When Secretly Against It, Any Excuse Will Do

During the recent election campaign our Governor earned the moniker "Both Ways Beebe" for trying to take more than one side on many issues. The subject of whether our state Department of Human Services would be allowed to protect children from homosexuals seeking to gain access to them through foster parenting or adoption was a prime example of that. A homosexual activist group thought he told them one thing on it, but once it came to light, Beebe seemed to reverse course. The people of this state thought he told them the opposite. And in his mind, he didn't tell either of them much of anything.

Beebe's gyrations ended up with something like he was against the state authorizing homosexuals to be given children through foster parenting or adoption, but he was not going to sign any bill if it was "unconstitutional" or "discriminatory". Hows that for "both-ways Beebe"? Here is what I wrote way back in July, "Based on my observations of the trial-lawyer loophole mindset that Mr. Bebee has displayed in the past (such as "we don't need to overturn Roe v. Wade because subsequent decisions have made the law a shell of its former self".) I believe that it would play out like this: Bebee would be against homosexuals getting their hands on children as foster parents in theory, but sadly, no actual bill ever put before him to do so would ever be "constitutional" as he saw it. No bill on the subject would be pure enough from the tinge of "discrimination" to merit his support."

Sometimes, I hate it when I am right. Sen. Shawn Womack has SB 959 about ready for the Governor's pen. It's a good bill. It does what most Arkansans thought Beebe meant during the campaign. But now Beebe claims "There's constitutional problems with it" according to reporter Doug Thompson's article. Beebe would not specify to Thompson what those "problems" were.

What poppycock. Our constitution does not state that the people or any group (like homosexuals) thereof have a "right" to adopt or foster parent children beyond any government or legislative purview. How could it? Those are other people's young lives we are talking about here. There are no constitutional problems, execpt imagined ones in the minds of parsers, who think words just mean whatever they want them to at the moment. I am not going to ask the Governor to sign the bill, he does not want to, even though his vaugue references to problems will not hold up to intelligent scrutiny. Instead, I have to count on the hope that the ledge will over-ride him on it.

I will end with this paragraph from my article in July. It is frustrating when you can see this stuff coming eight months away but no one is listening at the time....

"Maybe we are simply dealing with two different kinds of people in the two campaigns. The one side holds to absolute truth and tries to figure out what the rules are. These are legalistic minded people, sometimes called "straight shooters". "Well, if you told Fred you are for it, and Wilma you are agaisnt it, then you must have lied to one of them." That is the way a straight shooter thinks. Not so parsers. They don't think in terms of "If this is true then the opposite must be false". Instead, parsers think that anything can be true, and anything can be false, depending on how you look at it. It is not about truth, it is about their desires. Parsers talk endlessly about "what the meaning of "is" is" in an effort to escape being committed to a course of action that could cost them something. They reject the idea of absolute truth, and words mean only what they want them to mean at the time. And words are always flexible enough in their definitions that they did not mean what you thought they meant when it comes crunch time. You always seem to "misunderstand them" if they still want your help, or you are making "purposeful misrepresentations in his personal statements" if you misunderstand them when you are their opponent. It is all just a big misunderstanding you see, and it always will be when dealing with parsers."