Family Values

I usually let craziness like this just pass me by, but for some reason today it made me angry.
A headline in that never ending stream of social media declared that a former staff person in the Reagan administration thinks a handful of southern states should secede from the United States and form their own nation in an effort to protect family values. Values that, to him, are under attack by multiculturalism and marriage equality, among other things. Maybe all this struck a raw nerve because yesterday I attended a presentation on domestic abuse and listened to a woman share her story of tolerating years of abuse in a traditional marriage before she found the courage to confront her husband and find the help and support she needed. I forget the statistics she shared, but the number of women (primarily) who are abused is staggering.

I want to say as clearly as I can…
Family values have NOTHING to do with protecting traditional marriage or being white.
Family values in a relationship or in a marriage has EVERYTHING to do with respect and love and trust and support. And, more than that, family values has to do with not only treating partners with respect, but neighbors with respect and strangers with respect and even those who fundamentally disagree with you with respect. Family values has to do with doing your part to make your relationship stronger, your marriage stronger, your family stronger, your community stronger, your country stronger. Family values has to do with decency and honesty and kindness and compassion.

I am tired of those who shout so loud about family values using words and language that belittles and demeans anyone and everyone who doesn’t think like them or look like them or share their views being given a platform larger than the tiny soapbox on which they are standing.

OK.
Rant is over.
Back to the things that really matter.