You Owe It To Your Family, Your Country And Yourself To Get It Right

This is not a political post. The goal of this post is not to promote one presidential candidate over the other. Instead it is a plea to every voter to educate himself in the next three weeks and cast  his vote dispassionately for the candidate he honestly feels will lead this country back to prosperity and pride.

For any of you who are politically astute at all, I don't really have to tell you whom I support for President of the United States of America. The fact that I am a Texan gives you a better than even chance of guessing for whom I will vote. That said, knowing that I am a Texan does not define me completely. I have in the last few years voted for candidates outside my party. In all likelihood that will happen again at some point.

Just from what those of you who are regular reader know of me, you can understand that my views on important issues in the present campaign are complex. I am a married bisexual man who writes a blog for married gay and bisexual men. That means you would be right to believe that I do not support Republican supported laws such as "The Defense of Marriage Act." You would also be right to infer that I was happy to see President Obama stop "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the U.S. military and publicly support the right of gay people to marry.

On the other hand, I am not personally supportive of Democrat supported opposition to right to life laws. Personally I think abortion aught to be legal and extremely rare. But when it gets right down to it, I am a man. I don't have to give birth to a child. I don't feel it is my right or the right of the government to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her reproductive rights. That should be her decision.

I am anti war and pro peace. But I am rational enough to know that peace depends not just on my view but on the views of those who do not treasure peace as I do. Keeping the peace more often than not depends on one's willingness to go to war and physically push back against those who do not want peace. The Hitler's of the world, the Ahmedinajad's and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei 's as well as petty tyrants all around the world must be reckoned with in terms they understand. These people mean it when they say they want to dominate the world and bring about a new order.

I am proud of the fact that America has elected its first President who identifies himself as black. I am not proud of the fact that the election of the first black president could not have occurred without reverse racial bias and misplaced emotionalism.

I am also not proud of the fact that Democrats and Republicans tend to give their man a pass on his failures and shortcomings and lie about the strengths of the other guy and make up lies about faults he doesn't have. Campaigning should be based solely on issues and ones ability to deal with the issues.

I am not proud of the fact that an increasing number of Americans of all parties now tend to vote for the candidate they believe will represent their interests best even if their interests are not those which would be best for the country as a whole. I would remind all Americans that our founding fathers put everything they had on the line for democracy. Many of them ended up paying with their lives and their fortunes for their support of this country at the time of its birth.

All one need do these days is look around the world to see that things are not good. Europe is awash in strikes and protests over the austerity measures that have been put in place. Worse, those protestors seem to have no comprehension that wealth and prosperity simply cannot be created out of thin air.

Here in America we have people voting who do not know the issues at all. We have people voting who cannot name the Vice President of the United States, who cannot name their Senator or Representative. We have people who have no idea what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have to say about how this country must be governed.

The simple fact is that this country is a very diverse and heterogenic. It is a country in which everyone should have an equality of opportunity, but one in which no one should be guaranteed equality itself. One's actual place in society should always be earned by hard work and by contibutions to the greater good. Too many Americans now feel entitled to the good life without their having done any thing to earn it.

Since there are issues in which I support the Democrat view and other issues in which I support the Republican view I plan to put aside those issues which are important but not existential. In this election there are simply too many issues which are existential. We all must vote on the basis of these existential issues and not in our own self interests. There is nothing to be gained by having the right for gay people to marry if the country itself is in ruin, in bankruptcy or is overrun by its enemies. 

As gay and bisexual men our happiness and well being often depend on making hard but reasonable decisions. So it is in deciding for whom we are going to vote. We must recognize the realities of the present era in this country and in the world. We must elect someone who can get things done, not just talk about getting it done.


In the end, a very real part of the greatness of this country is that our leaders are chosen in a peaceful process in which each of us is truly free to vote his conscience. Whether or not we vote on the loosing side or the loosing side, we accept the will of the people and we support the winner. We owe it to our families, our country and to our founding fathers to get it right.

Jack Scott