So me and my big mouth have now weighed in on a few issues that my friends have included in their journals and I'm reasonably certain that my big fat opinion will once again serve to alienate me from people that I care about in a place I've come to love because when I get wound-up and emotional (like I did when I started talking about Molly....... see previous entry) it tends to spill out all over everything like lava out of a volcano.

So for the record; I DO believe in God and have for as long as I've been alive. I speak to Him regularly and am eternally grateful for all the wonderful things I have in my life which I consider to be great gifts. I think God lives in all who choose Him regardless of circumstance or religion. He is our guide, our inner light, the reason we seek to do and be better and more than we are. But I also believe that The Bible was written by men and men (humankind) are absolutely fallible as evidenced by all the enormous atrocities committed by men in God's name. This is, in my mind, the worst of all hypocrisy. I should also add that I don't believe God condemns ANYONE to hell simply because they weren't "born again" in Christ. Man is the one who came up with the "my way or the highway to hell" mentality and man is the one who uses religion to make allowances and justifications for any and all types of behavior.

I also believe in the right to choose. Because that is one of the guiding principals this country was founded on. The right to choose life, limb and the pursuit of happiness in whatever form it might take as long as it doesn't interfere with another's right to do the same. This includes, but is not limited to, the right to worship as you choose, have an abortion if you choose (although I do NOT believe you have that right after the first tri unless it becomes a life or death decision for the mother in which case I think she should be able to choose and if she can't then her next of kin or closest person to her should. I think that people of age should be able to drink if they choose as long as they do so under conditions that will not and cannot harm anyone else. Because I believe in the right to choose, I also believe we have the responsibility to teach our children how to make choices for themselves. Doing so means we have to teach them as much as possible about as many things as possible so they'll have enough information to make an informed choice rather than a choice which is only representative of the "point of view" of the group with the most influence and wherewithal (read: MONEY) to push their own agenda into the texts and curriculum of the public school systems.

I take our country's need to find someone to blame for absolutely EVERYTHING personally. We say one thing and do another and then hold ourselves up as some kind of shining example to the rest of the world and can't figure out why the countries who don't hate us are in fact laughing behind our backs AND right to our faces. I'm tired of a federal govt. that has whittled away our civil rights until they are meaningless while telling us it's for our own good. I take it personally that many in this country think that the right to free speech means they have the right to tell other people how to live (which it does by the way) then turn around and twist that right to prevent others from attaining any modicum of freedom to live and express their lives and their identities as they choose.

I believe that everything is possible until it's been proven impossible and even then I hold a bit of me aside to preserve a piece of that belief because we have thousands of years of history in which man has proven that impossible is just a word. I believe we have to learn to live together and support each other even when we disagree because to do anything less would be support a kind of delusion and limited self-interest that can only end in war, mass murder and genocide which has also been proven throughout those same thousands of years of man's history. As Eile Wiesel once said:
"Peace is not God's gift to man. Peace is man's gift to himself."
At least............ I think that's the quote and it's source!.....................

Hey! I love you and it's way past time I go to bed. I'm pretty much up at dawn so I've gotta keep a schedule or there WILL be h%ll to pay!