The President is now a Dictator

Six years ago I wrote a letter to my Cuban friends warning them not to vote for Obama, because of his ideas about our country; I called him a Socialist. What I could not have predicted is that he would become a Dictator. According to the US Constitution, this one act of his calls for impeachment, but that will not happen. We elected him for the wrong reason and we will not impeach him for the wrong reason and on both counts we are wrong.

No man is above The Constitution despite the subject at hand or the importance of it. His short speech to the American people attempting to justify the action is by itself very telling, because he spent that time appealing to our sense of fairness and the good heart of the American people. He had little to say about the legality of what he is doing, and that is because it’s not legal. While The President identifies himself as a Constitutional Scholar, he seems not to really care about its protection, I consider myself an admirer of that document and of the men who created it. Never before in human history has anything like the American Constitution existed and however noble the cause or issue at hand we should never let any one man or woman rise above it; even if only for one decision. The justification of “prosecutorial discretion” might work if this were being done for a few individuals but not for 5 million; that is called “abuse of power”, and failure to “faithfully execute” the oath of office. If he has not been able to agree with the Congress, then he needs to go back and work it out.

STEP BACK and LET GO OF THE PEN !

God save this Great Nation from the perilous road we have embarked on.


Below you will find a copy of the letter I sent to my friends a few days before Obama was elected for his first term in November 2008. Yucas and the Presidential Election of November 4, 2008.

Marriage and the Current Debate

The discussion, debate, argument, posturing and legal maneuvering is at an all-time high over the issue of same gender unions. There are some things which I find fascinating in this process and two of them particularly stand out to me. The first is what marriage is and where does it come from, and the second closely related to the first; does a same gender couple have the right to require a pastor/clergyman to marry them.

Point of clarification, what each of you does with your life is your business, not mine and not ours. This commentary goes as to the definition of marriage (not a legal exercise) and also as to the religious freedom of others regarding marriage.

Marriage as I see it and as most people see it, is the union of one man and one woman and many of us in the Judeo-Christian tradition hold it as a sacred union created by God at creation and later affirmed by Christ at the weddings of Cana. That’s it, that’s the simple definition. We also believe that what the state does regarding marriage is to give legal status to a union created by God. The argument for the longest time has been that same gender partners should have the same “legal rights” as those in marriages. My only disagreement with that is that it would also be called “marriage” although it could not from a religious stand point, if we hold that it is God who instituted marriage. Many have said over the years give same gender folks the opportunity to have the same legal rights and call it “xyz”.

The argument would continue, we want to go ahead and do this and call it marriage anyway, even if you religious folks don’t consider it marriage; the state says it can be called marriage. The Church does not have a copyright on the word “marriage”. OK the church does not have a copyright on the word marriage, so the aspiring couple could go ahead and “marry” under the laws of a given state and call it marriage. So we now have the same word for two very different things. The problem with this is that the folks that support same gender “marriage” have now managed to confuse themselves into thinking that since it is called “marriage” they can “require” a minister to perform a wedding ceremony.

Hold it there folks, the “marriage” that was just legalized is the one performed by the state which has no power or jurisdiction over the marriage the church performs. You see the confusion this has created. The marriage the Church performs by its ministers, pastors, priests, deacons or rabbis is protected by the 1st amendment of the United States Constitution and by God Himself.

All along the folks that argued for the rights of same gender unions explained that this was a legal issue and that folks in those relationships should have the same legal rights and that consequently God or his ministers had no business in this argument. It was not a religious matter only a legal one. OK, since the state can issue any license and call it what it wishes then the state can go ahead and perform whatever ceremony it wishes.

However, once you attempt to force a minister to “marry” the couple then this is no longer about rights for same gender couples. This is now something else; what should we call it?