That’s how I feel when I visit my parents back home, at their ranch near New Baden, Texas. Spring brought rain and mild weather; the land is lush and green, and young life is everywhere to be seen: calves, foals, goslings, etc.
After a long day working in the pastures, we enjoyed our favorite escape: Saturday night at the 110-year-old New Baden General Store, where they grill freshly cut rib-eye steaks that deserve their own poems. Here is a little taste, figuratively speaking:
Photos of Ella’s baptism (below) are wonderful, but the videos, of her and Pastor Rush during the ceremony, and family before and after, is even better.
Yesterday my youngest niece, Ella Selden, was baptized. Ella is the 12-year-old daughter of my brother Rush and his wife Lisa. It was quite a family gathering: grandparents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, all came to witness and to enjoy a magnificent meal after at Rush and Lisa’s house. A few photos here. I’ll upload video soon.
And now a few photos of family, taken after niece Cora’s dance recital:
Niece Cora performed in dance recitals today, ballet and jazz forms. I can’t believe how tall, stately and graceful she has grown. She’s also warm, funny and intelligent beyond her years, with a diversity of interests that impresses me (she is also the most avid equestrian in the family). Countless hours of training and practice went into her performance. I am very proud of her.
Kim and Jim Stewart, friends in Michigan, share this photo of Dora, an orphan kitten they are fostering, eating dinner with their adult cats. Blessings on them for caring for the little girl.
Nephew Keith, a fine young man who just completed his first year in college, biked last month in the MS150, an annual event to raise money for muscular dystrophy cure research. He rode with friends from a Christian service fraternity he belongs to. Bad weather shortened the two-day ride to one day, but lengthened the ride to almost 100 miles. I’ll let him tell the story:
“Sadly, the second day of riding was canceled due to the weather. Because of this, I and a bunch of the guys who I have been riding with, decided to do the 100 mile first day ride instead of the usual 78. Now I have to say that this was the first endurance sport that I have ever done, and I was unsure of how it would go. Yesterday we rode from Tully stadium to La Grange which (according to my bike computer) ended up being 98.8 miles. While I am very tired today, the ride was actually quite enjoyable and it was great to do it with some of my best friends.”
My heart fills with pride for Keith. If ever I fear for the future, I think of him and young people like him, and my hope is renewed. (Now he will spend the summer as a counselor helping young people at the wonderful Pine Cove summer camp.) Though still a teenager, he already exceeds the grace and goodness of his old uncle. Blessings on thee, young man.
Keith (on left) with friends:
My choice for awarding the first “civil liberty hero of the week” is one I never would have anticipated: the Pink Pistols, an organization “dedicated to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community,” a community, they note, which suffers the second highest rate of hate crimes in the U.S.
Pink Pistols sued the District of Columbia over its “good reason” requirement for the issue of gun permits. This week the federal District Court for the District of Columbia sided with them, granting an injunction against the requirement.
The so-called “good reason” requirement for the issue of gun permits, in place in several states and cities, is a flagrant violation of a fundamental civil liberty. It is most often used to circumvent court decisions validating the 2nd Amendment (DC uses it to flaunt the Supreme Court’s Heller decision). I will write more about this soon.
I’ll let Pink Pistols speak to the court’s decision:
“This clause was a travesty of justice from its inception,” said Gwendolyn Patton, First Speaker of the Pink Pistols. “It left the free exercise of an inherent human right up to bureaucrats and police officials.”
“[We] maintain that nowhere in the Second Amendment is the concept of “good reason” enumerated, and a requirement to show such special need is fundamentally unconstitutional.
“We are dedicated to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community. We no longer believe it is the right of those who hate and fear gay, lesbian, bi, trans, or polyamorous persons to use us as targets for their rage. Self-defense is our RIGHT.”
I am not gay, and I’ve never suffered blatant discrimination or violence, but I stand with Pink Pistols and congratulate them for standing up for themselves and for all citizens. I consider them brothers and sisters in the pursuit for freedom. We share and defend common ground. The rights and liberties of free people hold for all.
Mom, brother Kevin, and sister-in-law Lisa at Jones Hall in Houston, for a recent performance of Faure’s Requiem by the Houston Symphony and chorus. A few years ago, Mom played organ accompaniment for a performance of this requiem, sung by a large regional choir in Bryan. She loves the piece. I like to see her happy.
The Department of Justice has seen fit to file suit against the state of North Carolina. The state’s offense? Passing a law restricting the use of public bathrooms according to the sex designated on an individual’s birth certificate (which state law allows any individual to change).
The DoJ claims to be defending the rights of ‘transgender’ people to use any bathroom of their choice. So be it; I don’t yet have a dog in this hunt (I am still working through this newly-erupted issue).
But if the DoJ has roused itself to defend our civil liberties, and if they are true to their mission statement of “ensur[ing] fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans,” then I have an opportunity to suggest to them. It involves many times more aggrieved citizens, many more offending states ripe for suing, and widespread violations of a civil right more fundamental than personal choice of loo.
Follow along with me…
Estimates are sketchy, but about 700,000 citizens are transgender, or about 0.22% of total U.S. population (approximately 320 million). Of North Carolina’s 10 million residents, about 37,000 (including teenagers) are transgender, or 0.37%, i.e., about one-third of one percent.
Despite their small numbers, transgender people possess all the same liberties as any other citizen, and a government tasked with defending those liberties (as ours is supposed to do) should so defend. Whether such liberty allows them to use a public bathroom of their choice is a new and untested question. The issue is not enumerated in the Constitution or in any established law. The DoJ has made this determination of their own accord, absent guidance from or consultation with Congress, courts or public discussion.
If the DoJ is moved to defend 700,000 people, from a still-untested legal position, would it be more moved to stand up for 13 million on a sound Constitutional basis? That is the number of citizens with official, state-issued licenses to carry a handgun. (The number of legal gun owners without a carry permit is many tens of millions more, by most estimates more than a third – i.e., more than 100 million – of all citizens.) In Texas alone, at the end of 2015, licensed citizens numbered 937,419, with a rate of growth that probably now has the number greater than one million.1
The right to bear arms is far from new and untested. It is a right specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution; it has been affirmed by the judiciary many times, recently in the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, and only yesterday by the 9th District Court of Appeals.2 The right is as old as the Constitution itself.
As established as the right is, it is violated by many states. I am licensed by the state of Texas to carry a gun3, concealed or openly, having successfully gone through the training, testing, security and background checks necessary for such license. However, 15 other states and the District of Columbia refuse to recognize Texas permits, and will arrest and jail me if I carry a gun into their domain.
Furthermore, nine of these states4 refuse reciprocal rights to citizens from any state; in other words, they impose a blanket denial of 2nd Amendment rights to all citizens of other states. Penalties can be severe; all include options for arrest, fines and imprisonment. This even though, at least in the state of Texas, citizens with CHLs are the most law-abiding in the population.5
Is this not discrimination to a broad degree? Is this not a violation of the Supremacy Clause?
The U.S. Department of Justice (a large number of whom have donated to the leading Democrat candidate for President), of this or previous administrations, has taken no action against any of the offending states on behalf of citizens with gun licenses.
I will not hold my breath waiting for a governor or mayor to deny travel to any of these states; or for an actor or pop musician to boycott any of these states; or for Apple, Google or any other company to refuse doing business in any of these states.
Some forms of discrimination are clearly still tolerated, even encouraged.
NOTES
1 Just this week the Texas DPS announced that issued carry permits exceeded one million
2 “The panel held that…the right to keep and to bear arms for self-defense is not only a fundamental right, but an enumerated one…” Teixeira v. County of Alameda, May 16, 2016
3 I believe in “Constitutional carry,” i.e., the right of every law-abiding, mentally stable citizen to own and bear arms with no additional sanction or burden imposed by federal, state or local government. I secured a state concealed handgun license out of respect for the law, but I believe that the necessity to do so is a violation of a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
4 California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island. Concealed carry permit recognition is also not extended by the District of Columbia, New York City, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
5 According to detailed statistics maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety, licensed carriers commit only 0.23% of crimes in this state (as of 2014, the latest year for which numbers have been released). For a large majority of crimes tracked, no licensed carriers were convicted at all.
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