Oops.
That means child support cannot be enforced. That means unwed mothers are now, both legally and morally, the progenitors of bastards who will have no rights. And so on. Divorced couples could find themselves in a wonderful legal quagmire. Way to show those Family Values North Carolina.
All of this led to an historical result. The president of the United States, who may have just flushed his reelection hopes down the crapper, came out in clear support of gay marriage. No political double talk, no reservations, nothing but a clear statement that all people need to be treated like people.
I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
It’s interesting, some of this is also generational. You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same sex equality or, you know, believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.
Which led to Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, issuing this pronouncement “… a child needs a mother and father.”
To which I would point him to “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” – Jesus of Nazereth – Matthew 7:12.
It would seem to me that the Catholic League should be familiar with that little bon mot, but one can never tell these days.
But, just for giggles, let’s check in on the traditional American family. Police in Fort Wayne Indiana have arrested a mommy and a daddy for strapping their kids to the roof of their car and then driving drunk around town.
Last week, two Florida grandparents were accused of using their SUV to tow their granddaughter down the street in her toy car after they had a few drinks.
This week, a dad in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has been arrested after allegedly strapping four young children to the hood of his car after a liquor store stop.
The Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne reports that Aaron Stefanski told police: “I was only going to drive around the corner. I thought they would like it.”
Stefanski, 29, was driving with his 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old and 5-year-old sons, along with Jessica Clark and her 7-year-old daughter, when they stopped at a liquor store on Monday afternoon, according to the Journal Gazette.
The store manager and other bystanders called 911 and reported that Stefanski used a tow strap to tie the children onto the hood of a large white vehicle and then took off down the street. A U.S. marshal heard the dispatch and stopped the car about three blocks from the store. Fort Wayne officers arrived and arrested the driver, according to a police news release.
“With one of those straps you crank on a semi to hold down lumber, they were strapped with that thing, wiggling and wobbling down the street,” witness Tom Nowak old NBC station WISE of Fort Wayne.
Witnesses told WISE that after the car was pulled over, the woman tried to leave.
“Everyone said, ‘No! She watched it all, sat in the passenger seat and let it all happen. Take her too!’ So they called her back and handcuffed her,” Nowak told WISE.
The hubby pointed out that he’d only gotten about 20 feet when he was stopped and arrested as if, somehow, failing to take the kids on the highway while they were strapped to the car earned him bonus points.
Meanwhile, cops in Elizabethtown Pennsylvania, arrested a woman who left her 6 year old daughter and infant son in a running car so she could go tan.
A Pennsylvania woman is accused of leaving her two young children in a car parked with its engine running while she went to a tanning salon, NBC station WGAL reports.
The incident occurred Saturday morning in Elizabethtown, WGAL said. Police said an officer spotted an idling car along a street and found a 6-year-old girl and 10-month-old boy were inside.
“He asked the girl where her parents were at and the young girl said that her mother was across the street at the tanning salon. As he spoke to the young girl, he also observed an infant in a child restraint seat in the rear seat area. The young girl said that she was not to talk to strangers and began to cry. The officer explained that he was not a stranger and that he was there to help,” according to a police news release cited by WGAL.
The officer found the mother, Krista Mann, in the salon and discovered that her license was suspended in connection with DUI, police said.
Mann is charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of children, two counts of leaving an unattended child in a motor vehicle and driving under suspension, DUI-related.
There are so many bad decisions she has made I don’t know where to begin. Personally, I’d start with the fact that she should have made him use a condom and then work my way up from there.
Police in Fridely Minnesota seem to have stepped on God given parental rights when they stopped a loving mother and father from further humiliating their daughter after they had already shaved her head and forced her to wear nothing but a diaper and tank top in public.
Authorities in Fridley, Minnesota have arrested a couple for allegedly making the woman’s 12-year-old daughter shave her head and run up and down the street in a diaper as punishment for poor grades, the Associated Press reports.
Stephanie Ann Broten, 38, and her partner Darnell Alan Landrum, 34, were arrested Monday night on suspicion of gross-misdemeanor malicious punishment of a child after police were called to their residence and saw a horrific scene unfolding.
Reports state that around 50 people, including dozens of teenage and young adult men, were crowded along the street watching the girl do wind sprints in nothing more than a diaper and tank top, according to the criminal complaint. Officers said the girl’s head was completely shaved and she had likely been out in public for 30 minutes before police arrived, WCCO reports.
Fridley Police Lt. Mike Monsrud told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that when officers found the girl, she was “crying and hysterical.”
“[Broten and Landrum] told her if she didn’t [earn good grades], they would shave her head and put her on ‘diaper duty,’ which I guess meant running up and down the street and cleaning up trash as a form of public humiliation,” Monsrud told the Pioneer Press. “Through the whole contact, and even on the way to jail, both were laughing and thinking it was ridiculous police would get involved in what they said was their parental decision.”
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the girl had received an ‘F’ on her last report card and her mother thought the humiliating sprints were proper punishment.
The girl and three younger children living at Broten’s apartment have all been placed in foster care, according to the paper.
The couple made their first court appearance Wednesday, and Broten was released on bail on the condition that she not try to contact her daughter. A small bail was set for Landrum, who has minor criminal history.
According to WCCO, Broten and Landrum each face up to a year in jail and a $3,000 fine if they are convicted on the charges.
Encouraging your children to get good grades is an excellent parenting choice. The rest, not so much so. On January 5th of this year I wrote about another shining example of parental excellence, Sarah Burge. This is what I had to say then; “Let us not forget the self proclaimed Barbie mom, Sarah Burge, who just bought her 7 year old daughter a gift certificate for liposuction. She also got her a gift certificate for breast augmentation. She is doing this so her daughter can always feel good about herself. Well, that’s her claim. In reality she’s doing this because she’s an ignorant, shallow, moron who believes that beauty is the sole source of self worth.
The good news is that she’s too stupid to home school her kid so there’s still hope.”
Well, joy of joys, she’s back in the news.
“People in the UK just don’t seem to get me,” self-confessed plastic surgery addict and “Human Barbie” Sarah Burge of Cambridgeshire, England, said Wednesday.
The 51-year-old mother of three has made headlines by spending more than $800,000 getting herself surgically enhanced — and for encouraging her young daughter to go under the knife as well.
“I really do wish the media would concentrate more on my professional side rather than this absolute baloney that they’re dishing out continuously,” Burge told Ann Curry on TODAY.
Charity work
In addition to being a mom, Burge is a self-styled author, model, businesswoman, aesthetic medicine consultant, TV star and international public figure. “I actually help thousands of people every year with the correct path to plastic surgery through accident, disease and disfigurement. Most of them are from America because they don’t have a NHS system [Britain’s publicly funded health system] out here, and I put them to the right surgeon for the job,” Burge said.Burge’s charity “Don’t Mess With Me” is committed to ending domestic violence, of which she has been a victim. In her memoir “The Half a Million Pound Girl,” she maintains that experience motivated her to undergo plastic surgery; she first received reconstructive surgery after she was violently assaulted.
Burge became emotional as she discussed her charity work with Curry. “I have e-mails from people who are desperately, desperately saddened by gunshot wounds … I help these people, and I’m shocked that the media want to portray me in such a negative light when all I do is help millions of people.”
‘Poppy the Diva’
Burge is in the U.S. so that her 8-year-old daughter, Poppy, can compete in beauty pageants. According to reports, Burge has condoned Botox for her teenage daughters, hosted a pageant party for Poppy’s 8th birthday that included spray tans, hair extensions and manicures, and has given Poppy vouchers for breast enhancements and liposuction.“It’s actually a tax-free gift that she can cash in at the age of 18 years old and take herself off to become the professional she wants to be,” Burge said of the vouchers. “Poppy actually wants to be a plastic surgeon when she’d older, and I think the media is getting all hyped up over this sensationalism, which is coming from the brutal press in England.”
Poppy has a page on Burge’s website called “Poppy the Diva” where Poppy says she’s the “youngest girl in the world representing the youth of today on stage, screen and all print media for all things fun and girly.” She also writes, “From pink limousines to my pink pamper party bus, I know how to do it in style.”
Burge says she shouldn’t be criticized for encouraging her daughter to take the “Toddlers and Tiaras” route because she wants to take pageantry back to its traditional roots. Burge defended pageantry, saying it’s “not particularly about beauty. It’s about grace, it’s about poise and it’s also about raising money for charity as well.”
Please don’t limit yourself so Ms. Burge. People all over the world don’t get you, it’s not just England. In fact, if I may be so bold, I can assure you that many people think you’re a self absorbed piece of excrement using a noble cause – helping victims of traumatic incidents regain their self esteem – as an excuse for your narcissistic mutilations.
Oh, and as for your kid, we’ll all be lucky if the little brat isn’t the next Jack the Ripper.
I ask again, how are any of the above superior to two people who love each other and want to raise a family?
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.