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San Francisco ChronicleBy Leslie GriffithWe've got a multigenerational ecological disaster in the Gulf, the gulf between the rich and the rest of us bigger than ever, education in the toilet, budget deficits rising, chronic unemployment, healthcare in the tank...and we cannot stop arguing about gay marriage?
Am I missing something?
Maybe it is something so basic, so seemingly banal that we just can't see the answer. Maybe it just comes down to numbers. The sort of numbers military planners use when plotting and planning the next round of deployments.
... The discrimination and outrage targeting Gays may come down to simple demographics. Uncle Sam needs soldiers, and same sex couples (without help) cannot make them.
I wouldn't have believed this had I not seen this played out in the extreme. Consider the plight of Romania. In 1966, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu noticed his country had a stagnant birth rate. President Ceausescu knew that to be a player on the world stage, he needed soldiers and a very hard working underclass. Mr. Ceausescu began promoting reproduction at any cost. Homosexuality was illegal. He outlawed birth control and encouraged lots of heterosexual sex. When a school girl reached puberty, her sex life was encouraged and documented by the Romanian pregnancy police. Women who gave birth to five children were deemed heroines of the state. Those who gave birth to ten were akin to national gods...very tired, worn-out, and impoverished gods. Those couples who did not reproduce were taxed into poverty. Ceausescu's plan worked in one sense. Tens of thousands of babies were born. Unfortunately, many Romanian families were too poor to feed their own children. That's when the self-proclaimed "Father and Mother" of Romania, Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu, encouraged Romanian families to bring their children to a state-run network of crowded orphanages. The children lived three and four to a crib in these horrible places, often lying unattended in their own waste...until the Ceausescus were assassinated following a military coup in 1989, and the orphans were released into the streets.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/griffith/detail?entry_id=70858The author is is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post and occasional contributor to truthout.org, the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate's City Brights. She is a former anchorwoman at KTVU, Oakland.