Now that Republicans dominate all three branches of the national government as well as most of the country's state governments, I have a feeling that conditions will begin to worsen first for people who have wound up somewhere outside the mainstream whitebread majority for one reason or another. George W. Bush talks about the importance of showing compassion, but my impression is that he has a fairly narrow view of who exactly ought to benefit from our compassion. Children, yes. It's easy to be in favor of children. He's probably also in favor of compassion toward old people and most racial minorities, so long as we don't have to count their votes. I read a Joe Klein article in the New Yorker a few months ago that suggests he may have a genuinely compassionate attitute toward illigitimate children, and I give him credit for that. (I can't find the article now, but the basic story is repeated in the fifth paragraph here.) But is he man enough to show compassion toward minorities who are unpopular with most Republicans?
I've thought a lot over the last several years about how much I've come to love and admire some of the families that these people despise the most, and I wonder whether this president will be kind to them. I don't want to prejudge him about that -- he may be a better man than most of us now assume -- but I do want to say that the policies toward lesbian women that his supporters espouse would do a lot of damage to some of the most stable, healthy, loving families I've ever seen, and I don't think you can talk intelligently about this subject without getting to know some of these people.
http://www.brecheen.org/cbrecheen/Entry2001-01-23.htm; © 2001 Cole Brecheen; All Rights Reserved.