Newspaper Page Text
♦ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2006
4A
Munaimi .Ijounuxl
OPINION
Daniel F. Evans
Editor and Publisher
Julie B. Evans
Vice President
Don Moncrief
Managing Editor
Bug on the windshield
This report came across the news ser
vice the other day.
A man in Virginia was fired because
he had a “pro-marriage”decal on the wind
shield of his pickup truck.
Not same-sex marriage, not “let’s support
marriage between people and animals.”
(Can you honestly say we won’t see that
sometime in our future?)
No, he had a bumper sticker on his truck
that read: “Please, vote for marriage on
Nov. 7.”
That is the day voters in Virginia will
be considering a proposed amendment to
the state constitution protecting tradition-
al marriage
between a
woman and a
man.
Can you
imagine?
Getting fired
because you
stand for
something
your father
and mother
and their father and mother and on and on,
generation after generation have stood for?
It just doesn’t make sense. This country
has gone absolutely psycho in regard to
political correctness.
And even further, we are the vast major
ity - we meaning people who still believe in
tradition - and yet we let others treat us as
if we’re the minority.
And we’re not talking about fair here.
We’re not out to rob them - them being peo
ple who tend to be on the complete opposite
end of the spectrum from what we believe
- of their rights but they absolutely insist
on robbing us of ours.
But the truth is, if everybody who believed
in traditional marriage were to go out and
buy a bumper sticker stating so, and then if
we were to all get fired, this country would
come to a screeching halt.
Then with any luck, the guy - or gal - who
fired this gentleman would be washing
windshields for a living.
Seeing red over green
We stand corrected.
In Thursday’s Houston Daily
Journal we said it would be nice
for someone to think outside of the box. We
asked the question wouldn’t it be great if
developers didn’t just bulldoze the land flat
before putting up new houses.
That way we could save the trees and resi
dents could in turn enjoy the shade and save
energy at the same time.
It appeared that - preserving the earth
- was secondary to: Get ‘er done and more
importantly, get ‘er done fast.
In fact, there are several perfect examples
of that mindset down 41 alone - two con
tending to see which can go up first right
across the street from each other.
But, we’ve come to find out - the hard
way via several none-too-happy phone calls
- that the opposite is also true.
There are those - one who even offered
to give us a ride through his subdivision as
proof - who are good stewards of the envi
ronment.
They have taken responsible as stakehold
ers in our planet and to them we apologize
and hope they keep up the great work.
And maybe, just maybe, influence the rest
in their business along the way.
Letter to the editor
Nasty ads one way street
Like most folks, I get turned off by attack ads during
election season.
But in light of some of the letters to the editor I’ve seen
lately, I thought it was only fair to point out that negative
campaigning in the race between Mac Collins and Jim
Marshall is no one-way street.
See LETTER, page $A
Foy S. Evans
Editor Emeritus
And even further, we
are the vast msiority -
we meaning people who
still believe in tradition
- and yet we let others
treat us as if we're the
majority.
Sears tackles family fragmentation
When she became a trial court
judge in 1989, Leah Sears was
alarmed to find that nearly 20
percent of the civil cases on her dock
et were related to domestic relations
issues. By the time she had ascended
to the position of Chief Justice of
Georgia in July of 2005, those domes
tic relations cases - involving divorce,
child custody, child support and alimo
ny - had soared to over 65 percent.
In a speech she gave to the Atlanta
Rotary Club last year. Chief Justice
Sears explained the legal ramifications
of family fragmentation:
“The superior courts around this
state are busy, and in many locali
ties, overburdened,” she said. “Judicial
resources have been stretched to the
limit. Court calendars tend to be
lengthy and crowded.... Justice often
takes many months to accomplish, if
not years.”
“Typically crime and criminals
receive most of the blame for this.
The criminal justice system is seen as
a revolving door for repeat offenders,
most of them regularly committing
crimes that in one way or another
serve the illegal drug trade... Each year
Georgia’s tax payers spend millions of
dollars to prosecute law breakers and
put them behind bars.
“We seldom hear much, however,
about Georgia’s civil justice system and
the heavy domestic relations caseload.
The costs associated with that burden
have, for some reason, gone unnoticed
for years... But that doesn’t mean we
don’t have a family law caseload prob
lem in Georgia, because we do.”
She explains that domestic relations
cases not only outnumber all other
civil cases, they also outnumber all
felony and misdemeanor criminal cases
combined. In fact, Georgia’s superior
courts devote more time to domestic
relations cases than they do to crimi
nal cases. Perhaps more telling - and
troubling - is the fact that one out of
four children under the age of 18 in
Georgia had a case with the Office of
"Sure, they're cute. But anytime those two show up at
your door with their hands out, it's downright scary!"
If you blink while reading this, you missed it all
It’s time to come clean over some
thing I did the other night, some
thing I had never done before.
After plodding through a novel that
became more tedious as it went along, I
skipped ahead 50 or so pages and went
right to the final chapter to see how
everything came out.
There you have it. I’m not proud of
what I did, but I did it. I am a terrible
person.
Normally, when I begin a book, I
stick with it, no matter how long it
takes. If it’s nonfiction, I might skip
around but eventually read the whole
thing. Leaving pages unread is a waste
of words.
I’m the same way with television
and movies. If I don’t watch the entire
film or show, I haven’t really seen it,
and someday I’ll have to go back and
watch the entire thing again.
For instance, the last movie I saw
in a theater was, let’s see, King Kong.
(No, not the 1933 version, wise guy;
the one that came out last year.) It was
a long, long movie, and somewhere
between the jumbo soft drink and the
Empire State Building, I really needed
to visit the restroom.
But I stayed in my seat, endured,
meditated, prayed.
Why? Because if I had missed even
a couple of minutes of the movie, I
wouldn’t really have seen King Kong.
My wife, now, is the complete oppo
site. She can miss parts of a show and
OPINION
Ramdy S
Hicks bj 1
Columnist SgHfc-/.;.
Georgia Family Council
Child Support Enforcement.
It’s the latter statistic that takes us
beyond issues surrounding the courts
into what troubles Chief Justice the
most: what has happened to the fam
ily-
“We can tell from the overburdened
courts of this state that suffering is
taking place on a larger and larger
scale. In 1955, the year I was born,
for every 100 children born, four were
born out of wedlock while eight had
parents who divorced. By the year
2000, that number had risen fivefold:
for every 100 children born, 33 were
born out of wedlock and 27 had parents
who divorced.”
She points out - as I have many
times in this column - that research
demonstrates that positive outcomes
for children are generally higher in
intact families where committed moth
ers and fathers are raising their chil
dren together. Adults and children
from intact families are less likely to
live in poverty, suffer from physical
and emotional illness, or engage in
risky behaviors than adults and chil
dren from fragmented families.
The chief justice makes it clear that
it is not her intention “...to make
all single parents feel bad about the
choices they’ve made” or to imply that
all children from broken homes are
destined for a failed life.
“Many single parents succeed as par
ents against steep odds,” she says.
“And they have my utmost admiration.
But communities where lasting mar
riages are common have better out
comes for children, women and men
than do communities plagued with
never mind at all because she fills in
the missed parts by the time the cred
its roll.
For instance, when we’re watching
television and she gets up to get a drink
or answer the telephone, she always
says, “Don’t stop it.” She knows I will
automatically reach for the remote to
pause the action when one of us gets
up.
By the way, that is why I love the
digital video recorder our cable com
pany provides.
It lets us pause the action, back it
up or fast forward without missing a
second of the show. This device was
invented just for me. I can walk into
the room when the news or a game is
playing and back it up to the beginning
or replay segments where I couldn ; t
understand what happened or what
was said.
I five by the remote control because
I want to know everything that goes
on. I don’t like reaching the end of a
show and wondering where that guy
came from or seeing that a character
j
Glynn
Moore
Columnist
Morris News Service
HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL
high rates of divorce and unmarried
childbearing.”
The past must not simply be viewed
“as the graveyard of bad or outmoded
ideas. Not all change is for the better.
Some change makes things worse. And
the changed way many people today
view marriage has obviously made
things worse.”
What it all comes down to is that
family fragmentation is clogging the
courts, burdening the economy and,
most significantly, causing much suf
fering. For these reasons, Justice
Sears argues that marriage “is more
than a private emotional relationship.
It is also a social good.”
In response to the mounting prob
lems caused by family fragmenta
tion, last July, the Georgia Supreme
Court voted unanimously to create the
Georgia Supreme Court Commission
on Children, Marriage and Family Law
to help relieve Georgia’s overburdened
court system.
The Commission will be chaired by
Chief Justice Sears and will be com
prised of two committees: the Advisory
Committee on Healthy Marriages,
chaired by Justice Sears, and the
Committee on Justice for Children,
chaired by Justice P Harris Hines. Both
committees will study the legal conse
quences associated with the growing
fragmentation of Georgia families, and
make recommendations for addressing
their root causes.
It just makes so much sense. When
families stay together and divorce and
out-of-wedlock childbearing decrease,
so will many of our culture’s challeng
es, including the caseload of an over
burdened judiciary. It’s encouraging to
see leaders in our state tackling such a
tough and important issue.
Georgia Family Council is a non-prof
it organization that works to strength
en and defend the family in Georgia
by impacting communities, shaping
laws and influencing culture. For more
information, go to www.georgiafamily,
org, (770) 242-0001 or greggCwfam.org.
has vanished faster than the new crew
man on an old Star Trek episode.
I like to think I need to see the
entire show because of an old news
man’s curiosity. My wife, on the other
hand, thinks I’m quickly becoming
Monk Lite.
I must disagree with her. Is it con
sidered obsessive-compulsive behavior
to sit through the credits of movies and
TV shows? I don’t think so; some day,
I might need to know the name of the
key grip for that film, or who played
Second Cop, or whether any animals
were harmed in the making of that
production.
You know, a psychologist could have
a field day with one of us. (Pssst, it’s
my wife who needs help, Doc. My
behavior is completely normal. Really
it is. Really.)
Getting back to that novel I cheated
on: In my defense, I really tried to fin
ish it. The story was so convoluted,
though, that it reminded me of what
the wife of Chevy Chase’s character in
the movie Funny Farm said after she
had read the manuscript of his first
crime novel. She told him something
like this: “There are flashbacks inside
flashbacks, flash forwards, and I think
you even flash sideways once!”
That reminds me: I need to go back
and watch that movie again sometime.
I forget who wrote the screenplay.
Reach Glynn at glynn.moore@morris.
com