I'm Sorry - Baltimore is all my fault

[dbackjon]

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/texas-g ... marriages/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

“You look at what’s going on in Baltimore today, you know, you see issues that are raised there,” the congressman continued. “And healthy marriages are the ones between a man and a woman because they can have a healthy family and they can raise children in the way that’s best for their future, not only socially but psychologically, economically, from a health perspective.”

“There’s just nothing like traditional marriage that does that.”

[GannonFan]

Well, after you get through the gobbly-gook, the guy is right, though. If there was a proper family structure (and the part he gets wrong is that it has to be a man and a woman - a single parent can do it, but two adult parents would be better) where the parents really made it a point to be engaged and present in the upbringing of their kids, if they really valued education and did their part at home to sell that viewpoint and to foster it, and if they did the things necessary to make their lives as good as possible (i.e. if there aren't jobs to be had in Baltimore, maybe move to where the jobs are - staying in a city where there are no jobs and complaining there are no jobs is pretty useless), then we would've solved the vast majority of the issues. Kids need families and the families need to be striving to improve their lives. No family and no striving equals no progress.

[dbackjon]

Well, after you get through the gobbly-gook, the guy is right, though. If there was a proper family structure (and the part he gets wrong is that it has to be a man and a woman - a single parent can do it, but two adult parents would be better) where the parents really made it a point to be engaged and present in the upbringing of their kids, if they really valued education and did their part at home to sell that viewpoint and to foster it, and if they did the things necessary to make their lives as good as possible (i.e. if there aren't jobs to be had in Baltimore, maybe move to where the jobs are - staying in a city where there are no jobs and complaining there are no jobs is pretty useless), then we would've solved the vast majority of the issues. Kids need families and the families need to be striving to improve their lives. No family and no striving equals no progress.

This is true - he is partially right, but his hatred of gays blinds him to reality. He would be more on point if he complained about divorce, lack of birth control/family planning, etc.


As for moving, it is hard to uproot when you have no money in the first place.

[GannonFan]

Well, after you get through the gobbly-gook, the guy is right, though. If there was a proper family structure (and the part he gets wrong is that it has to be a man and a woman - a single parent can do it, but two adult parents would be better) where the parents really made it a point to be engaged and present in the upbringing of their kids, if they really valued education and did their part at home to sell that viewpoint and to foster it, and if they did the things necessary to make their lives as good as possible (i.e. if there aren't jobs to be had in Baltimore, maybe move to where the jobs are - staying in a city where there are no jobs and complaining there are no jobs is pretty useless), then we would've solved the vast majority of the issues. Kids need families and the families need to be striving to improve their lives. No family and no striving equals no progress.

This is true - he is partially right, but his hatred of gays blinds him to reality. He would be more on point if he complained about divorce, lack of birth control/family planning, etc.


As for moving, it is hard to uproot when you have no money in the first place.

Divorce wouldn't matter if you had parents who were really invested in their kids success and did what they had to to ensure that. I have plenty of divorced friends who are rasing very academically successful kids. Both parents are involved in their kids lives in meaningful and supportive ways. That's what counts.

Birth control and family planning are red herrings to the whole problem. There are plenty of people who plan to have kids, have them, and then fail to care about their upbringing. The root of the problem is people not caring about (or not knowing how to care about) the upbringing of their children.

As for moving, poor people move and relocate all the time. You follow the jobs. There's assistance to help in this as well and really, if they don't have anything, what's to uproot? Sitting around waiting for jobs to find you is a very poor way of conducting a job search. I was just listening to NPR today and they had some demographic guy come on and say how, back during the war (yes, he went back 75 years or so) there were plenty of manufacturing jobs in Baltimore, and Bethlehem Steel was one of the biggest. Well, the US has been getting out of the steel manufactuing business for almost much of the past 75 years, that's plenty of time for people to realize there aren't jobs there and to go someplace else.

[JohnStOnge]

as courts throughout the nation continued to rule that LGBT people should have equal marriage rights.

There's implication of that false premise again. Well, first of all, having your relationship recognized by others as a "marriage" is not legitimately a right. You have no legitimate right to compel others to recognize your relationship as having any particular status.

But beyond that, everybody in this country has been treated equally with respect to marriage for decades. Any person can, if they get a member of the opposite sex to go into it with them, have a relationship with a member of the opposite sex recognized as a "marriage." Nobody is excluded from being able to do the same thing everybody else can do anywhere in this country nor has anyone been so excluded for a long time.