No, I don’t pretend to be an expert on either sex or love. If you want any advise regarding your private life, I do consultations, like Lucy from Peanuts fame, for just a small donation. It has gone up from the 5 cents, she charged. Inflation you know. Don’t expect any salacious details. You’ll have to wait on those until my novel on my life with my ex-wife, she was nice but she was a real piece of work. 

We have red states and blue states that divide us but are we more divided by what kind of person we are? Republicans and their social values are supposed to be influenced by whether their father was a strong father type. Men who had fathers who stressed the importance of the rugged individual, and self-reliance. Democrats are allegedly influenced by their mothers to be more nurturing and community oriented.
I actually think that your religion has an impact on a person’s politics. There are Christians who come from the abolitionists and civil rights tradition and fundamentalists who talk about God’s wrath. Again, one can view the gospel and see God as a loving and forgiving God, and some others view it like Jonathan Edwards of colonial times as a vengeful God with all of us being great sinners. Edwards wrote the famous sermon entitles, “Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God. It still frightens one if you read the sermon these many years since it was written.
A person’s perspective on sex is different dependent on whether you come from the Christian view of some that sex is only for having children, while the other view is that sex is part of nature, not something to be feared or limited but enjoyed.
It is important to note that on one hand fundamentalists view contraception as being bad and abortions as well. This seeming contradiction is a means by which man attempts to control a woman’s sexuality. This conservative Christian viewpoint keeps men in their formal traditional view that men should be in control. No person has the right to control a person’s sexuality. If you took that concept to the extreme it would be deemed to be okay to force a wife to have sex or that rape is okay. Violence is violence, forcing anyone to do anything is wrong,
But change has occurred in our country, and change is feared by many. Women have more rights now. They can vote, they work and are the breadwinners as much as men. Changes such as these are disturbing to the status quo. But than these facts help explain who are Republicans and who are Democrats.
Family values is a phrase that the right-wing likes to talk about, less so now then before. A successful marriage is a part of family values and you would think successful marriages would be the goal. What is an interesting irony is that in states that are very red and very Southern, people get married younger and they have a lower level of higher education and their incomes are lower. And these Southern states have the highest per thousand rate of divorce than any other region in the country.
The results show that there are fewer divorces per 1000 in traditionally blue states such as Massachusetts. North Dakota shows the importance of higher incomes and lower unemployment. Those two facts illustrate why North Dakota has a lower divorce rate.
Sex should be recognized and enjoyed for what it is pleasure and the state has no right to interfere into people’s lives. It is too personal and it is none of anyone’s business. Who are we to judge? What we might find to be okay another person might find it disturbing.
A little less paternalism would go a long way. Our lives should be governed not by religious or political tyranny but by the golden rule.
The older outdated view that a woman’s place is in the home is still stressed by some conservatives as illustrated by a show on Fox TV. You would think the chauvinist view of a women’s place being in the home would not find a home on a major television network, but there you had three men talking about women. The fact of the matter is that hard economic times have made it necessary for two parents to work just to get by. This new world of reality can’t be good for the family. How can children get the attention and nurturing that they need if they see more of their teachers and more of their child care providers than they see their parents?
It is harder to understand why men, and I mean some men, still support the idea that women should not get paid the same for the same job as a man. But then again, maybe these men continue the glass ceiling to maintain their pride and power. Perhaps some come from the school of thought that a father figure, paternalistic society is best.
Let me tell you from personal experience having a father who never expressed his love or showed any affection was not uncommon in my father’s day. On the bad day if you looked at him the wrong way you might have felt his boot as you went across as a result a swift kick. What child did not hear of a parent who did not use a belt or a strap on his child. But we live in a changing world, and families and individuals are much better off when you can feel the love from your parents.
Our society is better when there is a sense of community rather than every man and woman for themselves. During the Great Depression, even though things could not have been worse, people took care of each other the best that they could. There was shared sacrifice during World War II.
Now for some of our fellow citizens it is all about me. They seem to want to be this rugged individual. But to be honest none of us get to where we want to be on our own, without help from someone. It is better to have a hand out to help those in need rather than having an attitude of tough, who cares. But for the grace of God you could be that person in need.
So I would rather be more like a community, and have our nation be a bunch of communities across this land. Where true democracy can start in each town or village, and if an idea works, hopefully others will hear about it and the idea will spread to where our lives start to be better. Our world is growing smaller and our lives are more intertwined than ever.
As to politics and our Constitution. It should be remembered that in two places in the Constitution it states the purpose of government. The pre-amble and the Necessary and Proper clause tell us how our government is to provide and promote the general welfare of the people. It does not state that government is to stay out of our lives, quite the contrary as it speaks to the responsibilities that those who represent us have in maintaining our Republic.
So who are you at there? Do you come from a paternalistic view of life or are you a democrat because your parents nurtured you and taught you the value of community?