Thoughts of Mother and her legacy

I understand how many people say you never quite get over losing a loved one.  You learn only to live with the loss.  Today I watched a move called "The Family Stone" and it is about a gathering of a family at the home for Christmas with an ailing Matriarch.  It is a modern day classic similar to old Hollywood holiday classics.  While watching the film it triggered a memory of my own mother.  On the surface it seems the Mom character in the film was different because my mother was very religious and rigid in her beliefs.  But there is a part in the film where the mother reveals her illness and I realized my mother like the character suffered from the same illness.  I wept because I miss my mother terribly, she was an outspoken evangelist and not the traditional Mom in any sense.  I am a witness to how sweet she could be, one example is she liked giving me something even on what I thought was an obscure holiday, Valentine's day.  I am weeping as I write this.

For the rest of my life, there will be a void that no one can really fill.  Thank you Mom for your Godly example, not perfect by any means, but Faithful to God, family and her brothers and sisters in Christ may I do my best to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.  I sing often 2 songs that were sang at almost every service I went to as a young child.  "We Have Come this far by Faith" and "Only What you do for Christ will Last".   

Biden on Gay Marriage/ Richard Grenell dismissal

Last week Richard Grenell a foreign policy and national security spokesperson for the Mitt Romney campaign, resigned.  The Romney campaign was criticized by some conservatives for hiring Grenell, an openly gay staffer.  On Sunday's Meet the Press program VP Biden said that he was ok with gay marriage.  President Obama says he opposes gay marriage, but supports civil unions.

I believe that President Obama's staff wanted to exploit the resignation of Mr Grenell by allowing VP Biden to enthusiastically support Gay marriage on a personal level, to curry favor with the gay community to gain votes.  I believe they were responding to recent polls that a majority of Americans, are not opposed to same sex marriage. The Biden support for same-sex marriage allows a not so subtle nod to the gay community, that the Obama administration also is open to same-sex marriage without supporting it "officially".

My views on gay marriage it that it is wrong for Christians to be in a gay relationship and that churches should not perform or condone gay marriage for their members, and churches should not be forced to perform marriages for same-sex couples who are not members.  As an American, I don't think I have the right to tell consenting adults how they should live as long as they are not hurting anyone else.  Although I would not vote for same-sex marriage, I support same-sex couples their "pursuit of happiness".

One reason that Pres. Obama's staff believes that they can alienate some Christians who are fervent in their opposition to gay marriage, is that these Christians, have demonstrated that in spite of what the Obama administration does these Christians will not  vote for President Obama.

An example of this is that during the healthcare debate, the Senate and House bills had differences. The House bill included the Stupak amendment that, did not allow abortion funding for healthcare participants and the Senate bill made no such provision.  Pro-life Senators could have inserted a similar Stupak-like amendment to their bill, even if they would not vote for it.  The democrats would have taken any amendment to the bill that Republicans proposed, but no Senator made provision halting public funding of abortion.

In the end to reconcile the bills as required the pro-life portion of the House bill was removed, but Stupak, got President Obama to sign an executive order banning public funding of abortions.  Instead of applauding Congressman Stupak for getting the Pro-life issue into the bill, Stupak is not recognized for this accomplishment by many in the Christian community.

I believe that Christians should leverage their power, by not being beholden to any party, but using this leverage to negotiate issues that are important to us   I believe that Pres. Obama's administration would make additional compromises if they could be assured of some support from these Christians.  We risk allowing other legislation that may be harmful to our society, because we don't utilize our voting leverage.