The following letter was attached to an application for child support that I processed before lunch today. Although it about crashed the spell/grammar check program, I transcribed the correspondence from the father to the mother as faithfully as I could—of course, the names have been changed to protect the innocent:
For the past 10-11 days I haven’t bugged you or said anything about the present situation. But I feel you do owe me some insite to your thinking.
This is very hard for me to write, but my thoughts come out better this way.
I wanted you to know my honest thoughts so don’t take this wrong.
I really, really, really don’t want a 3rd kid. Both my other 2 were not planned and I’m trying to do the right thing with them. I feel I can be a father for 2 but 3 is too much. I am stretching myself way too thin. My feelings in this matter count just as much as you but I feel you don’t think that way.
It should be both parties wanting the kid. If one feels as strongly as I do and I’m not clear on what you think cause you haven’t said but I cannot for 1 second comprehend why you would not see this the same. This was a mistake by both of us, nothing more.
This part may seem cruel but I feel I owe you my honest feelings.
Please don’t make me resent you and pay for this many different ways for the rest of my life, and I will. I can get over and deal with Todd, but as God is my witness I will not on a second. I will always feel my other 2 kids will suffer for this in many different ways. I am not a realationship kind of person nor will I ever be. I can’t say where I’ll be 5 yrs. from now or 2 months. If my job moves me. (This makes me want to move) We will never be one big happy family and I can not comprehend why in the wolrd you would want a 4th child from 3 different fathers unmarried.
You should not make any comparisons with Todd. That is not fair to him and not the case.
I will never accept it if you cannot see the right thing here and will always feel you have hurt me and my other 2 kids because of it, sorry but that is my true feelings.
I realize this is hard for you but you have to see what is right. I will help out financially and anyway you like, please let me know very soon what you think as this is wearing me down fast.
You’re oh so right, King George! We need to amend the Constitution to ban homosexual marriage post haste!
Mark, are you implying that the only reason that you are for gay marriage is because dead beat dads don't pay child support? Are we going to change the way society has recognized the union between a man and a woman for millenium because of the irresponsibility of some? Do you really believe that it makes no difference in the preferred raising of a child to have a mother and a father? Can you imagine how you would have developed in this life without your father's influence? And what of the lessons taught to you by your sweet mother?
ReplyDeleteWhy was the woman in your example in a relationship with a man that obviously had no interest in anything permanent. What gives him the right to have sexual realtions with a woman if he is not prepared to be responsible for the possible consequences, ie a baby. Why would she enter into a relationship, let alone get intimate with a man that is unwilling to make any form of commitment beyond sharing the cost of groceries? It would seem that before this became a finacial problem, they both had a morals problem. I think on that, we can both agree.
Maybe NBC should have created a television show based on the stories in your files. Then they could have put it in the time slot following "Friends" and called it "The rest of the story"
Before I respond to steve the dad's questions, it would be helpful for me to hear from other readers as to how many took my remarks to mean that I am "for gay marriage." Let the discussion begin!
ReplyDeleteI think you meant that with all the garbage that's going on in our society today, all George can think to do is propose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. That will whip up the passions of his republican "base". After all, they have important work to do - like cutting taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations in our society . . . like ignoring what science is telling us about our planet so that the obscene consumption of resources won't be interrupted . . . like building more prisons for drug users and the mentally ill instead of thinking of a system that would deliver good mental health care . . . like starting a war to feed the needs of the military-industrial complex . . . like setting the goal of tearing down the public school system by requiring more of it and supporting it less . . . like making common working people feel like they don't deserve a retirement in their later years. . . like subsidizing any number of industries that cheat on paying their fair share of taxes while brutally exploiting workers in other countries.
ReplyDeleteBut, I digress - I can see how your comment on gay marriage might have been misinterpreted, since often opponents of gay marriage speak of the "sanctity" of marriage between a man and a woman. Obviously, the letter you shared is evidence that the heterosexuals don't have the corner on the market when it comes to sacred unions.
I’m staying “behind the scenes” today in the hope that there may be the makings of a healthy debate here. I do hope that a number of you will feel so inclined to add your own “two-cents-worth” to the discussion.
ReplyDeleteProbably because she’s married to me, Mary came closer to getting the gist of my remarks than did Steve the Dad. The Bush administration is masterful when it comes to redirecting public focus. Do we really think that it’s coincidence when the British terror plot is revealed the day after Joe Lieberman is defeated by Ned Lamont in Connecticut’s Democratic primary? Dick Cheney answered that question when he stated that Lamont’s victory is giving comfort to Al-Qaeda.
The Bush administration is easily the most corrupt and immoral in American history. It has lied to the American public whenever and however it has needed to in order to accomplish its own agenda (an agenda which was clearly on the drawing board long before Bush was appointed to office by the Supreme Court). But whenever the public attention begins to focus on this fact, Herr Rove diverts attention to the need to regain the moral high ground in this country by calls for Constitutional amendments for everything from flag burning to gay marriage.
The most intense scriptural research I ever engaged in was for a New Testament class at Claremont School of Theology taught by William Baird. My exegesis was on the Apostle Paul’s admonishment in I Corinthians against divorce, and in a very rare instance Paul stated that this was Jesus’ pronouncement rather than his own. Divorce is—at least according to the Christ—immoral in that it murders the sacred covenant entered into by husband and wife.
So why aren’t the churches railing against divorce? So why aren’t the fundamentalists trying to amend the Constitution to prohibit this immorality. I wish that I was smart enough to know the answer, but I do know that the practice has become so commonplace in American society that it would be a hard case to generate any fervor for. In the meantime, we can attack the homosexual community for corrupting the morals of our country. Todd’s parents are heterosexual to a fault, and he is suffering from corrupted morals that nobody wants to talk about.
Whatever happened to the respect?
ReplyDeleteAs Rachel so subtly—and, in my opinion, not all that kindly—points out, my tactic of trying to generate more comments by not entering a new post is not working as well as I had hoped it would. I have to confess to blog envy of those sites that generate thousands of hits per hour just to update us on Paris’ latest fling (this is just a hypothetical example; I really don’t know if there’s a blog about Paris, but I’m guessing there is. I don’t even get satisfactory results when I Google myself).
ReplyDeleteI want to believe that there is a more widespread interest in the fundamental changes that need to occur in our society to save it from the demise of earlier civilizations. The question of whether or not morality can be legalized seems to me like a good place to start, but for years now I have been unable to incite such debate. I am slow to learn that I lack the necessary charisma.
I’ll probably come out of the closet next Monday with a brand new axe to grind. My apologies go to Steve the Dad that we didn’t get any more mileage out of his initial rebuttal, but just as he suggested that I might get more spin from surmising the outcomes of Friends episodes, maybe he can get more reaction from asking what is Paris doing tonight?