A friend of mine sent in one of his usual letters to the editor. This one resonated with me to such an extreme I felt the need to re-paste it, here, right where it's needed most.
Editor,
With the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the ongoing conflict between the Red state Republicans and the Blue state Democrats promises to heat up. We can expect to hear about family values as the Reds pander to their beloved constituents, the fundamentalist Christians. They will represent themselves as morally upstanding, patriotic, pro-life, anti-gay, God-ordained protectors of the family. They will caricature Blue northeastern and western coastal-state liberal Democrats as baby-killing pagans determined to corrupt and destroy family and nation.
But a closer look at the status of families in the Red states suggests that the Reds do not value families as credibly as their self-anointment would suggest.
Family stability is a blessing for individual and community alike but the divorce rate for all of the Red states is 31% greater than all the Blue states. The Barna Research Group found that Baptists and non-denominational Protestants per individual had the highest divorce rate for all religious affiliations at 29% and 34% respectively. Only 21% of self-professed atheists and agnostics reported having been divorced. The national average rate for all individuals they found was 24%. According to census figures, the lowest divorce rate by region in the United States is the very Blue New England states with liberal Massachusetts having the lowest divorce rate in the nation.
Along with a high divorce rate, violence also plagues the Red states. A woman in the Bible belt has a 34% greater chance of being killed by her domestic partner than in a Blue state. Meanwhile, godless New York City is one of the safest cities in the nation and Atlanta, Georgia third most dangerous.
The financial health of the family fares no better with household income for Red states being over $7,000 less than Blue states with the fundamentalist southern states occupying most of the bottom 10 places. Their collective average of $34,500 per household is nearly $10,000 below the national average. This region is stridently anti union except for Missouri that has a household income above the national average at $43,900.
In other matters of family values such as health one would expect Reds to excel at protecting life given their preoccupation with abortion and hysterical intervention into the Terry Schiavo affair. Not so. A child born in a Red state stands a 12% greater chance of dying in the first year of life and a whopping 20% greater chance in the Bible belt.
Health is no better for adults in the Red states with them leading significantly in obesity, smoking, heart disease and lung cancer. The rate of cardiac death in the Bible belt is double the Blue state rate.
Given these facts, there are good reasons why the Reds shill abortion and gay-marriage. It’s a red herring argument meant to obscure their dismal record of actually valuing families.
Harry
Maybe those on the moral mountain will find time to fully explain to the public some of their other deceptions and we can separate the propaganda from the facts. ...