I'm still fuming.
RW, it's like you've suddenly revealed here that you're playing the card game of life and you've only got 11 cards in front of you. Good grief, man! There are 52 cards in the deck! You can't play this game if you don't have all the cards!
Of course the needs of a marriage come before the needs of ones' parents.
Most of us started to clue into this by about the 6th grade after our introduction to a pair of families: the Montagues and the Capulets. Perhaps you've heard of them? No? Well, consider it a clue towards finding a few more cards.
It's people like you, RW, who are waging a quiet assault on family in this country. And in my book, that is an assault against a critical component of America's very stability.
In my apparently archaic view, when two people are married, they become the beginning of a new family. At that point, the needs of the husband and wife and any children (current or future)
must be held above all others. This is such a
critical point that I see being eroded here that it actually
scares me. If you allow the members of the past -- the Montague parents and the Capulet parents -- to determine the rules of that new family,
you are condemning family - and thus the nation - to death and decay.
In an article titled, "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: On the Communal Nature of Marriage," posted at the
Family Resource Council's website, Dr. Allan C. Carlson shows that he understands this. He eloquently puts into words something that some of us inherently understand: marriage involves concentric circles of interest. Here they are:
The First Community Circle: Parents and Their Unborn Children
The Second Community Circle: Extended Family, or Kin
The Third Community Circle: The Neighborhood
The Fourth Community Circle: The Community of Faith
The Fifth Community Circle: The Nation as a Community
You'll note that this article is on the subject of what consitutes healthy marriages. In other words, what should be taken into consideration when considering whether a marriage would truly be viable or not. That's tangential to what we're talking about here, but I wanted to post it because it shows that even
before a marriage has occurred, even the
Family Research Council is highlighting one fact: the
first circle is that of the "Parents and Their Unborn Children."
Michael and Terri had no children in this saga (and if they did, as Dr. Carlson highlights, their needs would have been on par with their parents), but they were two prospective parents. And as a result, their needs came first. It
has to be that way in order for family, and thus society, to survive. You cannot cling to the past (#2). You cannot expect a neighborhood (#3) or a church (#4) to be the core of a family. You cannot expect a nation to grow a successful family (#5). All those groups play a role in support, but the
core, once again, is formed by the parents and their children.
And so when I see so many people - including you, RW - launch into an attack on the dominance of marriage in society, I am in mixed state of fear and disgust.
What you are advocating, RW, by implying that the demands of the Terri's parents should have come above the demands of the married couple - and indeed, Terri herself - is the destruction of the "First Community Circle."
In other words, you and others like you, through your efforts to move yourselves up from your rightful place in circle 4 and 5, are thus attacking the core of the family.
Get back in your place, boy!
Here's another hint for some more cards: if you want to be in circle number one, you need to marry someone. Maybe if you understood that, by corollary you'd understand a bit more about what Michael Schiavo has been through.
I am
sick and tired of people like you who make grandiose, hand-waving statements about how you cherish life, and yet instead of taking
true steps towards protecting life - which in human terms is really
marriage and what stems from it,
family - you instead attack it, by
attacking the very sanctity of marriage.
The wishes of Michael and Terri Schiavo
must be held above the wishes of all other parties.
Get this through your head: marriage, and any children that result from that marriage, must be held above all else in order to assure the survival of the family, and thus the nation. If you intervene when a brain damaged woman is allowed to die, as her husband has requested and we have been told the very woman herself requested, then
you are taking us further down the slippery slope to the destruction of the family. Intervene this time to violate the wishes of a brain damaged woman and her husband, and what is it next time?
Hopefully my point has sunk in a little, so let's shift gears for the conclusion: how do we know what Terri's wishes really were? Well, due to the nature of this situation, that boils down to a matter of faith, doesn't it?
RW, you have faith that a man murdered a woman he did not love in an act of pure evil.
I have faith that a man loved his wife so much that, instead of just walking away
as he could have done, he endured
years of howls and barbs from
complete strangers in order to carry out her final wishes.
In all sincerity I ask, which would a religious man believe?
Though that doesn't prove him innocent either.