The deeper I get into my thoughts this a.m. the more complex they become. On this first morning after our 44th President’s inauguration, one of huge historical, if not sovereign significance, I awoke to the same divided political jabber on Facebook. Some ecstatic, given the significance of this re-election of a black president, being sworn in on the same date as we celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest preachers of all time. African-American born Martin Luther King, Jr. almost single handedly led us to this new day of civil rights, without whose labor this moment might never have occurred. As well, one cannot deny the unlikelihood of this coincidence in the same year, same month in fact as the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
On the other hand, the continued clamor of those extremist of the opposite party, sadly my own, who refuse to let go of what for some is continued racial bias and for others political loyalties. Their angst is now strengthened by a failing economy and a soaring national debt that needs to be blamed on someone. We must admit that something is awry spiritually in our nation when many among both parties are required by their own professions of faith to “pray for those in authority” and to strive toward unity, yet the tension continues!
However, the weak signal that caught my attention this morning was not the political commotion described above, but another contained in an article of fewer column inches than the inauguration, describing a somewhat bizarre child support suit in Kansas last year. Who would have thought ten years ago, that a law would need to be on the books to protect those who offer their excess semen to benefit families who otherwise could not enjoy the beauty of child bearing?
The family in this suit however, consisted of two females, artificially inseminated through a home kit without the benefit of a physician. The two split up, one needing public assistance while the other filed suit against her Craig’s list donor, hoping to secure funding to assist with the resulting child.
I was not aware until this morning, that there are home kits available, marketed by a group call Pride Angel, with simple instructions for transporting sperm, appropriate insertion techniques for the recipient, along with other necessary techniques to override the more natural sexual arousal that typically enables movement of sperm into the cervix for fertilization of the human egg.
Before we go further, my objective is not to oppose artificial insemination, sperm banks,gay lifestyles, nor make a statement on abortions; simply a boundary statement for the sake of our responsibility to children. Children are not commodities but rather human beings, who have certain unalienable rights also, and once conceived must face decades of situations through which many of us would not have survived without the support of a loving, cohesive family.
This entry may be stepping over a line that I have walked far too long, given the radical fringes contained in both political parties! However, children have rights too!
Could this be the time to lay down our differences, rise above the stains of racism and the greed that exacerbates those differences, so that we might collectively reassess the value we place on human life? Perhaps then we can end this civil cold war of partisan politics, and give attention to children: those not only slaughtered in the classrooms, disremembered in the womb, but now sentenced to bizarre lives, often void of any of the stabilizing familial relationships so critical to the morals of a nation.