Listening With My Heart This Lenten Season

So, this blog isn't intended to be just about cooking and other editorials but also a place for me to voice my opinion. And honestly, I am considering merging my "Around Town" blog here as well. However I digress...

This Valentine's Day I could mope about being single, but I won't. Frankly, there are so many other bigger issues out there to me than just my own little life.

Today is Ash Wednesday, and while many will give up chocolate or the like for Lent, I have read some curious articles about what the Lenten season is truly about. I will not delve in to any religious musings here except to say what I am doing this Lent is aiming to pray every day.

Please pardon me, as this might be a little scattered as I attempt to gather my thoughts coherently....

The things I am praying about revolve around a few issues. One- gay marriage. Whether you argue over the semantics of it or the religious aspect, the fact of the matter is to prevent two people from joining in a legal union is just plain wrong. It is. There's no getting around it. It's simply no different than the Civil Rights movement and for someone to argue otherwise shows their ignorance. But hey, let's delve in to religion for a moment. For me, God is simply about love. Just that simple. He tells us to not cast stones, and only those who are without sin may do so- we're all sinners. Therefore- we don't judge. So, if being gay and acting on it is a sin- well damn I'm gonna let God take care of that at the Pearly Gates. But in the meantime, I'm jut gonna choose to love like God and do my best to not prevent others from doing so as well. Out government should take the same stand.

Two- gun control. Now, I used to be all over this one: don't take my guns away. But recently I asked myself: "who needs these assault rifles"? Do I need one to protect my home and my kids? In my War and Diplomacy class at Mercer, we have learned that during the Revolutionary War (roughly when our Constitution was written) that guns themselves were very inaccurate. Remember the phrase "don't shoot til you see the whites of their eyes"? Guess what- it's because those darn things weren't so accurate. And therefore, not terribly deadly either. I'm pretty sure our forefathers would argue for safety on this one. I could be wrong. And one could refer to Jefferson's quote "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." Yeah I get that- but are we really giving up any freedoms here? I would argue not. No one is saying we're gonna take all of your guns away- not do I really think this would set the precedent to do so. At some point in time, common sense must reign above zealots.

Three- human trafficking. Yall, this shit is real. It runs me crazy how people think otherwise. Dr. Andrew Silver had a great post on Facebook today about it:

                           Though Chris Horne blew the story sky high with his front page article in the Eleventh            Hour, as far as I know, the first public writing in Middle Georgia on the issue of sex trafficking in Macon's proliferating Asian themed sex spas came from Erick Erickson in this 2007 blog. When Mary Alice Morgan, Katey Brown, Dee Hill Simms, Elizabeth Greim, Dottie Stafford, Ella Kennen, Hannah Vann, and I started work trying to redress the gaps in our city and county ordinances, Larry Schlesinger, a Democrat, and Erick Erickson, a Republican, teamed up together in city council to help us try to convince our city attorney to act. When that didn't work, Erick helped us get a sit-down with the entire legal team at the Georgia Secretary of State's office, and when that didn't work, he joined us in cheering on Cecil Staton, another Republican, as he passed a Georgia-wide law that helped us, after a year of trying, finally get laws passed at the county and city level. We had support in our efforts to help victims of trafficking and punish traffickers from conservatives and liberals, shock right-wing radio jocks and Unitarian ministers, evangelical conservatives and evangelical liberals, the Junior League and the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance. I think it's possible to publicly and vehemently disagree with the tone and content of another person's public rhetoric and still work with them to accomplish something good for the community. And in the case of human trafficking, so does Erick. And I want to thank him publicly for his work on this important issue. In an age which commodifies irresponsible and sometimes hateful rhetoric, we increasingly have to look past language and posturing if we want to get anything done for the good of our community.

http://www.peachpundit.com/2007/06/05/slavery-in-georgia-2007/

Come on y'all- if leaders in Macon, Georgia can all come together across political lines to recognize this is a problem then surely we can recognize and acknowledge it. I, myself, wrote a letter to the editor about this around the same time. We have sex slaves in Macon. We have SLAVES in AMERICA. For real yall how do you feel about that? One hundred and fifty years- 150 years- after the Emancipation Proclamation this is a very real problem in the United States. To paraphrase my own letter to the editor, published in The Telegraph in 2008, these women are brought here and are part of a subculture which many do not even want to acknowledge. Slavery, as it was prior to 1863, was an open part of our culture. We made no bones about the fact that it fueled our economy- Northern as well as Southern. But these women who are brought here illegally are voiceless, ignored, abused. And many just wish to turn a blind eye to their existence. To let this go, to ignore it, would be no different than allowing the enslavement of Africans to continue because it is best for the economy.

We live in a truly great country. I am going to use this Lenten season to pray that we continue to work to live up to it. That we work to give everyone here the freedoms they deserve, to marry whomever they love, to be safe from guns that are made to destroy life rather than to protect it, and that we continue to fight for the freedom of those who are abused and without power to protect themselves.