Government Sponsored Prostitution - 9:57AM, 2002/01/31
So as much as I like this layout, I’m considering trying to work up another one. The problem is time, of course. Unlike some people who can whip up a good looking layout in the matter of an hour, it usually takes me a whole evening of testing and retesting and throwing away before I get it to look like I want.
There’s so many more important things I have to do!
In other news I seem to have lost 3lbs, which is not a large percentage of the weight I could stand to lose but it was apparently an important 3lbs because my jeans do not feel tight anymore. Hurrah. :P
Now I will talk about something that has been disturbing me for most of the week. Dubya, in his infinte wisdom, has proposed financial incentives for women on welfare to get married. First of all, unless he somehow manages to do this by executive order, I am about 99% positive that this will not fly. But the very fact that he thought he could say it! In public! Whores of the state unite!
The very proposition is insulting. First, it assumes that marriage is a preferable state to being single. For many women this is not a clear positive. The kind of men they have contact with — and who would marry them for a handout from the government — are not the sort one should be marrying. Often they are the sort that should be in jail. Second, isn’t marriage supposed to be a sacrament, oh-great-moral leader? It’s not a business arrangement where both parties are bribed by the government! (I’m sure it doesn’t even need to be said that these women would need to be marrying men to get any kind of payoff.) Third, to pay someone to enter into a marriage is a very very short step away from prostitution. Paying men to marry women has a long and checkered tradition in the world, and I really do not think we need revive the custom here. Fourth, what these women need to get off welfare isn’t a man. It’s education and affordable child care. Why should a woman get off welfare if only to flip burgers for $6/hour when that amount is -less- than the amount most babysitters are paid? She’d be in debt the second she left her home. Which, by the way, she couldn’t possibly pay for on top of food, clothing, health care and child care.