Happy Halloween - Get your shakes in now!

Yesterday there was a 5.6 magnitude earthquake about 15 miles inland of San Jose. Darn it, we missed it - shopping for pumpkins about 30 miles south of here, we missed all the "excitement." Ironically, for some reason, I was looking around online the night before about what to do in an earthquake; then my aunt had a dream that California was rocked by an earthquake. Which it was. Which panicked my parents.

But wait! An aftershock of 3.7 just rocked my computer desk and rattled the doors. I'm surprised the 5.6er didn't tip the CD case over, because the 3.7 was enough to rock me around in my chair a little. California, it is a-tremblin'...

Open Wide, Phelps!

I nearly clapped my hands upon reading this, a breaking news item on Halloween Day, forcing a church to pay millions of dollars to a man whose son was killed in Iraq after they had picketed the funeral with signs such as "God Hates Fags" and "God Hates America." Remember, this is the church that inspired the bike-riding group Patriot Guard Riders to shield mourners of the the anti-gay church headed by Rev. Fred Phelps and his two daughters. This church has been finding as many military funerals as possible, arguing that the deaths in Iraq are punishment for the military's policy of "don't ask, don't tell" regarding gays in the military.

I could pick a million holes into this kind of rhetoric, but I'll save my breath by saying the following: God cannot hate America, especially when America is a land created by man-made borders, and therefore does not remove the individual calling we all have to love each other; and that it is not right for humans to pass such hateful judgment on others. God calls us to judge each other based upon law that is set forth to protect others, but he does not call a church to spread hate, which is why it makes this all the more sweeter (fitting because it is Halloween) that American justice has been served piping hot to a group of hatred-filled bigots who forgot what human decency was.

Considering many people in my family and close friends have been in the military or law enforcement at some point (Army, Navy, Marines), this kind of defense is why I am thankful to live on soil that lets me believe what I want without fear of persecution. I pray every day that the rights given to me simply by God and by birth are not taken away, and these men and women are defending this land and answering my prayer every day. Sure, this country has a load of other problems that I would prefer to live without, but if I had to choose, I would choose this again and again. We often forget how much free will has been given to us, not as a privilege, but as a God-given right in this country, and these men and women have shown bravery in places we didn't expect. But then again, that's what it's all about, isn't it?

I'm from Pennsylvania, and I know what these biker guys and gals look like up close. They're tough, they're authentic, and they're mostly veterans who survived Vietnam, Korean and Desert Storm wars. I wouldn't want to get near this at all.

So to the Phelps family, I sincerely wish that, for your sake and mine, that your hateful actions will remind you that free speech is a right, yet using it in a manipulative fashion will make you pay. Literally. And if God so hates America, then take your American church right on out of here and go somewhere else, because based to your theory, He might hate you, too.

Matters of Inversion

My grandmother sent me something very interesting today, asking me to "snope out the details." What I found was more disturbing that I bargained for.

"This should bother everyone. No matter the politics!! You will not see this heart-stopping photo on the front page of the NY Times or on the lead story of the major news networks. The protestors put up the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High School in California .

"I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington . The image of the American flag subsumed to another and turned upside down on American soil, is already spreading on Internet forums and via E-mail. ; Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government. If you choose to remain uninvolved, do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be 'redistributed' to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the 'fray'. Check history, it is full of nations/empires that disappeared when its citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person CAN make a difference. One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one......... The battle for our secure borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun. PASS IT ON"

I looked into this and found out that this email is "true," but it "lies by omission." There are several facts that are not in included that should clarify what happened.

In March 2006, about 1,000 students from neighboring school districts El Rancho (Pico Rivera, CA) and Whittier Union (Whittier, CA) walked out and protested in front of Montebello High School in Montebello, CA, unfairly attaching the innocent high school's name to this incident. Montebello students were on lockdown during this time because it was quite a rowdy crowd. The Montebello High School website offers the explanation here, near the end of the page. This memo MUSD school employees received describes the incident in further detail.

Snopes offered this article and clarification here.

Unfortunately, I also found a website that incorrectly reports the details, saying that Montebello students marched out in protest. This is not true, and I was horrified that there are seemingly "dependable" news sources publishing this thing, where others can take and reproduce on web forums, further perpetuating the mess.

However, these pictures are 100% authentic, as are the students who so foolishly tied their mugs to this abomination. Apparently, one single student from the El Rancho district was punished, but there are no details as to who it was or what their punishment was.

I would feel comfortable sharing these pictures, but there needs to be a better explanation with it. It lacks details, such as saying "the protestors," who could be anyone, but unfairly ties Montebello students with this label. Montebello students were known to march out in protest of immigration legislature, but they were only a handful, and they did not cause a commotion or doing something illegal. Yet another reason why I worry about some of those in the generation behind me representing "civil discourse" in all the wrong ways - it brings to mind Andrew "Don't Tase me, Bro!" Meyers and the like.

Senator Kerry, meet Brother Discourse

I love the fact that I live in a country where civil discourse is legal, but you have to use it correctly. If your civil discourse is laced with profanity and involves calling law enforcement "bro," then surely you won't be taken seriously. Alas, should I fear our country's future that people like him are the next generation to carry a war-torn, baby-boomer-laden country forward? Watch the video and decide for yourself.

At the very least, two law enforcement officers can return to their jobs knowing that they did the right thing.

Sweetness

Hershey's (the chocolate company) is moving some operations down south to Mexico. I was discussing it in an email with my grandmother, who asked me to confirm the story before she sent it out to her friends. As you all know, once I start writing, I can't stop, and these words came out:

"Well, I first checked out Snopes, and the email is only partially true. It is true that they are opening a plant in Mexico, laying off about 3,000 Hershey's workers, and closing the plant in Canada, but they're not shutting down the U.S. operations *completely.* They'll still be working here. It's just that they're doing what everyone else is doing by outsourcing some of their labor to cheaper labor sites (Mexico and South Korea) to cut down operations costs, and likely phase out the powerful U.S. labor unions, although they'd never say that out loud! If you'd want to spread the whole truth, I would pass this article around instead. Click here for the story.

More from the horse's mouth, here is a press release about Hershey Mexico acquiring one of Mexico's top confectionaries back in 2004. In truth, Hershey Mexico began operations way back in 1969. We've probably been eating chocolate made in Mexico at one point or another for nearly 40 years. So I am really not surprised that after acquiring confectionaries in Mexico and South Korea that they decided to move some operations down south. Click here for the story.

Ironically, the plant that is suffering Hershey's cuts by the end of the year is located in Oakdale, Calif. Sounds like some of the immigrants here may want to think about returning home if they want to keep their manufacturing job :-( that article can be found by clicking here.

Even more ironic is that the world's melting pot is now handing out jobs overseas and enticing workers with good jobs at a fraction of the cost that an American would require. Considering the power of the American dollar is sinking fast, we are going to be seeing a lot of this happen more often, especially with companies that most people think are truly "all-American." You have to wonder what the powerful U.S. corporations are thinking about this immigration hullabaloo... it's as if they're saying 'Don't come to us - we'll come to you.'"

So if you want to boycott Hershey, buy Dove. I don't know where their chocolate comes from, though.

If you feel guilty about eating chocolate at all, this will make you feel a little better about it.

Four Siblings stuck in the Family Tree

One Christmas morning in 2006, my grandmother gave a gift to her three daughters: a series books about birth order. Aunt Kim got the firstborn; my mom Debbie, the middle child; and Aunt Lisa, the baby of the family. I've never seen three grown women open those books up and giggle like a gaggle of schoolgirls reading about themselves and each other, passing the books around, pointing at each other and laughing about "that is EXACTLY what you are!" Although Uncle Skip is truly the oldest in the family, he was born much earlier than Grandma's girls and the only boy, and so had established himself as the oldest sibling but, well, he was the only boy, and so it's a little different for him. (Yes, sometimes, gender is a difference we must all accept, no?)

My mom's kids are similarly set. Three girls, one boy. I'm the oldest, technically, but only by 14 months. My brother and I might as well be fraternal twins, as we basically went through high school and college together, and he was a similar role model to my younger sisters. But then there's the trifecta of Weindorf sisters, the first, middle and last. So you can understand why this article intrigued me on CNN.

Granted, this study was conducted in Norway and had only male subjects. But it suggests that firstborns have a higher IQ later in life than their younger siblings. Maybe there's some truth to it. But then I started reading the "professional advice" that was given in raising each of the kids, and some of it was just plain ridiculous. Not to mention that there is too much advice running around, and that most parents don't allow themselves their gut instinct to take over some of the childrearing and depend on pure STRANGERS to help raise their kids, but that's quite beside the point right now.

I had to disagree with a lot of their "advice." For starters, they suggest saying to an oldest sibling that they have to "set an example" for their younger siblings puts too much pressure on the eldest and is discouraged. What kind of responsibility, then, are they supposed to have? Of course they're supposed to be an example. Everyone sets an example to someone. Kids really do need that kind of responsibility to grow up into responsible adults. This kind of information being perpetrated throughout our society is generating dependent kids and "helicopter" parents. I personally find that kind of behavior, like bringing your mother to an interview, deplorable.

Then I look at my family. My parents always made sure I was the best example to my younger siblings. My parents had us so far apart, though, that I don't think they had a problem with giving more attention to one sibling than the other. Maybe I'm wrong because I never noticed. Once I graduated high school, started college, and got engaged, I'll admit I probably took up a lot of my parents' time. My brother probably enjoyed that, only because he liked to make sure he kept his end of the bargain by keeping his room (sort of) clean and doing his chores, but then was pleased as pie to stay in his room and feed his fish, read, and play his games. Once Tim got out of his colic stage when he was, say, a few months old, he was pretty easy to raise.

Then my sister came along, and she was like the Tasmanian devil in the family. She had the most spunk, enough for all of us combined. She took the tricycle for a ride down the basement steps and probably sat in the ER and timeout for the most time out of all of us. While my mother and I, when I was 16, would have screaming matches in the kitchen that would fizzle just as quickly, Cindy had a glowing ember that would more or less spark a just few times a month. And then the baby, Sara, 12 years my junior, is about to get the house all to herself. Tim and I left home very soon after graduating from college, and Cindy's less than a year away from moving to North Carolina with her beau. Sara was a huge surprise for my parents, but probably the most pleasant and laid back. Everyone at school likes her. She loves sports and keeps busy. She rarely needs discipline and has a big heart (sometimes too big). We joke that my parents go too easy on the baby, but she really is a good kid.

As for the IQs, we've never taken an IQ test. So far, all of us have gone to local (Erie) colleges for education and have done quite well. We all had honors classes and graduated near the tops of our classes. But Cindy was the valedictorian at college, not me, and Tim graduated summa cum laude with 3.999998 GPA or something like that. I was somewhere in the top 10%. And Sara's doing a fine job, too, so what's a few IQ points? None of us want a piece of paper from a college to do the talking for us. We can prove ourselves just as well, thank you very much.

Go AWAY, Britney

Please, leave us alone. Now. I mean it.

All of these articles, plus more, have come from People in the last week. I think I counted about 10. She needs to pull a La Lohan and disappear in Utah for a few months so we can forget about her, so she can forget about herself, and she can learn what it means to be benevolent to her own kids instead of pulling a hit and run in the middle of her sorry mess. It's people like her that I have to try to explain to my kid someday that these people are not role models, REALLY, it's just the damn paps shoving the idea down your throat and hoping you are hungry enough to swallow.

Considering we're the unhealthiest country around, that's not too far-fetched.

To wear or not to wear?

Lou Dobbs has written an editorial that defends the reason why he still wears his American flag lapel pin - full article is here.

He defines the controversy around why people are wearing these flag pins as pure "lunacy," and I agree with him on that. Yet again, the pols in this country are nitpicking everything apart to pieces, throwing mud while dodging it at the same time. It never ends, does it? And of course, it doesn't help that this kind of debate has been sparked in both wartime and election time in this country, especially when a Presidential hopeful has put away his lapel pin, and Dobbs has blasted this gentleman's choice and reasoning for doing so.

Sen. Barack Obama has put away his pin and reasons that his words will suffice as defining him as an American. Dobbs counters that this is "arrogant" and Obama is "horribly mistaken." Then there's Katie Couric, who takes exception when Americans use the flag to refer to us as "we," even though we are all Americans here and what singly does unite us is the soil we live on.

All right. Couric and Obama have their points, but I think Couric is ridiculous to say that we can't refer to ourselves as "we" when there is clearly something that unites us all in this country. Further, I believe Obama's quest for being an American versus wearing it on his sleeve is a very fine goal indeed. Show us how to be a patriot by doing and saying, and not by sticking a pin and saying "NOW I'm an American! Found the missing piece to the puzzle, finally!" It's as if by wearing these pins, the journalism and political communities are saying "Look at ME, DAMN IT, I'm a freaking AMERICAN! That's RIGHT! This is BETTER than my damn passport, beeyotches, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it!" I'd rather not that be the message conveyed.

Dobbs points out that he also disagrees with those journalists who say the absence of the pin indicates neutrality and utmost objectivity. I must agree on this point. To quote Lewis Black, take a globe and look at it - "See? Countries!" To bear an American flag is to assert your citizenship to one of the many on this globe, but not to wear it doesn't take away my citizenship, and certainly will not take an American's objectivity away. It's in our blood, in our money, in our homes. For Pete's sake, we're watching American news while eating our American dinners in our American homes and working in our American jobs while paying our American taxes. The absence of a pin isn't going to change where we were born and raised or our "American-ness."

Let's face it, guys, whether Obama wears his pin or not, he still an American citizen, for crying out loud. And so are the journalists who don't wear their pins on the air. Further, I find it laughable that our country is so mired in its own culture and not more attentive to others, that we could dare question someone's objectivity on the basis of a pin. How many Americans have truly bothered to research and truly understand Islam? How many know that Ramadan is about to come to a close this week? How many truly know about both the advantages and issues of socialized health care and bilingual countries? You only have to look north to our neighbors, and even then, our American eyes are so short-sighted that we can't get past our own TVs.

But here's my beef, and it includes Mr. Dobbs: This whole issue with the pin is the high school equivalent of who was and was not wearing their school colors on pep rally day. Those who were wearing neutral colors were cast aside and questioned, even though it didn't change the fact that they were still going to the high school. Wearing the American flag pin has turned into a popularity contest, the ultimate trend to be in on, the accessory one should never leave their house without. Again, let's reflect on what Lewis Black says about this war: Just because you are not for the war, it DOES NOT mean you are for the other side. Just because you don't wear your flag pin DOES NOT mean you're for the other side, Mr. Dobbs.

Now that Obama has been questioned as not being "black" enough, and Hillary has been questioned as not being "female" or "feminine" enough (whatever the HELL that means), now we're questioning our candidates and pols as being "American" enough. How many levels of femininity are there? Or blackness, or American-ness? Has anyone counted? Can we pay some scientists to look into this, please, and clear this up once and for all?

Perhaps it is time for us to look at the globe, then, and see that there is one single thing that unites us all - our species, our humanity. The very essence of what and who we are are the very things that make us all connected in some way, even when we set against each other in war. There are no levels of humanity, unfortunately. Even if you're born in America, there's no on stopping you from obtaining citizenship in Canada or elsewhere. But once a human, always a human.

And if you're not wearing a pin, I promise to keep my nose clean, and yours too, of course. Just because Obama isn't wearing his pin does not mean I may or may not withhold my vote from him. I'm more interested in seeing what he does and not what he wears.

Man on trial for feeding homeless en masse

If I'd known it was illegal to feed the homeless in Orlando, I would have been proud to stand on trial, too. Here's the story in its entirety, courtesy of WFTV.com. Go ahead and read; I'll wait.

Incredible. I cannot believe that Orlando has an ordinance like this. Granted, I could probably think of a few reasons why this is so, but that doesn't excuse the fact that there are poor people who depend on the generosity of others for their livelihood.

I decided to research this ordinance further. Then I found this on the ACLU of Florida site, which apparently, only a year ago, it was legal to feed the homeless *twice* a year (and as we all know, we can live on eating only once every six months).

From the looks of it, Orlando has a long history of anti-homeless ordinances, including laws against panhandling. Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel had it right when he wrote this little op-ed.

We are called to feed the homeless and clothe the naked, but in this day and age, all people in America have the means to break the cycle of poverty. As a nation, we need to figure out how to do it, instead of throwing the homeless in jail for a night because they were panhandling, and then letting them out a few days later, only to be back to no home, no money, no means of feeding themselves.

I found another article from the Associated Press that sums up the actions of the ordinance here, begining with this opening sentence: "ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - City officials have banned charitable groups from feeding homeless people in parks downtown, arguing that transients who gather for weekly meals create safety and sanitary problems for businesses."

Ah yes. Those dirty, disgusting homeless people slopping their wares in public places. How dare they un-beautify the city of Orlando! Have they no shame?!

Well, it's not just happening in Orlando, apparently. Last August, a report from The New Standard covered the disturbing trend, which includes Las Vegas passing a simiar ordinance, with a related article here. If you're a law buff, the relevant Orlando ordinance text can be found here:

So let's sit and think for a minute. It's very possible that these people on the City Councils are embarrassed that millions of people visit their cities every year and are met with the sight of those in more dire need. Perhaps they are thinking of their tourist appeal, which I am quite sure they are. Businesses are embarrased by the fact that homeless peddle at their street corner or near their storefront. Many people wonder what happened that put them on the street. Can't they get a job somewhere?, they wonder.

Yet our attitudes towards the American homeless are getting more and more crass, as they seem to arrest our nation's development and advancement. Yet it is this very active development and advancement that leaves the weakest behind, instead of including them in this network, this opportunity, this nation under God.

But there's a fine line between letting those live their own life and helping others in need, because invariably, there will be those who always milk the system, which angers me even more, these people biting the hand that feeds you (or attaching like a leech to the hand that feeds you until running it dry and dead). I believe there are some good people in our goverment(s) that really do want to help, but we're doing it all wrong. Electronic food stamps are a currency that shouldn't exist; why can't we find a way to enter the homeless into our working system? Are the pork barrelers in D.C. too concerned with their own private needs that we can't figure out a way to enable the homeless to work for themselves, to give them a way to not be shoved into smaller and smaller spaces as we did with the Native Americans?

Being homeless is not a crime. We need to stop treating it that way and get these people off the streets by allowing them to begin working for themselves again. And I do agree that perhaps it would be an unnecessary burden for the government to force private businesses to hire at least one homeless person each, so how about the government offering their available jobs to the homeless? By using the system that has abandoned them, perhaps this is the answer to empowering these people again.

I found an interesting blog, called the 13th juror, and it's written by a woman who is a poverty lawyer. Check it out here .

Bureaucracy's Earache

Has there been any worse time of the month than the first and last? A pain in my ear, literally. Allow me to outline the last few weeks:

We found out that we could not afford the group coverage that we were utilizing through Spencer's company, so we decided to hunt around for indivdiual coverage. We found some reasonable prices through a group affiliated with AHDI, the professional organziation I'm a member of as a medical transcriptionist. No problem. Well, it was a bit hard to get a hold of my agent, so it took longer than usual to get all the paperwork, go through all the rules and plans, and pick the ones that were best for us. Needless to say, since the cheapest options with decent coverage were far between, I ended up putting our entire family on indvidual plans. Why should my husband have to pay for maternity coverage? Duh.

Fast forward to the end of September. It's almost time to cancel our existing coverage, and I'm having issues filling out paperwork. So we decide that, instead of risking the insurance company not honoring our requested effective date of October 1, we decided to get short-term coverage for October just to bridge the gap.

Then, I called the insurance company to check the status of our short-term coverage, in case we needed to see a doctor (like me. As sure as clockwork, I developed a strange fullness/ache in my ear mere hours before October 1.) I called Blue Cross of CA and was told that my husband and child were approved, but not me. Why? I had a claim. I went to the doctor to get a simple cyst checked out in September, and deeming me too high risk for short term coverage, I was denied.

So now I sit here, frantically filling out my own paperwork so that my husband can fax my paperwork first, and pray that we're not at the mercy of the insrance company if they do not approve my October 1 effective date. Not to mention that all my prescription medications will be fully out of pocket this month.

Why am I being punished for proactively taking care of myself? It's not like I have AIDS or diabetes or hepatitis C, or even over the age of 30. I am a low-risk patient by all means, and yet I'm being forced to hope for the best while my request for long-term coverage is being processed. Is the lesson "don't go to your doctor if you're switching insurance?" Because that is ridiculous. What if I was fired from a job and had to scramble for insurance, and ended up with pneumonia or a respiratory infection that required antibiotics? This isn't a chronic condition, and yet I'm being treated as if I have one.

Who is Ashley Madison?

If anyone can tell me who she is, I'd be indebted. I'd like to know why this muse has been the inspiration for a website called ashleymadison.com, "Where Monogamy becomes Monotony."

Recently, on CNN.com, a billboard ad featuring the words "Life is short... have an affair" has been the ire of Dr. Phil, Christian groups, and the target of many reporters grilling the controversial website spokesman for why they would encourage such a destructive act that destroys couples and families.

I decided to check out the site for myself. Surely this site was not advertising what we assumed it was - paying your way to an extramarital or open relationship with other like-minded husbands, wives or singletons. Was it true?

Unfortunately, it was true, and then some. An article called "The Myth of Monogamy" by David Barash, a psychology professor in Seattle, outlines the very reasons that humans, by nature, are being pressed by society to practice in something that is against our very nature. To sum up, humans are not meant to be monogamous. Like the female barn swallow who seeks out the male swallow with the deepest forked tail as an ideal mate, there is scientific proof that the female will "sneak copulations" with a male barn swallow whose tail has been artificially forked by researchers. There are several other species, and most of all of humans, who show that within their own respective societies that these kinds of open relationships or multiple marriages (usually, one man to several women) are freely practiced.

I am first of all surprised that I'd accept being compared to a barn swallow, especially in my regards to my sexual tendencies. The gentleman writing this article has first reduced humanity to a collective of high-minded animals who should be submitting to their basest, "natural" instincts. As a human who is capable of hatred, love, revenge or charity, I highly doubt that this kind of "natural" action would be accepted by the millions of people who have claimed to find their soul mate. It sounds like a contradiction, does it not? I find even more humorous that this kind of "evolution" should be embraced, the fact that humanity must "evolve" to accept this kind of natural behavior. Wait a minute. Last time, I heard that scientific evidence pointed to us evolving from apes. If we are returning to our natural state, isn't that called "devolution?" Isn't that a return to our natural, basest form? Why would this be called evolution if we were going BACK to our natural selves, and not TOWARDS a more refined, learned human state. That is confusing.

Ah, but it gets dicey. I started reading the comments from real-time users of AM, of course mostly anonymous, and found some interesting tidbits. People stuck in loveless, abusive marriages. Couples enlisting at the site in attempts at "open relationships." Women and men lamenting that the spark was gone from their marriage, and finding down-to-earth people at AM. Then I saw the words "soul mate" and "marriage" pop up in these comments. Then again, and again, and again. These people were finding the person they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. Wait a minute... what kind of tool is this? One woman suggested it was the best way to help men avoid resorting to prostitution, even though she claimed to be in a secure, loving, monogamous relationship.

So what kind of tool is AM, and what language is it speaking to this society of monogamy-centered people? Most have found their soul mate on AM, a direct contradiction to the claim of "social justice" that it aims to promote. Soul mate finder? Prostitution preventer? A simple social network of people looking for others who want sex? Ah. There are many of those kinds of social networks, but few that actually ask you to consider finding a spark with another human outside of the confines of marriage, to find the feelings of those raging hormones you felt when you met your husband or wife and now have been dulled over the years of monotonous marriage.

Perhaps AM is not the crux of the problem, although I do find it extremely troubling and lacking of tact or respect for those who do find marriage rewarding, liberating and yes, even sexy. Perhaps the crux of the problem is in the individual, the person who accepts marriage before they are ready, who accepts marriage for all the wrong reasons, the person who succumbed to the pressure of being married for the sake of it, for acceptance. The beauty of being a Christian is that some of us can be called to a life of being single. It is not a sin not to marry. Marriage carries responsibility, and this day and age, it's a tool for too many wrong reasons: power, money, social acceptance.

As I said, I find it troubling that we are being invited by some to return to our basest, most "natural" roots by finding the joys and liberation of being in open relationships or feeling the exhilaration of risk by cheating behind the backs of our spouses. Indeed, I feel it is the devolution of humanity to promote this kind of activity, a push backwards away from the capabilities of our beautiful ability to be educated and explore the world in ways we have not discovered yet. I do not envy those stuck in a horrible, abusive or unloving marriage; these days, it has been made legal to leave an abusive relationship, which is necessary. But for those who just want to get the rush, to feel the hormone-intense adrenaline rush of an extramarital affair, I ask: why use marriage as your own tool for your own selfish needs?

So, Ashley Madison. Whether you're a true-to-life mistress or simply a made-up moniker, you have been a tool for creating quite the titter-tatter among Americans who cluck their righteous tongues at your silly, derogatory website. Yet, I feel very strongly, we have a duty - as Americans, as Christians or as just plain humans - to yet again point the finger at ourselves and find how we can individually address this kind of behavior.