A "TRADITIONAL" Blog....

I had posted this blog over on MySpace recently, and figured it would work out here, too.

- ENJOY -

So, an Iowa judge declares the state’s “Defense of Marriage Act” to be unconstitutional. Well, duh! Of course it is… Anytime you make any kind of a law saying that this group or that group can’t do this or that action that all these other people can do – it’s discrimination…
But what floors Me is the comment by Republican (and Presidential hopeful) John McCain about it. McCain said "a loss for the traditional family."

"I have always supported the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman," he said. "The ruling of the court only reinforces my belief that we must have a president who is committed to appointing strict constructionists to the bench."

Hmm… how “traditional” is the “traditional” family of today…? We’ve got single parents, working mothers, stay-at-home dads… We’ve got nannies and nursemaids…. Aunt Jane and Uncle Jim…. Grandma and Grandpa taking care of the kids…. We’ve got child care… We’ve got dependent grandparents and other family members living there…

Of course, we then don’t even have to consider what divorce and remarriage has done to the “traditional family” over the years, either… We’ve got Rudy Giuliani and his multiple divorces and his kids that don’t support his current career choice (he is campaigning for the job of President, you know)… We’ve got other Republicans (and Democrats, too) that have multiple marriages under their belts and multiple divorces… Hell, look at Fred Thompson and his former marriages and love life… Even the “exalted” Ronald Reagan had a divorce and remarriage…

And does ANYBODY in the Republican Party or the conservative right wing of the “GOP” remember a little TV show or two from the 60s and 70s…? Shows like “The Brady Bunch” and “The Partridge Family” and even “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and more… How did THOSE shows, which were quite harmless, show the “traditional family” to be…?

Let’s see… On “The Brady Bunch”, we have two people – a man with 3 sons and a woman with 3 daughters – meet and fall in love and get married – creating the ULTIMATE “nuclear family”… They lived in a semi-typical suburban house in a typical suburban area of America… They had the typical station wagon… They had a live-in maid – well, Alice was more of a housekeeper – and the kids had typical school dilemmas…

Then we have “The Partridge Family” – all about a woman with 5 kids that, in an effort to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs, finds a way to nurture their musical talents and become a traveling group, driving around the country in a multi-color converted school bus…

Even later, we had all sorts of “traditional families” on TV – from “Who’s The Boss” and more….

But the question truly becomes this – WHAT DEFINES A TRADTIONAL FAMILY?

Truly, what is that magical ingredient; that spark that defines what a TRADITIONAL FAMILY is all about….? Is the traditional family the Cleavers (from “Leave it to Beaver”) in which mom stays home and takes care of the kids and the house while dad goes out and earns the bucks? Is it the Stevens family from “Bewitched”…? Or is it the Nelson family from “Ozzie & Harriet”…? Or maybe it’s the childless married couple from “The Honeymooners”.

Is the TRADITIONAL FAMILY the Bundy clan from “Married, With Children” or how about Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie from “The Simpsons”…? Maybe it’s the Cunningham family from “Happy Days”….

Again, who or what makes a TRADITIONAL FAMILY…?

Even further, what makes or defines the concept of “Traditional Marriage” – which is what their argument should be about….? Is it, as McCain is quoted above as “one man and one woman”…? Well, that may not be entirely true and right, either… Look back in time – go ahead, I can wait….

But truly, look back in time – look to history – and see if you can find what a TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE or a TRADITIONAL FAMILY is all about….

Look to the rulers of other countries…, to the Kings and Queens of England, France, Germany, Spain and more. Look to the former royal families of what we now know as Hawaii. Look at those “marriages” and see if you can call them “TRADITIONAL”. Many of them had lovers and concubines and even other spouses besides the one that they were “married” to.

And even look back in time to the “common” people of those ages. Do some research and see how far back the concepts of “Marriage” actually go. Up until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, “Marriage” was pretty much limited STRICTLY to the rich and the royals… The “commoner” was not allowed to marry. It was a way to consolidate power and property within families.

And that’s even another thing to consider about “TRADITIONAL FAMILIES” and “TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE”… Many of those marriages were between members of the same family – of the same bloodline or lineage. Cousins married cousins. Uncles married nieces. Nephews were wed to aunts. It was all considered normal and “traditional” for even brothers and sisters to marry – in order to keep the bloodlines pure and not allow property and power to escape the hold of the few over the many.

The Republicans can’t have it both ways – and neither can the religious right conservative “Neo-cons”… You can’t consider a “Traditional Family” as only their definition. Because you can then go back before the “point” that they choose as the “basis” for their definition to prove it wrong. And you can prove, time and time again, how the concept of “Tradition” has changed over and over again as time has moved forward. What was “tradition” for the founding fathers of the USA has changed over the past 200-plus years. Slavery used to be a “tradition”… Lighting by candles and heating by wood fires used to be “tradition”. There are many things that have changed over the years, decades and centuries that have changed so-called “tradition”. The advent of cars made “traditional” long distance land travel change. The advent of airplanes made the “traditional” way of getting from place to place and country to country change.

And we can even go back before the founding of the USA to see how tradition has changed. Medicines and medical care have changed the “tradition” of illness and the length of an average lifespan… We now live longer and, often, healthier lives than we did just a few hundred years ago. We can even go back, further than that….

Go back to the time of Christ, for example. And I know how the religious right is gonna LOVE this… Christ was not married. He hung around with a woman of … questionable virtue… He was born unto a woman that DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH HER HUSBAND and was not created in the “traditional” way… His “father” still married his mother, even though TRADITION was to call for Mary to be STONED and KILLED for not being a virgin at the time of her marriage!

Traditions change, folks. And it’s time that the Republicans – and the religious fanatics of the US and the world – changed too.