The kids will spend most the next week here with me, as their mother travels east to visit her ailing father. My daughter just got home yesterday after a week camping near Yosemite in San Francisco's Camp Mather.
She looked taller and I have a theory about that, like I have theories about lots of things.
When they are growing as fast as she is, at the age of 14, we don't really get acclimated to their new size for a while. They have to level off and stay at a size for, say, a few months before we can accept their new height and weight as real.
Until then they just seem to keep growing before our non-acclimated eyes.
All eyes are on the Supreme Court this week. Journalists get restless at times like these. Decisions are imminent, the kinds of decisions that help alter history, or at least affirm that history has been codified into law.
Some great issues await resolution -- civil rights for gays and lesbians, affirmative action for under-privileged minority students, and voting rights for those who historically have been largely shut out of the political process.
Whatever your thinking is on such issues, they affect millions of people probably not a whole lot like you. I guess you could measure a citizen's social empathy by ranking his or her's opinions on these types of controversies.
Should people of the same sex be allowed to marry and gain access benefits only heterosexual couples enjoy today?
Should minorities who still lag in education be given preference getting into college?
Should everyone have fair an equal access to the right to vote in elections?
FWIW, here are my personal opinions, not meant to affect or disrespect anyone who differs with me.
Same-sex marriage -- it's a no-brainer. Of course. It's time to do the right thing.
Affirmative action -- I do not like it, but I recognize that it may be a necessary evil for a bit longer, under we see more educational parity in this society. I will not cry elephant tears if the Court strikes it down, however, which I suspect it will this week.
Voting rights -- it's an abomination that any state or county or district would in any way attempt to fix elections by erecting unfair barriers to participation based on race, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, party, or any other factor. It is, simply put, un-American.
Of course it matters not what I think or believe; only what nine justices in black robes decide to agree on -- make that five justices in black robes decide to agree on.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment