Casey Clubb's Blog

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Did you know

That some people are better than others?

Yes, it is true, I know, for I am better than you

I am curious, though

Why did God make us all so different?

Why did He not finish His work?

Why did He not make you like me?

It is so bland, is it not?

This world in which we live

It is a mural

Filled with an abundance of color

With mountains and oceans

With forests and deserts

With birds in the air and fish in the sea

But I cannot understand

Why did God make this world so bland?

Why did He not finish His work?

Perhaps it was

So that I could finish it for Him?

Yes!  That must be it!

So, I will go to you, wherever you are

Or I will bring you to me

It really matters not

And slowly

Carefully

Lovingly, because I care so very, very much

I will finish God’s work for Him

I will blend all the colors

Into one beautifully dull color

I will rub out the lines

Until it is a beautiful mural

Of nothing

Until we can no longer see

That there were once

Mountains and oceans

Deserts and forests

Birds in the air and fish in the sea

I will work on God’s mural of life

I will finish God’s work for Him

I will make you just like me

 

Supposedly, each generation dreams of leaving the world a better place for the next. After all, isn’t that part of what being human is all about?

But, I wonder sometimes, what legacy are we leaving for our next generation?

In Italy, politicians are halting the roll out of a new school program, Game of Respect, due to concerns that it will “confuse children about their sexual identity.”

Morbidly curious bunny that I am, I was dying to find out the horrific details of Game of Respect.

I was aghast, as I’m sure you will be, to discover that the program, geared towards three to six year-olds, includes a game that “contains images of male homemakers and female plumbers…male teachers, female chefs, female firefighters and a man pushing a pram.”

OMG, what kind of deluded maniacs would try to expose vulnerable children to such profane ideology?!

When we are born, we are, each of us, placed in a box—the Gender Box.

The existence, or lack thereof, of an appendage between our legs, determines into which box we are placed.

We are expected to dutifully live out the remainder of our lives in that box. THIS is what we need to drill into young minds. How else will our children grow up to be judgmental, biased, and perpetually fearful of being true to their own identities?

Our children need to learn that while they are indeed unique and very special snowflakes, they must be unique and special within the confines of their assigned boxes.

I get that gender is an easy way to categorize people. Just like yes and no, and on and off, there are only two options—male and female, right?

But I’d like to think that humans are vastly more fascinating than light switches and the average teenager’s monosyllabic response to any question asked by a parent.

So what if, and here’s a thought, people were free to be who they are and love who they love, regardless of the shape of the junk between their legs?

Once upon a time, we lived in caves. Men went out and slaughtered things while women stayed in the cave and popped out as many babies as they could before they keeled over dead.

Thankfully, times have changed. We’ve evolved. Or, at least, we think we have.

Yet, despite the fact that we now know that the Earth is round and that the sun does not revolve around us, we still insist on putting our children in gender boxes.

Our ancestors probably dreamed, as we do, of leaving the world a better place for their descendants. They lived as they did, I would argue, so that we wouldn’t have to.

Isn’t it time we stopped putting our children in boxes?

Isn’t it time we set ourselves free?

Isn’t it time we made our ancestors’ dreams come true?

 

Anti-LGBT groups are hopeful that the opinions of Katy Faust, one of the “quartet of truth” who filed amicus briefs with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals urging them to uphold state bans on same-sex marriage, will be taken into consideration by Justice Kennedy.

I can only hope their optimism is as deluded as Katy’s letter.

In her letter to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy that was published on Public Discourse, Katy claims that the gay marriage debate is about one thing—children, and that legalizing gay marriage will strip children of their rights and cause them undue suffering.

Call me crazy, but I always thought that the gay marriage debate was about non-heterosexual people having the same legal right to marry that heterosexual people have.

I had absolutely no idea it was really about children’s rights and suffering.

Clearly I’m missing something, right?

After reading her letter, I get the impression that the only way to protect children from great suffering is to not legalize gay marriage.

According to Katy:

“…civil society has an interest in maintaining and protecting the institution of heterosexual marriage because it has a deep and abiding interest in encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing.”

“…the government’s interest in marriage is about the children that only male-female relationships can produce.”

Really? Hello! Welcome to the 21st century where people can parent children without being married, and people can marry without having children.

Marriage is not merely about procreation and child rearing! If it were, a sworn affidavit of intent to procreate should be a requirement for a marriage license, failure to spawn biological progeny within a specified period of time should be cause for an automatic dissolution of marriage, and women over 50 should never be allowed to marry.

But I guess it makes sense for people to claim that they oppose marriage equality “for the children”. Doing so takes the blame off the bigot, and dumps it squarely and safely in Mother Nature’s lap. Just as Katy does:

“It’s almost as if Mother Nature got this whole reproduction thing exactly right.”

“…when it comes to procreation and child-rearing, same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are wholly unequal and should be treated differently for the sake of the children.”

Katy pulls no punches:

“Making policy [legalizing gay marriage] that intentionally deprives children of their fundamental rights is something that we should not endorse, incentivize, or promote.”

And, “…these children [children of gay couples] will have their right to be known and loved by their mother and/or father stripped from them in every instance.”

Seriously?

Being born of a woman who is married to, and living under the same roof as, the man whose sperm contributed to your DNA is not a guarantee of being loved by either of those people.

Many people have been horribly abused and traumatized by their biological, heterosexual, married parents who were living with them under the same roof.

Be that as it may, Katy argues that:

“…it is undisputed social science that children suffer greatly when they are abandoned by their biological parents, when their parents divorce, when one parent dies, or when they are donor-conceived…”

“Every child raised by “two moms” or “two dads” came to that household via one of those four traumatic methods.”

Somehow, legalizing gay marriage is going to cause this suffering to occur….

Presumably, if gay marriage is legalized, married gay people will pluck children from the stable, loving homes of their God-fearing, married, biological parents.

Happily married families will be rent asunder and previously doting parents will abruptly abandon their children, and/or fall over dead, the moment two same-sex people become legally wed.

Wow, I had no idea the power that gay people had to wreak suffering on the world’s children! And with nothing more than a marriage certificate!

Perhaps all it would take to stamp out child suffering in one fell swoop is to outlaw divorce, adoption, all fertility treatments, and, most importantly, gay marriage.

In fact, putting the kibosh on gay marriage may very well be the key to achieving an end to all suffering. And, indeed, world peace!

Who knew it could be so simple?

The people who are fighting so hard to prevent the legalization of gay marriage would have us live in a world where only heterosexuals can marry and have children. And the only way for gay people to have children is for them to deny their own truth, marry someone they don’t love, and live a lie.

They seem to think this world would protect children.

But in that world, only one thing is guaranteed for certain—children who love outside the hetero-norm will grow up suffering under the heavy pall of having to choose between being true to themselves and being accepted.

I found this letter offensive on so many levels it made my head spin.

Even so, I do agree with the author on one point—the gay marriage debate IS about children.

But while Katy claims that “redefining marriage would strip those children {of same sex parents} of their most fundamental rights.” I would argue that redefining marriage would do the opposite—it would be a step towards imparting upon all children a fundamental right that none of us yet has, but all of us should—the right to grow up feeling safe to be who we are and love who we love.

Marriage equality—yes, it is absolutely about the children.

We have four urns sitting above the fireplace.

Today I found myself sitting and staring at them, and thinking. Like I often do.

When we lost our first pet, our beloved Toby-dog, getting him an urn seemed like the right thing to do at the time. We didn’t think it through. We didn’t think about all of our other pets, and all the other urns, that would one day follow.

A year ago, we lost our Shelley-dog.

Like we had done for our other pets, Stuart and I picked out an urn for her.

When it arrived, we set it on the mantelpiece beside the others.

Then we sat together, and cried.

I thought about what it was going to be like, fifty years from now, the two of us sitting together in front of the fireplace, holding hands and staring at urns on the mantelpiece.

It occurred to me, then, that that’s what marriage is about.

Those urns represent more than memories of beloved pets. They represent memories of us, of our life together, of our shared journey through life. His and mine.

Marriage is about so many things. Sex, love, partnership, parenting, financial stability.

But it’s about so much more than that.

Our son has grown and gone.

Sex, sure, sex is great :-), but there are days when we look at each other and nothing about what either of us sees in the other person sends us running to the bedroom!

Some days, there are fireworks, some days there aren’t.

Sometimes we want to do stuff together, sometimes we don’t.

But always, no matter where we are or what we are doing, we are living life together, sharing life together. Sharing memories and moments, love and heartache, together.

When I look at the four urns on the mantelpiece, and think ahead to that day fifty years in the future, I know there is nobody else in the universe that I want to be with, sitting and staring and remembering the loved ones in the urns.

Remembering our shared lives and loves and heartaches.

Our shared moments and memories.

Our marriage.

Urns on the mantelpiece — that’s what marriage is about.

 

The other day I bought a stuffed elephant for Paco.

It’s soft and plump and it squeaks.

And it comes with a tag that says: “IMPORTANT: Not a chew toy. Supervise during play.”

Seriously?

On what planet is it not a chew toy?

It’s a toy for a dog.

It looks like a small furry critter.

And it has a squeaker on the inside which makes it squeal like a small furry critter too.

What, other than chewing it, is my dog supposed to do with it? Snuggle up with it like a toddler with his favorite teddy bear?

Well, yes, actually, Paco probably will snuggle up with it. But only after he’s dismembered and disemboweled it and strewn its fluffy white stuffing across my living room floor.

We live in a world filled with cautions and warnings and waivers and releases of liability.

But wouldn’t it be cool if, in the world of dog toys at least, we could do away with all that?

I didn’t buy the stuffed elephant so that Paco could have something to snuggle with. He already has something to snuggle with – me :-).

I bought the stuffed elephant so that my precious momma’s boy German Shepherd puppy wuppy could make believe that he’s the fiercest canine predator ever to stalk the Earth. All within the safety of his warm and cozy living room.

The tag on the stuffed elephant claims that it’s not a chew toy.

But it’s a chew toy. Or rather, it’s a fake prey animal that my dog is going to chew into oblivion. Ergo, it’s a chew toy.

Paco knows it.

I know it.

The manufacturer knows it.

So why can’t we just tell it like it is?

With dog toys, at least?

 

You can’t buy love.

But that doesn’t mean that love doesn’t have a heavy price tag.

Far from it.

In fact, I would venture to say that love carries the highest price tag of all.

That’s what I told my husband when I was badgering him to let me get a puppy.

My husband argued that dogs are too expensive.

They cost a lot to feed and care for — the vet bills alone could put a decent dent in the cost of a college education.

And it hurts too much when they die. We’ve lost two dogs in the last ten years.

The pain was excruciating, he didn’t want to go through that again.

To be fair, I didn’t either.

But that’s the price we pay for love.

Love is expensive. It costs a great deal.

In money.

In vulnerability and risk.

In heartache.

Loved ones live and die, they come and go, they suffer and sorrow.

Adopting a puppy/dog is like purchasing a one way ticket to heartache. And, yeah, very likely, a financial bloodletting.

But the payout in love and devotion is priceless. And unsurpassed.

Money is a tool. It’s something we use. Ostensibly so that we can, amongst other things, be happy.

We use it to buy things – toys, cars, houses, pretty things – things that we believe will make us happy.

And we use it to make investments in things that we hope will earn us more money, so that we can buy more things to make us happy.

I like to think of bringing a dog into our family as a means of circumventing all that and, instead, making a direct investment in our happiness.

The difference between investing in a dog and investing in everything else is that dogs give a guaranteed return on investment. And the return on puppy love is high.

Sure, we could protect ourselves against the pain of another loss. Instead of getting a dog, we could save our money and use it to buy a bunch of cool stuff. But why?

Of all the things we can do with our money, there is no better return on any investment than the love return we’d get from a dog.

 

Even at the heavy costs we know we will inevitably have to pay.

 

 

Needless to say, I got my puppy :-).

Does the title seem preposterous? I mean, freckled children bring their parents no more, and no less, grief than non-freckled children do, right? But what about gay children? I invite you to try an experiment with me: Read the article … Continue reading →

I’ve learned many things from having a new puppy. The most important being that there is a very big difference between raising puppies and raising children. Yes, I know, that sounds like it should be obvious. But that’s the problem. … Continue reading →

A parent group in the Anoka-Hennepin school district is protesting the district’s implementation of LGBT awareness measures, including the continued support of a student-led GSA, as part of a plan to decrease bullying and suicide among LGBT students. According to … Continue reading →