Where you and I are not opposites we are so much alike. It’s as if one of us is Captain Kirk and the other is the evil Captain Kirk with the gautee from the mirror universe.

Two views we have in common is our understanding that only Jesus will save us and our awareness that politics can prove an unwelcome temptation.

I don’t want to nit pick you point-by-point– I know that you could do the same to me– rather, I’d like to provide an alternative way of viewing the progressive/liberal mindset.

There are winners and losers of the current system. In a dizzying array of ways, these winners don’t always deserve to win and these losers don’t always deserve to lose. If the system was perfect it would equally reward productivity, enguinity, and bravery. Because it is not a third party should equal the playing field as much as possible.

I’ll buy the possibility that their lives are more challenging. But most of us want kids who have struggled, a little bit, who have a bit of character, integrity, toughness, etc.

I could respect the Justice of the Peace if he’s ever refused to marry for other reasons. There are certainly many combinations of people that are statistically likely to be lousy or abusive parents. I wouldn’t think he’s in the right, but I could think that at least he is not using a smoke screen to cover his racism.

Race is often the face of culture. In the case of the JOP in LA it sounds as if he understands something about culture – at least his culture. Without making any judgements about bigotry, his admission was that his concern was for their prospective children.

Now i know that’s an old canard (sp?) used by racial purists, but there is something to it in an environment where people recognize the deep divides in culture down racial lines. And i DO mean to suggest that it isn’t always a one-way street.

It’s purely annecdotal, but when i lived in Philly 20 years ago there was a news story about an interracial couple who moved into a “black” neighborhood. The story was about how they were being harrassed and vandalized by the people in their own neighborhood specific to their interracial union.

That was the first time i ever questioned the paradigm of racism and began to consider human nature as the presiding factor in bigotry.

Here we are a generation later and the popular culture paradigm hasn’t changed much. Yet there are still gulfs that separate races and their cultures. The young don’t care so much about race and nationality differences when it’s rutting season. But when the heat of physical attraction settles down as a person matures they begin to focus more on common values rather than shared attraction.

i have told my girls that i don’t care what skin color or country a man comes from because of the irrelevance ultimately found in those characteristics. Rather, it’s the character and the values a person possess that makes them worthy of your love and respect. But there are many character traits that are commonplace in certain cultures of which one ought to be wary when they present themselves as contrary to your values.

What one believes and believes in is the most relevant value.

An intruiging question, “should the government be in the marriage business at all?”

It’s one thing to recognize human nature and its supreme failure of terminal self-interest, it’s another thing altogether to suggest that Communism and Capitalism offer the same opportunities to overcome our foibles.

Capitalism has the potential to elevate the human condition through enlightened self-interest while Communism artificially suppresses our natural inclinations to excel. Besides that, Communism is the great sour-grapes excersice. It’s the kind of rationale adopted by the homicidal stalker who insists if “he can’t have her, no one will”.