Where Did My America Go?

DOMA

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was a federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress intended to define and protect the institution of marriage. This law specifically defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman...

DOMA specifically stated that "the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife” and further states that “[i]n determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defense_of_marriage_act_(doma)

Who would have thought that one day there would be a law stating what marriage is? When i was growing up we knew what marriage was. My mom and dad were married. Anything i knew about marriage i learned from their 60 yr plus committment. That is, until the day they died. We all knew what marriage was. It didn't need defined by a law. The institution had been around since the beginning of human kind. We grew up in a community of married people without a law telling us who the husbands and wives were. We knew them by name and it began Mr. and Mrs.

Marriage was one of those things-even though we knew some people got divorced-that would always be there and we didn't give that any thought. As sure as the sun was coming up on the world men and women would marry, have children, start a family.

It was one of the things that was right with the world.

Abortion

The 19th amendment giving women the right to vote passed Congress in 1919 and went to the states for ratification. In May, the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 304 to 90; two weeks later, the Senate approved it 56 to 25.

Source: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage#background

From that day forward women would become more politically active and play larger roles in the political life of our country.

They would seek and win office. When we were growing up it was no big deal to actually go and vote although you had to be 21. It was like an adult rite of passage.

Then came the time of the draft when anyone 18 yr of age was holding their breathe to see if they'd be next to head to Vietnam.

The rallying cry of that generation was that if you were old enough to die for your country you were old enough to vote. They passed an amendment changing the voting age to 18*.

Women, Blacks and 18 yr olds had to battle for their right to vote and have some say in how we were governed.

In 1973 abortion became the issue of the day. When i was growing up the thought of killing the unborn was horrifying and it wasn't legal.

We knew that it happened, albiet illegally, but it was rare. My graduating class didn't have one single girl that had gotten pregnant. There was a rumor going around about one girl but it couldn't be verified so i'm going to have to chalk that one up to gossip.

i didn't know a single soul that had ever gotten an abortion.

The next thing i knew it was considered a woman's right.

Before Roe V Wade went to the Supreme Court it was unthinkable. They argued it was a Constitutional right.

To this day i have never found such a right in the Constitution.

i do see life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness mentioned as God given rights.

The issue was contentious and divisive.

Division is diabolical.

i honestly couldn't picture something like this happening in our country when we were growing up.

You could look around at all your neighborhood friends and would never have had to wonder which one of those kids might not have been there to grow up with you.Out of the realm of possibilities.

I do know if someone got pregnant there was bound to be a 'shot gun' wedding. The guy felt a responsibility and wasn't going to leave his girlfriend out there to fend for herself and the baby.

I'm not saying every guy would have felt that way but it seemed to be the prevailing thought-it wasn't let's see if we can get rid of the baby.

The rallying cry of the pro abortion movement was making it legal would make it rare, safe and affordable.

For the life of me i couldn't wrap my head around the rare argument. It was extremely rare. Legalizing it made it extremely common. The numbers are astronomical.

When artificial contraception (birth control)and abortion became legal &easily accessible the number of out of wedlock pregnancies started skyrocketing. Think about that for a second. The opposite should have been true. Stands to reason,right?

When Roe V Wade passed and abortion was legalized people assumed the law had restrictions. To this day people assume the law had restrictions.

The truth is there was no trimester [when] you could not have an abortion. It was legal up until the moment of birth. People don't read laws in detail.

Roe vs Wade was overturned as NPR reported on June 24, 2022.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 Roe ruling and repeated subsequent high court decisions reaffirming Roe "must be overruled" because they were "egregiously wrong," the arguments "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority".

i do know that when we learned someone was pregnant the first thought was this person was going to be a mommy/mother whether she had just found out (tested positive)she was pregnant or it was months later.

Terms like clump of cells or parasite weren't part of the language. She was a mother who was going to have a baby and if she had other children they were going to have a brother or sister.

Childbirth was natural. Most of the time it was fairly safe. The human race has been around for a good long while.

There are cases where the life of the mother is endangered. It's known as an ectopic pregnancy.

The procedure to terminate this pregnancy is NOT an abortion.

From the Mayo Clinic:

Pregnancy begins with a fertilized egg. Normally, the fertilized egg attaches to the lining of the uterus. An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the main cavity of the uterus.

An ectopic pregnancy most often occurs in a fallopian tube, which carries eggs from the ovaries to the uterus. This type of ectopic pregnancy is called a tubal pregnancy. Sometimes, an ectopic pregnancy occurs in other areas of the body, such as the ovary, abdominal cavity or the lower part of the uterus (cervix), which connects to the vagina.

An ectopic pregnancy can't proceed normally. The fertilized egg can't survive, and the growing tissue may cause life-threatening bleeding, if left untreated.

Keep in mind that it can't proceed like a normal pregnancy and the egg is not going to survive.

Nobody has ever forced a woman to endure a pregnancy where there's no chance for the egg to survive and she's in danger herself.

An abortion deliberately ends a human life. It's the sole purpose. It's a normal pregnancy and both mother and baby can survive.

The ectopic pregnancy is not normal; the egg is not going to survive whether there's a procedure or not and the mother is very likely to die if there's no procedure. Big difference.

An abortion is going to terminate a normal pregnancy by deliberately destroying a human life that will be viable. Do not confuse the treatment of an ectopic pregnancy with an abortion. Roe v Wade doesn't apply here at all.

No law is ever going to force a woman to continue with an ectopic pregnancy. It's understood and is not up for debate.

When people talk about the exception of danger to the life of the mother chances are they're referring to an ectopic pregnancy. i don't know why it even has to be considered an exception when that's always been the case.

As for the other 2 exceptions, rape and incest, i think most of the public supports those exceptions. I know Pres. Trump considers himself pro life with those 2 exceptions.

i consider myself pro life and do not support the exceptions.

I'm not going to take the time now to explain why i can't support them. It would take more than a few minutes to deal with an issue that serious. I understand the weight it carries.

However, when Roe v Wade was overturned the issue went back to the states. Some states would ban it altogether. Some states would have restrictions. Some states would have none at all and support abortion on demand.

The left went into heart failure. They liked that the federal government supported abortion. They were sure this would end legalized abortion.

The right thought this would end abortion once and for all. It is not what either expected. I think they both had unrealistic expectations.

It's still a contentious and divisive issue. I will always remain pro life from conception to natural death irregardless of Pres Trump position.I still support him.

He deserves credit for ending Roe v Wade and protecting the pro life movement. He has never abandoned us;at least he's not afraid to speak up and let our side be heard.

They can't bully him. It hasn't worked so far. The man has chutzpah. He gets it. He knows these jackals.

i don't think the public is going to change their view but that's not going to be changed by law anyway. We are not going to acheive our goal of ending abortion through politics. i've always believed we have to reach hearts and minds.

We can't be timid either. We can't be afraid to defend our position. The left was never shy about letting their pov be known.

The left has a way of grabbing the narrative, controlling the language and painting someone who supports life as extreme, oppressive, backwards, medevial etc.

We may have to be more aggressive with the message not run from it. Pres Trump is right. We have to talk about it. It should be up for debate. It's a very serious issue. It's one of those issues that didn't get discussed at the time. It was shoved down our throats and made any real discussion impossible.

They've tried to silence us. It's too important an issue for candidates to acquiesce all the time. They try to change the subject when it is the subject & they lose the debate. They're just too afraid to take it on. It's the pro abortion side that's extreme.

If it weren't for Margret Sanger's eugenics maybe abortion would not have become an issue at all.

i think the pro life movement has made progress over the years. People have joined us.

I have faith that young people will come to respect human life more as they see what abortion has done to their own generations-how many of the previous generation did we lose after 1973?

i don't want to see 1 dime of tax payer funding going towards the industry.We have to draw the line. We're not buying the story about the services they provide. They use them for cover.

Money is fungible. They can take the donations and still have them work their way into abortion funding. There are people willing to donate. Let them.

Sorry, but they've done it for years without our permission. Abortion is a lucrative business.

They took the guy in the back alley and moved him up to a clinic. Planned Parenthood uses plenty of money to donate to candidates that will support their agenda. They don't need ours. If they can buy a candidate they don't need funding from us.

Ball of Confusion

What dya say we do a reality check? This is more for the left. Hopefully they're willing to do it. Again, in the America a lot of us grew up in we went through a process we all go through. Socialization.

It's a fancy term for learning how we get along in our own society. It begins at home in the family. There's the 1st step.

Our parents don't take a course. They just pass along their norms,traditions and values to us so we internalize them. You could actually say potty training is the basic 1st step.

It involves disciplining oneself. You learn to control your own bodily functions and this is how it is appropriate. You're teaching your children self control, appropriate behavior, independence.Socialization. Anotherwords, here is how you fit in with others and get along. You're telling your child, YOU have to do this. I can teach you but i can't do this for you.

We learn what gender we are. We gradually become aware of differences because we don't start out with an awareness of a lot of diffences.

We all enjoy playing and imaganitive thinking. We can sometimes be assertive and balk at doing something we are told to do-go to bed, eat our lunch, pick up our toys. It's up to the parents to make sure that a child's behavior isn't disruptive.

Sooner or later though boys may be more interested in some actitivites than girls are and vice versa. The girls may have activities that boys may have little to no interest in. Girls will model their behavior after their mom's. Boys after their dad's. This is part of socialization.

Who on earth would have thought of mutilating their children's bodies and altering them chemically to become the opposite gender?

If they had a girl the blanket was pink. If they had a boy the blanket was blue. It's not that color made a child a certain gender. It was a small way people made a distinction and identified the roles.

People didn't deliberately encourage a child who might be confused. Parents are the adult in the room. Our culture backed them up. Children go through phases as they sort out the norms. You don't help the confused by confusing them more.

A DOSE OF OBJECTIVE Reality

You don't tell Betty she might be Bobby-then long before they sort it out you give consent for life altering surgery. i look back on being a child into adolesence and not once during that whole period did i meet anyone who was transgender.You? Unheard of. Now, all of sudden, it's an epidemic. Not buying it. There's a disconnect from reality.

As time goes on these activities and behaviors become more complex. In fact a boy may show some interest in activities normally attractive to a girl and a girl may engage in activities normally more suited to a boy.

When i was growing up that boy might be considered a sissy and that girl might be considered a tomboy.

It's also true that the 2 genders tend to associate with other children of their own gender and form close friendships in that group.

There's no interest in the other gender. This is the way it was. It was not a big deal. We all grew up. If you were the neighborhood sissy or tomboy nobody would have suggested to you that you should change genders. Kids usually come out the other side with age and experience.

Anything along those lines would have been considered the magical thinking of childhood. It passed eventually.

The culture was not trying to sexualize you either. You went to school to learn math, writing, science, history and liteature. You first learned about intimate relationships from your parents. It didn't have anything to do with sex. It had everything to do with the security of a healthy environment; the bond between mom and dad by example. Children feel safe there.

That was intimacy. When you were taught age appropriate information about sex you associated intimacy with a loving relationship. It didn't come from a teacher. There were boundaries. You learn this in the home. You learn this at school.

If any teacher would have started talking to the class about sexuality i guarantee the school would have been full of angry parents. The teachers would have been shown the door. No questions asked. It would have been considered immoral; over a line they didn't cross. We didn't have to worry. It would never happen but if it did it would defintely be dealt with.

The norms of the society at that time would not permit it. How did it ever become part of the curriculum?

Just like we took for granted a school shooting would never happen even though everyone i knew had a gun/rifle.It didn't happen. Who ever heard of mass shootings at schools just 50-60 yrs ago?

Every school day began the same way. Mass at the church, the pledge of allegiance [with hand over heart no less]and a prayer before lessons. The idea of a school shooting was totally alien to us.We didn't have a worry in the world except that we better have our homework done.

Our parents passed down to us the cultural norms we needed to function in adult life. We learned values that made us who we were and the glue that held everything together in our community, our state, our country.

Socialization at home reinforced at school/church is everything. When this goes off the rails, people go off the rails. It's evident it's gone off the rails. The fundamental transformation of America was a really bad idea.

The more this is forced on our country the more the country is going to disintegrate. It could go past the point of return. It's going to take people willing to push back and push back hard. The country looks like it's suffering from psychosis. The worst part is the culture saying they're normal and you're sick.

Does it look like the America you knew?

I've never seen so many people who look deranged, who act deranged, whose thinking is so convoluted you can hardly reason with them. There are sexual disorders that are now considered normal. It's probably why Pres Clinton signed DOMA into law.

The government is corrupt but the people who have the authority to do anything about it, aren't willing to do anything about it.

I probably simplified some larger issues too much. You're always free and welcome to delve into them much deeper than i can.

[God put limits on our intelligence, but none on our stupidity, right]?

The question isn't so much where did my America go. as it is where did OUR America go?

* At the time i was sure the politicians had lowered the voting age based on principle. Now that i'm no longer a naive 18 yr old it's dawned on me how large a voting bloc that was and how these people operate. Why do you think they passed the amendment to the Constitution? Principle or votes?