Sunday, November 16, 2008

I do come from a fighting, protesting bunch

My Da was, at the age of EIGHT, a runner for the IRA.

At 17, he emigrated to the US from Ireland, where, by the by, we don't patch up the holes from the wars. We leave them as a reminder that the freedoms that are enjoyed now were paid for in blood. Go to the post office in the middle of Dublin and the bullet holes are still there; a bloody reminder of the uprising.

My Uncle Dan, who was on the boat with my Da at 17 (Irish twins, 9 months apart) was on the beaches on D-Day, as were my Uncles James and Junior (both 17 at the time). My FIL was a POW in Stalag 13, shot down over Germany.

If you look up my family , the whole bunch of us have readily gone to war to fight for what we thought was right..which included fighting against the Crown over and over and over again on both sides of the Atlantic.

AND now I am finding myself hopping mad. Madder than I have been in a really long time...and if you know me at all, I get mad easily and often over all kinds of things.

And I am mad over Prop 8 and at the Catholic Church and the Mormons and their $22 miliion dollars.They pulled this crap with the ERA and I am still mad about that.

See, none of this has ANYTHING to do with religion.

You get a license from the STATE and when you dissolve your marriage, it is dissolved by the STATE. If you choose, you can have your union "sanctified" by a priest/rabbi/minister/lama/imam/whatever but that is a choice. You are married by the STATE. It is a legal contract, not a religious one.(And I have a whole lot to say about that religious contract, too.)

And if the Mormon and the Catholic Churches want to put up so much money and have so much to say about political matters, then maybe they need to lose their precious tax-exempt statuses and start admitting that they are not holier than thou, because frankly, they are not.

The way they make you believe in them is to convince you from the get go is that if you don't believe you will go to hell .

Like that has ever scared me.
I was married to John Work and Jack Bridge.I grew up in the LEARY family.

Hell doesn't scare me.

So I am fighting, protesting, working FOR the right for everyone to enjoy the same rights that I so freely enjoy.
I can't say I have always made such great choices. but I have always had the right to make them and I, for the life of me cannot see what makes me so special that I can make them and someone else cannot,.


Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln



2 comments:

PERBS said...

Not familiar with this and probably disagree so maybe I should just stop here.

Chloe said...

Abd that is exactly why I love you so much Paulie. You stand up for what you bellieve in. So do I. And there is room enough for the both of us. ANd I'll work as hard for you to have the right for yours as for me to have the right for mine.
It's not for nothing we fought against the Crown.