Happy Birthday, Janie!

In 2005, nineteen-year-old Jane married twenty-year-old John, and barely ten months later begat little Janie. Janie was barely two when her mother and father divorced, and part of her third birthday celebration was to accompany her mom to our office to apply for child support. Unless John miraculously adopts a new sense of responsibility for Janie, she won’t be getting any financial support from him anytime soon. I can’t help but wonder what Christmas is going to be like for all the Janies and Johnnies in this “Christian” nation of ours that so piously condemns choice and same sex marriages. At least when John marries George there won’t be any little “begats” running around unless their adoptive family has survived a rigorous screening process. And I am compelled to ask where all the pro-lifers are. That little life they insist was full-blown at conception is now just a pawn in legal wrangling that proves nothing more than that John and Jane think of no one but themselves. Congratulations, Janie, you were saved for your destiny by irrational zealots! As I wrote yesterday, Christmas is about the love of and for family. For as long as Americans tolerate and condone countless scenarios like the one I’ve just described, we can forget about ever genuinely grasping the reason for the season.