The Better World...from my eyes

[britzlove]

At home this weekend I again watched the film, "Beyond Borders", which I have seen too many times, I admit.
Still it left me thinking, and I truthfully spent a really contemplative few days.
Why on earth was I spending anytime debating whether or not people should be allowed to profit from cruelty to horses when the truth of the matter is that allowing other more horrid practices to exists in the world puts humans in worse shape.

And it's not lost on me that the same values that allow us to turn a blind eye to the true suffering of others is the same as the one that allows people to believe what they are told on the slaughter issue.

It boils down to this for me. I have to stop even expending 20 seconds of my time and energy combating something I know is wrong, but that I have done my small part for. What I mean is, I don't breed indescriminately, I have rehabbed useful horses, and I have never failed to stand up for horses in abuse/neglect issues. I know the law, I use it. I have helped document violations in a legal manner for a case involving an auction house. My footprint on this issue is a good one.
I'm doing my part and that has to be all I can do.

That said, I feel like people could be more honest with themselves and others if they simply admitted their parts and their lack of action. I do believe you have no place in this kind of issue if you are not doing your own little part. If you are, why on earth are we talking about it.

I love animals, I love people. I truly do try to find the closest to goodness in anything. There is just so much ugliness out there. Two weeks ago, I saw a little girl, 12 years old on a local TV program that specializes in finding homes for older children. My heart was broken in about 6 million pieces because I realize that I will never be approved to be a foster parent or an adoptive parent in this country because of my lack of religion. I'd love to believe that we are in a country that judges the true merit of any person by considering the whole person, but we're not there.
We live with so very much ugliness.

What I am trying to get to is that this list is full of wonderful people and I am not sure that I should continue to debate the slaughter issue with them. My time would probably be better spent finding ways to help people since I've personally contributed enough to animals. I need to focus on people, not horses, even though I'll always keep my same idealistic outlook. I'm never going to change my views of right, wrong, good, bad. I hate to be spending time arguing it.

Sorry...back to homework now..

[Terry Wallace]

Wha? Britz...there is nothing wrong with debating...and its not all debate anyway... it is how people feel, what they have seen, what they know and
how it affects them.

Hey...many is the day I sit and think to myself... WHAT makes me so more fortunate than people in a third world country? Why them and not me suffering ... there but for the grace of God go I...
I should be in the Peace corp building irrigation ditches or something...

Believe me...I think LOTS of us debate issues like this privately to ourselves.....

I love animals and horses too... I DO find it unfair that I can have horses while other people are starving... BUT then...LIFE is unfair and always has been........ ;-)

[CarolU]

And it's not lost on me that the same values that allow us to turn a blind eye to the true suffering of others is the same as the one that allows people to believe what they are told on the slaughter issue.


Britz....I don't think any of us are 'sold' on the slaughter issue, or that this goes hand-in-hand with turnning "a blind eye to the suffering of others." I guess I even kind of resent the implication that it does. I spend a lot of time on this BB arguing about the plight of immigrants, the poor, minorities, the un-insured, etc. I believe that is a far cry from turning a blind eye on it.

But, I am very much a realist. I would LOVE to live in an idealic world where every horse and every child is born into a loving home, is fed adequately, lives a healthy life, and dies a pain-free death. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? But that is not reality, except for the very few and the very VERY lucky.

As an individual you have to pick your battles and fight those. If you spent your day looking at ALL the problems of this world, and crying over all of it, you'd accomplish nothing. It doesn't mean you aren't aware of the others. It doesn't mean you don't care. What it means is that you are a finite person with finite time and financial resources. Even Bill Gates can only take on some of the world's problems.

It also means weighing one problem against another. If I had the resources, I would have a very large Paso Fino rescue ranch. Does that mean I don't care about ALL horses? No, it doesn't. But it does let me focus on what I care about most.

And you also have to realize there are some problems that you can't fight - period. I can't rescue and feed the 90,000 horses that went to slaughter last year. I can't stop people from breeding them. I can't come up with another solution...and I very honestly believe that Nature (or God, if you prefer) made certain animals predators for a reason. It may seem, and may indeed BE very cruel to the zebra that gets killed and eaten by the lions, but it IS what is SUPPOSED to happen.

Horses were eaten by man for many thousands more years then they were 'domesticated' by man. It is nature's way.

[PasoVicki]

Britz,

I've been a foster parent for ten years. I care for prenatally drug-exposed, medically fragile newborns and infants. My heart is put through a wringer every time a social worker calls and says "Can you please take this baby?" and I have to say "No, I'm sorry; my hands are full right now with the ones I already have." My heart is put through an even worse wringer when a child is given back to biological parents who EVERYONE in the system agrees are "marginal at best" and may not even be able to keep that child alive, much less thriving. But the fact is, there's only so much I can do. I try to give the babies that come into my home the best possible start in life; I try not to cry over the ones I can't take in and the ones who leave. If I dwell on them too much, I'll burn myself out and I won't be able to help anyone.

The same thing should go for you. You help the ones you can help. You plant ideas where/when you have a chance to plant them. And you try not to dwell on battles you can't win if doing so burns you out and makes you less effective in doing the things you CAN do.

By the way, you don't need "religion" to be a foster parent, as long as you're willing to respect the religion -- if applicable -- of any child who enters your home. In my state, you don't even need religion to be an adoptive parent.

[Jane Hurl]

It may seem, and may indeed BE very cruel to the zebra that gets killed and eaten by the lions, but it IS what is SUPPOSED to happen.

And if it makes it easier to accept, remember that when that zebra is pulled down, it goes into shock. Shock is nature's (God's?) way of protecting animals from pain.

[Carol Nelson]

And too remember when that dumb idiot who sticks his camera into the lion's pen to take the picture gets pulled right in behind it and devoured..that that is the way it is supposed to be also...because we are prey animals ourselves...right???

[Backinthesaddleagain]

My husband and I are also foster parents to two teenage girls, 17 & 15. It is at times wonderful and at times stressful and difficult. My biological children, now 34 & 32, were wonderful kids. Never any kind of issues and these girls are really neat but certainly a hand full at times. I agree, you do not need religion to be foster parent so if that is your heart's desire, go for it. There are so many kids that need a safe loving place to live. Good luck to you......

Margie

[britzlove]

I'm sorry...I think what I was trying to do was simply my feelings, and reading it today, that post is mixed up too :-?

The turning a blind eye comment, I don't know where I was going with that and I certainly didn't mean for you to find offense Carol because my frustration yesterday was getting bogged down into disputing with you when overall, big picturing it again, I generally agree with you. So let me explain now, that today, I really don't know where I was going with that thought, I know it had a point, but I can't find it today.

It was a right-wrong thinking that I was trying to put forth, I can't get it out right.
I'm not having a problem with debate...I just mean that I think the debate needs changing. I said that back in the beginning.

The foster parent, well, it's an adoptive parent program, not a foster parent. It's not right that my religious views are ever anyones business but I have long suffered the reality of it. I am so glad for what you are doing Margie and Vicki, thank you, I'm sure you see the gratitude though, but I'm thanking you. Still, though the premise might exist that religion should not be part of it, it is. There's where I think it's wrong. Keep in mind I am smack in the middle of the bible belt, where I come from the first definition of who you are is what church you go to.

It's not right...but I can't get around it. That's all I meant by that and the Beyond Borders thing. It's not right that children go without food, medicine, even nurturing. It's not right that horses are fed into a pipeline of an industry that benefits criminals and bad humans when if only somehow, really, people could find away to get that food to those children, it could...it really could. Or even to feed zoo animals anywhere.

If they were feeding the genuine needs...it would be a different issue to me.

Gosh...I'm just posting this I've edited about a million times and I want to get on here that I was trying to say that I respect the people here and I want to get back to debating later...I just need a break I think.

Britz

So...that said, I was trying to rest on this post. I want to debate, but I'm tired of that one.

[CarolU]

So let me explain now, that today, I really don't know where I was going with that thought, I know it had a point, but I can't find it today.


Yep, of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most! ;-)

I should add something on the foster parenting thing. When I got divorced, I ended up with the house...and payment, $600/month. At that time I brought home $800/month. Well, after my van pool and utilities I had NO money for groceries or gas. I took in teenage foster girls. I had five over the next few years, Melinda stayed with me for several years, even after placed on Independent living.

Now Utah, with their psyco fears of homosexuals raising kids, has passed a law that only married man/woman couples can be foster or adoptive parents. This law closed over half the state's foster homes, and those kids now live in shelters. Utah NEVER had a case of homosexual child abuse in foster or adoptive care to 'fix.' The law just happened in all the hyperboil against gay marraige that Karl Rowe started for the 2004 election.

It often amazes me how these 'do-gooders' will turn a blind eye on the problems they create by their 'legislated morality.' There is your blind eye Britz...the same high mindedness forces a woman to have an unwanted pregnancy, but denies her medical insurance to pay for it. Makes a lot of sense.

[Minouri]

I think the debates we have here help people to clarify their own beliefs. I enjoy the diversity, even though I find myself disagreeing...at least I'm solidifying what I believe.

I'm not a foster parent, but as I teacher I had to make a decision a long time ago that I was not going to let my job destroy me.

The children that attend my classroom are sometimes going through such crisis that it breaks my heart to see it. Some of them are in protective services already and still suffering....some are in the process of being removed from unhealthy homes. Some are simply trying to survive what they have endured.

You don't have to look at a foreign country to find suffering children. Sometimes I dont' have to look further than the tables in my classroom.

But what do you do when year after year you see the same issues....no matter what attempts you make they come back like waves at the ocean?

I buy them things I know they need. I make sure dangers are reported. I try to match families with services that will help them. I do everything I possibly can for the children in my classroom...legally and as a teacher and then I close the door at the end of the day and leave it there.


I cannot carry the weight of it home with me to my own family.

Sometimes I mourn the death of my idealism when I thought I could save every child who entered my class. But in realism I find strength. I make a difference every day. It might not be the world changing difference I had dreamt of when I went into education, but I'd like to think that every child is better for having spent time in my class. Every child feels loved, has learned and had an advocate for year.

Perhaps that's why I look at other issues the same. I wish animals were not eaten...not even by other animals....but how realistic is that? I feel for the mice that my cat kills in the barn....but who wants mice?

I'd love to hear that people have all decided to care for the animals they have....but they often times don't even care for their children. You think more laws will change that? Talk to the chldren in my class. New laws don't seem to help them.

So, don't stop debating. I like to revist my idealistic side. It IS nice to sometimes imagine a world where hunger and abuse is no longer an issue for any creature on the planet.

[britzlove]

Glad you stopped back by my thread here Carol.

Down in your reply where you mentioned the "legislation of morality", that's basically the kind of thing that I was trying to address. All across the country I do feel the weight of this attempt and in my mind, its not trying to legislate correct morality.

Putting children in government group homes with no personal true nurturing, or limited nurturing and certainly a structure that may not be conductive to positive self growth for them, no, I don't think that's better than homosexual couples who have been shown to correctly adhere to the afore mentioned ideas, building better relationships and creating better young adults. I'd be just as upset about that for sure. I would think that inadequately supervised children of biological parents would be more at risk than those in good foster homes of any intimate preference.

Makes me crazy...we recently had a scare in my little town where a letter was sent to the elementry and high school documenting how easy it was to abduct our children. Every body went haywire! All of a sudden all the parents picked the kids up after school, parents were sitting on their stoops watching every move their kids made, some even went down to watch the recess of their kids. My mother and Grannie both called in a panic, and I was abel to calmly say I wasn't worried at all. My baby doesn't run the streets, she's only watched by myself and the sitter who replaced my old sitter for the reason that my other one couldn't supervise my child, or her own. I'm telling you, people called in every suspicious vehicle, or stranger...it was actually a bad time to be a tourist in Marengo.
That was at the beginning of the school year...today...when I drive home...I'll find kids in the streets, as young as 4yrs old. No more parents on stoops...nothing happened...nothing to worry about now I guess.
My child...still safe. They never caught the author..I think it was a concerned parent like myself...I wish they'd write again.

Anyway...that has a tie in...I kind of went off track there...but my point is that parenting should only be judged by it's record and results. If a gay couple is raising a child that is growing healthy in all aspects and is safe from harm, and they have a healthy record of daily life...well they are better than the mother down the street who does not know where her son is until after 9pm when she hollars out her door for him. (He's a good kid...I have to limit his interaction with my daughter because he does have some issues..but his heart is good. It saddens me that he could get hit by a car this afternoon and be at the hospital for hours before she'd miss him.)


Minouri...I see your point too. And the school system...public---generally stinks. I am just waiting until next year to pull my daughter out because she has her favorite second grade teacher again for 4th grade. My problem is..there is a lack of teachers like you that do or will care for the kids true future. It's sad really, and has a lot to do with we pay our politicians more than twice (or even more) than our teachers. There's another right-wrong thing there...the teachers are making tomorrows leaders...but we don't give them the right tools then how will we expect them to lead well? You know?

Good replies...thanks!

Britz