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Date:         Mon, 27 Jul 1992 02:43:00 CST
From:         "VALENTINE M. SMITH" <CDELL@UMKCVAX1.BITNET>
Subject:      A few thoughts ...

Re-reading the "high moral toned" remarks of T. Kidd, and seeing Jimbo's
lambasting of "Christians," earlier, I AM tempted to ask some questions.
Have Robert, Missy Kerry or Travia ever been married, or have they ever
had sex? One begins to wonder what revelation did they receive that makes
their standard on sexual relations, and/or marriage, so viable (and the
Bible is an unacceptable authority for me, as I do not believe the book
to "be the word of God") and so vehement!

I, too, was divorced. Had my first wife and I stayed together, one of us
would have killed the other. In neither of my marriages did we vow to
"stay together until death do us part," but wrote more pragmatic vows
ourselves. Though troubled, my second marriage is basically sound, and
has lasted 12 years. That leads to my next question. How old are these
moralists who would dictate to me, and everyone else, how we should live
our lives? I'm 45, and know good and well staying married to my first
wife would have led to homicide and/or severe child abuse, as we were
both severely angry people with no training in how to deal with it, and
counselling failed. There is a reason for divorce, abortion, and sex -
none of these actions occur, or have occurred, in a void. Accepting Missy's
1.5 million a year abortions since 1973, I suggest that a necessity existed,
or such activity would not have occurred. The last year I have records for
(1989) states a marriage rate of 2.4 million (9.7 per thousand), and 1.2
million divorces (4.7 per thousand). Now without going into a lot of
mathematics, let's go into the population generally. Roughly 70 million of
the then 248 million people in the US were under 16, maybe, MAYBE, 10%
of them are sexually active, and .1% in that age group are married. So,
right off the bat we have roughly 6.9 million candidates for jail under
T. Kidd's standards. 94 million more were between the ages of 19-44. As
of March, 1989, the Census Bureau says 52 million of ALL Americans are
married, and that doesn't deal with how many of the 94 million are so,
and how many of them are over 44, (about 86 million). So of about 180
million "adults," 52 million are married. The rest aren't. Perhaps
125 million single individuals. Let's be kind. 25 million are widowed,
10 million are too old, 10 million are bitterly divorced and celibate.
That leaves roughly 80 million potentially sexually active people in
the country, who may not, under Travis' "rule" EVER engage in sexual
activity because they are not married. Let's be kind again. Let's say
only half of them engage in sex. Add that to the other 6.9 million
trangressors - hey, we got a whole new business in this country -
sex cops and sex jails!

Which brings me to my last point of this irritated litany. Travis and
Robert both seem very fond of imposing their alien moralities (as far
I can see, neither very close to "mainstream"), and Travis especially
seems desirous of a police apparatus state while similitaneously arguing
for less Federal/government interference in our lives. I want less
interference in MY life all the way down to the municipality! I want the
government, and the self-appointed morality cops, to get out of my sex
life, my medical life, my substance consumption life, my legal life, my
tax life (unless we are willing to have genuinely fair taxes for all
including those "persons" called coroporations!), my political life, and
stop trying to dictate to me what the rules "God would want us to have."
I can barely live with the rules of men, as is the case for most of our
society. Theocracies perished almost completely by the end of the last
century, and for a damned good reason. They were too rigid. Let's not
trip back to the past, but move forward to a more reasonable and fair
future. Tell me not how to live my life, and I may feel a great deal more
tolerant of yoir narrow-minded, moralistic (to drudgery) beliefs. Not
realizing how irritated I was 'til I read Jimbo's post, VMS
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