husband.  There’s also the fact that since I did make the choice I did, I have no memory of being with someone else. My sexuality, in a very real way, belongs to my spouse.  He is the only man to see my adult body totally nude.  He is the only one who knows where to touch and what to say.  Our marriage bed is truly secret.

I don’t feel naive or somehow deprived, when I say that.  I feel proud.  I feel like I have managed something really miraculous, in preserving some of the old ways in my own life.  There is this feeling of sacredness and divinity that is so lost in our culture, in our world, and to be able to keep even a touch of it alive is so worthwhile.

To have sex with someone is to grant them access to your body.  That is not something that should ever be done lightly.  To have sex with someone is also to bond to them, in a way, because the body will form an appetite in a very real way.  Hormones play a game of catch and release, and once your body learns to desire it won’t stop doing so.  In a marriage it’s a good thing, because sexual appetite can keep two people together through the times when anger and obligation blind them to their love- but outside of a marriage it becomes testier.  What happens when you break up, but your body keeps craving?  Do you throw yourself into another relationship just to have sex?  Learn to settle for something less than, just to not crave?

Wait for what is best, my mother would say, don’t just settle for what you can reach.

I agree.

It looks like everyone in the blogosphere is talking about Obama’s speech from yesterday. I’ve already done the same elsewhere (link includes full transcript), so I really don’t want to repeat myself here except to say language is power, and by that measure Obama is far more powerful than people credit him.

I do want to talk about race. See, I’m white. I’m not just “Caucasian”, I’m WHITE. The vast majority of my heritage is dutch, and it shows in my pale-as-a-baby’s-bottom skin, the blond hair and blue eyes, the “wholesome beauty” of my features which will never be described as striking. I’m the daughter of a Pastor and a woman whose parents started out as Amish, so I also come from white middle-America Evangelical conservative stock. We didn’t watch the evening news. We listened to Rush Limbaugh.

I also have black cousins. Their mother married a black man in a time when that sort of thing was still rare and rather taboo. I can’t describe the oddness of going to family reunions where a good half of the people were Amish, most of the rest were conservative Mennonite, and here’s me in my punk rock jeans sitting off to the side with my black cousins. People who think that race doesn’t matter or is no longer important are people who were raised in a part of the country where race doesn’t matter. People out in the boondocks see that it does, and how do they see it? Because out here you NOTICE when someone is black. If a black man in a wifebeater with jeans around his ass walks by me, I’m shocked.

I’m shocked, and I’m always worried that my momentary startlement will be interpreted as racism.

I’ve heard lines like, “black people aren’t willing to work,” and “black people are still too full of self-pity to move forward”, and “black people are all full up with anger” from the mouths of men I wouldn’t have thought capable of racism. I’ve heard gentle, loving women say things like, “when I see a black man I cross the street, I don’t know why, I just get afraid”. So there is still this lingering issue of race. That, and there’s fear. As we lose more and more jobs and we see more and more black people and Mexicans walking around our little town, people start to wonder if they’ve got the jobs and the rest of us don’t.

I get angry when people say, “racism is outmoded” or “racism doesn’t matter anymore.” How can you say that? As long as it exists, it matters, and it STILL EXISTS. There are still parts of this country where people see black men standing on a corner and they tell their kids to lock the car doors as they drive by. It matters; it matters and it is still very real.

I have heard more than one man say that if Barack Obama becomes the President, he won’t live to run for a second term.

Oh, yes, it matters.

I found a lovely bit of wisdom on the TV a while back.  It was the show House, M.D., and one character said to another, “the people who hate boxes are generally the ones who can’t fit in one.”  Or something like that.  I smirked when I first heard it because I thought it was painfully simplistic.  And it was (painfully simplistic, that is) but also true.

I hate boxes.  I also find that I have a hard time fitting into them.  I was born and raised in a fairly conservative tradition.  I’ve got extended family that’s Amish.  That also didn’t stop me from getting a huge tattoo across my back and dying my hair pink on my eighteenth birthday.  (The tattoo reads “misericordia”, which is the Latin word for mercy, and should make perfect sense to anyone who reads this blog regularly.)  I’ve left some of my conservative roots but certainly not all of them.  I’ve kissed less people out of passion than I could count on four fifths of my right hand.  My husband is the only man with whom I’ve ever been intimate.  I’m twenty-five, a stay-at-home-mom, I breastfed both kids and started them out in cloth diapers.

Yet…  I’m a raging feminist, and would never expect or even ask another woman to make the same choices as me.

I personally believe that all life is sacred, and I would rather be beaten than get an abortion- if my government required one after two pregnancies I’d become an expatriate.  Yet, I believe that freedom of choice is God given, and I would rather conservative politicians do what they can to make abortion legal, safe, rare, and a last instead of first option for the impoverished, than that it be made illegal.  So what am I, conservative or liberal?

I believe that the point of government is to protect and sustain above all else.  I don’t believe it’s the government’s job to force people to live holy lives or to protect people from themselves- only to protect them from undue interference from others.

I believe that we should treat others the way we want to be treated, and when I hear about things like the abuse of prisoners I think of the Americans who are oversees, and how horrid it would be if the same thing happened to them.

While my personal heritage condemns homosexuality, I believe that any two people who choose to combine lives and possessions should be afforded the legal protections that make such a commitment feasible.  Life is hard enough, we should all be afforded comforts where possible.  True, holy, marriage isn’t guaranteed by a certificate, but that certificate is important because of what it represents- security.

All citizens should have equal rights to be secure.

So what am I?  Conservative, liberal, confused?  There are times that I myself don’t know.  Socially I’m not necessarily conservative, fiscally I’m more conservative than either party seems to be and I believe I favor a conservative foreign policy, although some liberals would tell me that by the dictionary definition of “conservative” a “liberal” foreign policy is more conservative than the “conservative” one.

God help me, it all starts to give me a headache after a while.

When looking towards the election, I actually take the time to read all of the candidate’s policy points and check them against their voting records.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seem like they are both fairly good matches, and John McCain might be as well if he hadn’t become such a war hawk in his old age.  This leaves me triply befuddled, because when you listen to them speak, they don’t sound equally matched, and they all proscribe to different agendas.

Life would be easier if we all really did fit into carefully labeled boxes.