Lessons for Life ~ Life and Death Tuesday, Jul 14 2009

14^th of July 2009

Series called:

LESSONS FOR LIFE ~ LIFE AND DEATH

The subject of death seems to be extremely emotional for people.  The obvious reasons are the loss of a loved one.  How would it change your views on death and the living, if you accepted that those who passed away were not gone; that they remain a passive element of our lives?

In the West, we’ve been taught that there are only three things that are certain in life; we are born, we pay taxes and that we die.  We directly and indirectly learn that once we die, there is nothing more.  We are buried, the ones we leave behind must grieve our passing and unless you “repent and accept God,” there is nothing more.

Jesus spoke multiple times about the soul lasting beyond the death of the physical body.  Christianity taught for over three hundred years that the soul within each human being, came from God and once physical death occurred, it traversed back to God.  Three hundred and twenty five years after the death of Christ, Emperor Constantine created the Council of Nicaea.  Constantine was a life long Pagan, but understood humanity enough to know, that if family member would kill another family member due to a difference in ideology, then he must unite their beliefs.  He set out to create a unified religion that took from all other ideologies and set forth as the only religion in the world upon which he mandated its practice.  Constantine did not feel reincarnation benefitted this unified religion and had all references to reincarnation expunged from the Old Testament.  He then established that no one should teach reincarnation directing the Council of Nicaea members (three hundred religious and political leaders of the time) to establish an ideology that would guide members to the church for salvation, thereby changing the world’s view of life after death.

This background information is to establish that most Western people do not have an in-depth belief in reincarnation.  They identify this ideology as one from the East.  However, this was not always an ideology specific to the East.  It was believed, practiced and taught by almost all organized religions.  They unilaterally believed, that the soul return to a dimension other than our own until such time that it chooses to return in a new physical body.  If this is truly an old belief, why then does it enrage so many and invokes with great passion, retributions such as that forced upon the ruling cardinals of 545 A.D. to draft a papal decree stating that anyone who believes that souls come from God and return to God will be punished by death;

“If anyone asserts the fabulous preexistence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.  (the Anathemas against Origen), attached to the decrees of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, A.D. 545, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d ser., 14:318).”

For those who don’t believe, I ask why not?  Why do you suppose we are born to live a singular lifetime and only learn what we are exposed too within it?  Would it not make more sense, that our soul has been here before and with each lifetime comes a series of lessons?  Our soul gathers the cumulative knowledge from each life as we return from our physical adventures to a place of peace, meant for resting between lifetimes.  If you believe in an omnipotent being that created us and this universe, why would such a being only construct us for a single life?  What do you do if the singular life you have, happens to be a difficult one or maybe a down right crappie one?  Do you get angry if you don’t come into this world as Bill Gates, but rather the child born to no father and a mother infected with HIV, no food, no home and no family?  Wouldn’t it make more sense that we have hard lifetimes mixed with good lifetimes to solidify the lessons we are meant to learn from?

I believe that we are an accumulation of all of our lifetimes.  That we add to our base of knowledge by our experiences.  We can learn when we are resting between lifetimes, but we learn more when we interact with other souls, here in this earthly realm.  That being said, I’ve come to understand that we agree to the lessons we are set to learn in each lifetime.  Understanding the lessons we must learn and the path of the life we are set to endure, we choose the family that will best establish our experiences.  For the most part, we choose souls that we’ve experienced in other lifetimes.  We come into each lifetime as an established being that will best serve our learning the lessons we agreed to learn: male, female, straight, gay, color, nationality, ideology, etc. will all be established to meet the needs for those lessons we must discover.

When you view life in this manner, I have found that it is easier to understand the arduous experiences that some of us endure.  When you question why you are with a family, it is easier to accept that you chose them in service to your needs in teaching you the lessons that you agreed to learn.  When we understand life in this manner, it changes how we view the harshness of some of our lessons.  None of this will ever remove the greatest gift we’ve been given, “FREE WILL.” We can choose to remain on the journey that was established or we may decide on a different path.  However, I have found that life is so much easier when you don’t fight the path you need to be on, and yet, I know that it is always our rights to change our fait.

Life is meant to be a wonderful and amazing experience for us.  Our souls excel when you learn the lessons you are meant to learn and teach those lessons that you can teach.  This knowledge is written from the perspective of a belief in God (an Omnipotent being), but if you are not of the faithful, please accept that in the life you now live, it may best serve your needs in not believing.  That will always bring us back to a common place that says LOVE, HONOR and RESPECT all who surround you.  They may be in a different position, learning lessons that you’ve already learned.  It may be you who is learning the lessons that those around you have already digested.  We can learn every lesson with love, or we may need to learn them through harm, hate, anger or misery.

These articles are building a base of knowledge (A Series: LESSONS FOR LIFE), we all start from the same place as exactly the same thing…..a SOUL.  Our goal is to end at exactly the same place and that is an enlighten soul with grace.  The only way to obtain our destination is to learn all of the lessons we must learn.  If we do not learn our lessons in this lifetime, we will learn them in another.  Some lessons can only be taught with distress, while some may only be taught with love, but we are the accumulation of all that we learn.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Lessons for Life ~ The Golden Rule Sunday, Jul 5 2009

4^th of July 2009

Series called:

LESSONS FOR LIFE ~ THE GOLDEN RULE

It is no mistake that almost every religion and most organized ideologies, such as Buddhism, have a similar saying; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

This phrase is known by many as the “Golden Rule,” and it says something that Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Ancient Greek philosophy, Wiccan and even Paganism all have similar phrases.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is the verse used by Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible, Chapter Luke.  It is one of the more common ways to quote this passage.  The reason this phrase is so important, when we start thinking of all people as much as we think about ourselves; we grow exponentially.

Taoism:

“The sage has no interest of his own, but takes the interests of the people as his own.  He is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind: for Virtue is kind.  He is faithful to the faithful; he is also faithful to the unfaithful: for Virtue is faithful.”

A great lesson we must learn in life is that we are not alone.  We must care as much about those who walk with us, as we do for ourselves.  We become so focused on our needs, what to do for our children and what is in our own best interests, that we forget there are others souls inhabiting this planet with us.  We are so busy with work, family and what we consider living life, that we don’t know our neighbors.  We don’t know their names or anything about them, much less if they need our help.  We must get to know our neighbors and learn to care as much about them as we do for ourselves.

Judaism:

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”

Before you do anything to your fellow being, would you take the same action against yourself?  If you would not consider the same act against yourself, you should not take that action against your neighbor.  Much of what we do against others is done out of fear.  Fear and not hatred is the leading instigator that perpetuates harm and the killing of fellow souls.  If the act is not that which you would do to yourself without fear, then it should not be done against others, especially in the presence of fear.  The only thing we fear is fear itself.

Islam:

“Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.”

To be a good steward of humanity, we must make choices that show our own individuality and yet we must also ensure all persons are able to do the same.  That will not always be easy, but we must find a way and the means.  Humanity will never survive if we think solely about ourselves.  We must think, act and learn to love all others as much as we do ourselves.

Confucianism:

“Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself”

If we are to live in accordance to the Golden Rule, we must learn to Love all others as much as we Love ourselves.  Love is the greatest lesson that we can possibly learn or teach.  The next time you make a choice that places you adverse to another, take a moment to answer this simple question: would I do this to myself or would I like if they did the same to me?  If you cannot answer that question easily, you should rethink the action you are about to take.

Baha’I Faith:

“Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not.”

Your humbled servant – Todd M Dobson

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Celebrating Our Independence Saturday, Jul 4 2009

4^th of July 2009

CELEBRATING OUR INDEPENDENCE

Today is a truly remarkable day if you are a citizen of the United States.  This should however, be a day to remember for every souls who inhabit this world.  While US citizens are celebrating our independence from a tyrannical King who denied our rights, we are all a little freer today than we were yesterday!

There are people in countries all over this amazing planet who do not share in the freedoms that we have within the United States.  I question living within the boarders of a country where laws are passed by fear based hatred, denying the rights of so many.  How can millions who have given everything they have just to step within the boarders of this country who dream of a brighter future for their family; however, many of those human souls are hunted for the transgression and the illusion of a life of sovereignty.

There are many issues we endure that might make a person question the liberties we celebrate today, but I am the optimist who also envisions a brighter tomorrow.  It is demanded of anyone who petitions the United States for the status to remain within her boarders and to become a citizen of this nation that they know our Constitution and Bill of Rights.  I find it interesting that the large majority of citizens born within her bosom cannot tell you what is present in either document.  For it is the construct of each document that grants my faith that our country will eventually make decisions based on the principles by which we were founded regardless of personal ideology.

The brave men, who conceived, championed, architected and signed these two documents, had the foresight to know what they could not yet discern.  They believed in a nation of people who were equal in every conceivable way.  Before those who wish to point out the frailties of our founding fathers and wish to interpret the word of these two documents to their own accord, please read the blogs I’ve written previously:

Our Founding Fathers – A Response to Mr. Wilson

http://tmdobson.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/response-to-mr-wilson-our-founding-fathers-homosexuality/

Happy Independence Day

http://tmdobson.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/happy-independence-day/

As a student of history, I take great strides to understand the historical context that is documented.  Read these two amazing documents: The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, so that you may refresh what makes this country a truly great one.  Read the Amendments that grant each citizen the rights we should hold so dear.  Then think about the billions who don’t share in our rights.  They cannot speak freely or appose those who govern them.  They may not bare arms of any kind that may be used against the very government that oppresses them.  If a person has anything the government wants or deems against its own, that person does not have the protection of said documents.

My dreams for tomorrow are as they always have been: that every soul within the confines of this planet, be free to live their lives in harmony, with peace and above all else…LOVE!  Today is a truly great day to celebrate, but do so with the knowledge that somewhere in the world others do not have the freedoms we take for granted.  That even in a country that refuses to let me love whom I wish to love, that I am free to voice my opposition to those who live in fear and with hate in their hearts.  Celebrate so that one day, another person who struggles to cross a boarder on a quest to find freedom for his family may indeed rejoice in that independence.  Know that on a day soon to come, even I may find, love and marry the person I choose to without regard to race, nationality or even sexuality.

CELEBRATE OUR LIBERTY TODAY

FOR A BRIGHTER TOMORROW

LOVE CAN NEVER BE WRONG

Your humbled servant – Todd M Dobson

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World Blood Donor Day Sunday, Jun 14 2009

13^th of June 2009

WORLD BLOOD DONOR DAY

Sunday the 14^th of June, 2009 is World Blood Donor Day and it is designed to help restore the depleting the world’s blood supply.  I would normally chant for the cause pushing for every soul to do their part and donate blood, but here in the United States, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) with all of its stogy, decrepit board members, who refuse to release antiquated phobias and biased causing the blood supply to be depleted.

Every drop of blood received by any agency must go through three tests that will identify 99.995 percent of any HIV antibodies that may be inside the donated supply.  The test will also identify if the blood has any STD’s or any other contaminate posing risks to any receiving body.  This is a great focus, but the FDA Board of Directors is still homophobic in their refusal to acknowledge the statistics that tell infections of HIV/AIDS outside of the United States is a heterosexually lead disease.  The leading transmitters of HIV/AIDS infections outside of the United States are primarily within the heterosexual populace.  Outside of the United States, homosexuals are not the leading population infected with this horrible disease and therefore all blood donor sites should conform to questions that isolate risk behaviors and not stereotypes such as homosexual men.

The largest collecting organization within the United States disagrees with the FDA and has requested rigorously for a change in its bigoted seclusion polices.  Unfortunately, the old boys club that manages the FDA Board refuses to listen to reason or any arguments that proves their denial is based on hatred as apposed to factual statistics.  The average gay man tells me to lie when I want to donate blood, but I refuse to lie or to adapt to a corrupt, racist system that needed to change fifteen years ago.

I would love for every person within the United States that is planning to donate blood, regardless of sexuality, to complete the form and then refuse their normal donation of blood until the FDA reverses its years of active bigotry and homophobia.  Until the FDA faces its hatred and changes policies, the blood levels should continue to drop to dangerously low levels finally forcing the FDA to reverse its reign of terror, bigotry and hate!

I am not advocating that we do nothing to protect our blood supply.  On the contrary, we must do everything possible to ensure our blood supply remains safe.  I am advocating that HATE should not be propagated by political policy when that course of action is dependant on the generosity of the citizens of this country.  Everything should always be done to ensure our blood supply is safe, but the questions should be used to diminish those who are at risk for STD’s, HIV/AIDS based on behaviors and not stereotypes.  Not one soul should donate one drop of blood sending a loud message to the FDA that when it changes is policies of hate, we will gladly fill the necessary supply.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Lessons for Life ~ Judging Others Monday, Jun 8 2009

6^th of June 2009

Series called:

LESSONS for LIFE ~ JUDGING OTHERS

I think every one has watched Will & Grace on television.  Many people love the bitchy, alcoholic woman named Karen that had a harsh word for everyone and everything that happened around her.  While her sardonic demeanor was funny to watch, in real life, there’s not much joy being at the end of such wrath.

No body likes to be demeaned and talked down too like they’re a child or somehow inferior.  If you read my last post, you understand that we are all the same.  We start at the same place and ultimately when we’ve learned all of the lessons we must heed, our final destination is the same for everyone.  I’ve also written many blogs that explain how when we enter this world, we come in knowing one thing as a person…how to LOVE.  We learn everything else.

We are taught how to bully.  We allow our confidence to be stripped away by others.  We learn how to manipulate people and situations in order to make others feel inferior while we make ourselves feel superior.  It is through our own ego’s need to feel in someway better than others, that we justify our own self loathing that leads to treating people as Karen does on Will & Grace.  If we all start from the same place and we all end equally, the only difference for each of us is within the paths we take towards our final destination.  Some turn to focused ideologies such as organized religions to navigate the treacherous waters of this world.  Religion is a wonderful source to focus us, but most religions teach their parishioners to feel superior over those who are not members.  That within itself is a judgment over the billions who chose another path.

We are all on our own path with our own journey that is as individual as our finger prints.  Because we start at the same place with a singular goal of completing all of our lessons, the only differences between you and me is how we learn.  There is no wrong means to learn life’s lessons or to educate those we must disseminate knowledge too.  For some, organized religion is not the ideology that educates our way through life.  My point is that we need to focus more on the lessons to be learned and taught and less on how we are different or better than those who surround us.  Accept that what you choose to be may be right for you, and likewise may not for me as I step through my journey.  That does not make either you or me wrong, just different.  In no way am I superior to you or does that make you superior to me, so we should leave the judgments till after we pass from this world.  Let the only one judging, be something or someone that is worthy of true superiority without ego causing the inflation.

TO JUDGE IS TO INDIGNANTLY CLAIM

SUPERIORITY OVER OTHERS

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Lessons for Life – Common Ground Tuesday, Jun 2 2009

1st of June 2009

Series called:

LESSONS for LIFE ~ COMMON GROUND

In the introduction to this series, I alluded to the fact that we all start from the exact same place.  When you read that point, you may very well say NO, I  was born into this life with a family of status, or just the opposite to a family with no status and no means.  While that is not what I refer too, it gives you a place for beginning these lessons.

I’ve come to understand that we are born into this world (dimension) to learn lessons and to teach them.  It would be wonderful if all of the lessons we learn were taught in a class room setting or done through positive reinforcements.  However, life does not always educate us in that manner.  Many of the lessons we learn are taught in life as we experience it.  Some are even taught through negative reinforcement.  The people who enter our lives do so not by mistake, but rather with some design and they do so, to learn from us or to teach us.  In some cases both actions are transpiring.  Some will leave us wanting more while we are happy and blissful, while others will educate use during which time they break our hearts and rip away at the very fabric that makes our lives flow.  Any of these means are purposeful and we should all embrace both the lessons we learn and those we disseminate.

If I am right and we are all the same, why then do we allow ourselves to fall victim to such vile like HATE, VIOLENCE or BIGGOTRY?  These are the vices we cling too when we fear and do not understand.  They are also that which teaches us some of our most profound lessons.  The greatest of these lessons is not to give in to the power of FEAR! If we allow ourselves to fear, it will always cloud our vision and keep us from seeing those who might otherwise teach us so profoundly.  If we are beholden to FEAR, we may not allow ourselves to associate with white people if we are black, black people if we are white, people of different nationalities, different cultures, different religions or even different ideologies.  Because we hold ourselves back from those who are dissimilar, we loose the beautiful view of life through their eyes.  We cannot experience life through their perspective and the lessons we might otherwise be exposed to through the wonders, joy and beauty that is Life itself.

When I state that we start from the same place and end at the same place, I mean that we are all here to learn the same lessons.  Our ascension brings us to the same destination once we have learned all that we are intended to.  We must garner the same knowledge and we will only ascend once we have achieved it.  We start with nothing and we must learn everything.  The knowledge that we must gain is specific and will step us through to the next lessons we still have yet to learn.  Only once we posses all of it can we ascend to the next level.  Because we all begin with no knowledge, that is how we all start and are exactly the same.  Not one of us is given anything more than the others.  You might argue my point and say that you are more intelligent than others; you have more resources (money) than others and so on.  Some may acquire during a lifetime different means, but we must all learn exactly the same lessons regardless of our means during a given life.  Some of us may learn faster than others and to some, the lessons may come easier.  Money, power, intelligence are all wonderful components, but none of them will help and in many cases may even hurt learning that which you must learn during a lifetime.

Regardless of anything I say, we were all given something that transcends all religion and non religious ideologies.  Something that can never be paused or taken from us….FREE WILL.  You have the ability of free will to do, believe and say anything that you wish.  No one can take it away from you….not a tyrant, not a government, not a religion.  Free will is always your gift.  I mention it because many of us turn away from the most power force within our lives or within the world…..LOVE.  With love in your heart, you can over come any obstacle that is placed before you.  With love in your heart, you can learn all of the lessons that we must and ascend as we are all meant to do…..and yes, eventually we will all learn the same lessons.  The question remains, when will you learn them?

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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A Series: Lessons for Life Monday, Jun 1 2009

30^th of May 2009

Series called:

LESSONS FOR LIFE

The last fifteen years have brought about enormous changes in my life.  I had an amazing life fifteen years ago, but I could never have imagined that the path I would turn too might be the one I am on now.  This is the setup for a series of articles I will be writing over the next few months.  I hope that as you read this knowledge, that something will resonate with you.

This series is meant for everybody; however, only a few will garner knowledge from these teachings.  They are designed to fill in the gaps you may have in learning life’s lessons.  My greatest hope is that you will pass this information on while you teach others.  I hope to not only provoke your learning, but also the transference to others that you encounter.  Some will read my words and ignore or even get offended.  I am truly sorry if any one refutes this information.  We are all the same; starting at exactly the same place, we all learn and understand our lessons differently; therefore we begin at the same place, knowing the same thing and we will all end exactly at the same location.  I can only explain that this knowledge is delivered with the LOVE in my heart and with the hopes for a brighter tomorrow for us all.

These articles are meant for everyone.  From time to time they may resonate with your religion, and for that I am grateful.  However, they are designed for all religions as well as all non-religious people.  You don’t have to be spiritual to walk away from these lessons with the knowledge, love and faith.  The FAITH that I speak of is the faith you must have within yourself and for yourself.  You may think, well I don’t love myself or have faith within myself!  If that is the case, please read more and let me know when you find that love and faith within you, because regardless of anything else, we are all exactly the same!  Yes, one of the very first lessons you will learn is that we are all start from the exact place.  Yes, some of us during our lifetimes may have something that seems to set you aside from all others, hell, Bill Gates, may seem to be slightly different than the rest of us, but he is just like the rest of us and must learn the same lessons and teach that which is intended for him to teach, just like you and just like me.  If at any point you doubt the messages within these posts, search your heart and your soul for the answers that are truth for you.  I know that when you connect with your pure heart and your higher self that this information will be shown to be absolute truth, of that I am not worried.

My first post will follow this and you will find another post from me on this subject at least one per week, if not more.  I hope with all my heart that these blogs may say something to each one of you reading.

May you all be filled with Love, Light, Peace and Blessings

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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California’s Bigotry was Echoed Today Wednesday, May 27 2009

26^th of May 2009

CALIFORNIA’S BIGOTRY WAS ECHOED TODAY

I am deeply saddened by the California Supreme Court’s ruling today.  I don’t blame the court for its ruling; I blame the citizens of California that voted for a constitutional amendment to define marriage between one man and one woman.

It is funny that religious groups are the ones who are fighting so vociferously against allowing gays to wed.  Religion claims that it is the sanctity of marriage that is a religious right, and it will defile all men and all women who are married in a church, if I am aloud to share in that privilege.  Marriages were arranged for centuries before religions adopted the practice.  Religions implementation of marriage was more to solidify that the one and only Church – Christianity remained a singular entity as designed by the Council of Nicaea.  The joke on our modern day religious zealots, who claim ownership by telling how marriage is a religious foundation that without which, all of society will be destabilize.

These narrow minded, tunnel vision hypocrites, refuse to acknowledge any history that points out the facts where marriages were organized as far back as the eight century B.C. in both Greek and Persian cultures.  In all cultures marriage was more an arrangement that benefited one of the two sides and was found to be a business or social obligation rather than religious.

The remarkably hilarious component to the Christian Right’s arguments, claiming that marriage is a religiously protected covenant, when religions very sporadically and selectively performed the unions until around 866.  That is when Pope Nicholas I decided that they needed to be sanctioned by a religious celebration, forcing all marriages to be performed by the Church.  The focus was to organize various rituals that still had non-religious traditions at their foundation, giving them a religious structure and thereby removing anything that might lead parishioners away from the Church.  Pope Nicholas I feared with the widespread growth of other religions as well as the recurrence of Paganism and then later what the Church referred too as Witch craft.  Fear surrounded religion leading Pope Nicholas I to claim that marriages were to be performed by the Church as a religious sacrament.

The commonalities between 866 and now, is that FEAR was used to force the average person into believing that if a man can share in the legal rights of LOVE with another man, that all of society will cease to exist within that moment.  The most laughable part to this insane stance pushed Californians out of their homes in order to vote for a constitutional amendment that limited California’s marriage to being shared between one man and one woman only.

Religion have used FEAR throughout the centuries to maintain a strangle hold over society.  I am not apposed to religion, but I am apposed to religious organizations (like the Church of Latter Day Saints), who get involved in politics.  Jesus Christ himself said that Church and Politics needed to be separated due to the corruptibility of both.  If the son of God said religion needs to stay out of politics, why is the Religious Right spending millions on passing legislation within states their not even located in?

Californians should be ashamed of themselves if they voted for this amendment.  The hypocrisy of most organized religions and especially of the Church of Latter Day Saints, who have thousands of member’s still practicing polygamy with a very destructive view of women.  Yet they wish to fund the California fight for an amendment that limits the rights to marry.  One message everyone need to heed: you cannot stop a people from their fight against injustice for ever.  You may have won a small victory, but we will continue fighting until we share in the same rights as all citizens within this country.  That is a promise you can count on.  Those who degrade the life of another will loose when faced by those who fight for their civil rights.

LOVE CAN NEVER BE WRONG

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Our Perspective is Everything Monday, May 11 2009

10^th of May 2009

OUR PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING

There are important lessons that you learn, and as you learn them, you just instinctively know they need to be disseminated to all who wish to know it also.  This is one of those lessons.  It is funny how I was told and then told again that I needed to write this blog, so I am taking the time to document what seems to be important for me to convey.  We are all enduring times that require sacrifice and a clear head.  But regardless of the circumstance, this blog should have a meaning for all who read it.  If you’re not one that has suffered the loss of a job, a retirement accounts that forces you to continue working another five or ten years; or a loved one you are at odds with; you know someone that is.

If you find yourself among those suffering, regardless of how or why, read and understand these words.  It is easy to allow yourself to become inundated with sadness, sorrow and bitterness.  It matters little how or why you find yourself without, only that you do.  I must emphasize that our perspective will either enable us to get through this ordeal smoothly and efficiently or arduously as we become mired in despair.

When you find any situation that is not to your liking, try viewing it from a slightly different perspective.  What I mean, look at the circumstances differently until you find a viewpoint that is more positive, and enables you to maintain yourself.  An example is that I was unemployed for ten months when I found a contracted position to manage a software project for an insurance company.  I was so happy to be working again and what I thought was a productive part of society.  I changed how the project was structured and brought it to a point where it was starting to take on its own life.  That’s when I was told the contract was being closed due to financial instability.  I find myself unemployed again and seeking another professional job.

I could allow myself to go right back, to the miserable state I endured prior to the three months I spent working.  Or, I could revel in the fact that I made money for those three months, which enabled me to catch up on bills.  I can fall deep into the depression and despair that I was in when I received the contract, or I can be grateful for the opportunity it afforded me.  I may dwell in the despair of being unemployed again while continuing to ask the questions of “why me,” or I can bask in the joy I felt for those three months, this is my choice which perspective to select.

I choose to see the positive as apposed to dwell in the darkness of negativity.  The circumstances don’t change, but my perspective does.  By changing my perspective, I am able to remain positive and focused while knowing that a new job is around me sooner rather than later.  I know that I won’t wait ten months for another job as I maintain my view of these circumstances with ease.

The other focal point that can be maintained is that you must remain in the NOW.  Some of us have a difficult time not planning for the future.  We spend so much time planning for tomorrow that we forget about focusing on the decision for today.  If our future is not where we dwell, then it may be our past.  Languishing in the misery or the glory that once was, can consumes us.  We are unable to change our past.  It happened as it did and we should either remember it fondly or know that the darkness, were the lessons we had to learn.  Let go of the past for it can no longer serve our needs.  Do not spend too much time in the future; we don’t know if we will ever have one.  Remain focused on today. Make decisions that are right for today, and that will serve us well for tomorrow.

Your humbled servant – Todd M Dobson

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The Debate over Hate Crimes Legislation Thursday, Apr 30 2009

30^th April 2009

Hate Crimes Legislation

The Matthew Shepard Bill

Yesterday, the Representative from North Carolina was neither Honorable nor conducted herself in a Respectful manner when she opposed the Matthew Shepard Bill. Mrs. Virginia Foxx said, while knowing that Judy Shepard sat in attendance (the mother of slain Matthew Shepard who was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die as he over looked Laramie, Wyoming) said, “I also would like to point out that there was a bill – the hates crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery.  It wasn’t because he was gay.” You may see Mrs. Foxx as she addresses the House of Representatives by following this links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWm2zGTZBM0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLxbQmlOT1I

Mrs. Foxx went on to say that what happened to Matthew Shepard and naming this Hates Crimes Legislation after him is a “HOAKS”.  It is one thing to dislike a group of people based on an aspect of who they are as people (which is by definition HATE), it is another to be an elected official, with the resources to obtain police documentation, prosecution documents and have the ability to even question those who can authoritatively say why the two men accused of killing Matthew Shepard were tried with crimes motivated by HATE.

It took very little effort on my part to find copies of the arrest documents and transcripts of the trial which define that even though Mr. Russell Henderson turned States Evidence against Mr. Aaron McKinney, both men perpetrated a crime based on abhorrence because they thought Matthew was gay and thereby an easy target.  Mr. Henderson testified that the motivating factors of their crimes against Mr. Shepard were in fact based on their thoughts that him being a homosexual.

What makes Mrs. Foxx’s actions even more repugnant was that she knew Mrs. Judy Shepard was in the gallery listening to her personal attack on a son she’s lost.  This legislation has two different sides arguing, but little of the arguments are based on fact and are substantiated more on personal ideology.  Because the issue of homosexuality has been so dynamically charged, people are basing their arguments more on the manner they choose to live (such as their Christian ideologies, religious affinities or dislikes for people who love other people of the same sexual orientation).  This has motivated those who cleave to their religious text, saying that they will denounce anything having to do with homosexuality and thereby it is a sin.  While the other side is loosing patience with the personal attacks on whom they are as people.

I must say that coolers head need to prevail and we must find a way to debate such issues without name calling and find the ability to discuss calmly and rationally our side of such personal issues.   We must find a way to focus on the needs to better serve society as a whole.  With that being said, if someone opposes such legislation, it does not mean that this person is against all homosexuals.  That also means, that supporting such legislation does not mean that you agree with all homosexuals.  Please read below for my comment to a forum where most people were Christians against homosexuals and thereby against this legislation or they were for this legislation and thereby they are homosexuals.

________________________________________________________________________

It deeply saddens me to read that Mrs. Foxx would be so insensitive with Shepard in the audience, while trivializing the death of her son.  It also dismays me that two different sides can neither see a way to come together for the greater good of all citizens in this country.  We must find a way to see our opposition and meet their needs for a better tomorrow for us all.

History has shown that in this great nation of ours, some have leaned towards biased and some find it easier to carry HATE within their hearts rather than to show respect for a person who may be different.  We have protected black people from hate crimes because in this country many have succumbed to the whims of white people who find the only crime committed was the color of their skin.  We protected woman because for centuries, their male counterparts saw them not as equals, but as chattel and some even found that they could harm or kill women simply because they were not men.  We’ve protected Jewish people who found some Christians and others would hate them simply because they were Jewish.

None of these protected groups sought special protection, but they expected to be cosseted from the ones who would target them based on Odium.   Each of these previous groups only wanted to be viewed as equals, which does not mean being denied those same rights that all citizens within this country were granted.  When some wish to segregate others simply based on their differences, using those disparities as a means to harm, denigrate or take a life; it is wrong.  That is the pure definition of HATE, when another cannot see what you have in common and would rather only identify that which makes you different.  In none of these protected classifications did we say it was alright for anyone to kill, and just happened to be a man that killed a woman, was there anything less wrong with his crime.  Nor have we said that if a man kills a woman he must automatically be put to death or greater punishment heaped upon him.  We said that if a man so filled with rage, and kills a woman simply because she is not male, perpetrating this crime based on his bias as apposed to any other reason; then he may be prosecuted for his crime as a HATE CRIME, with greater punishments due to the motivation.

YES, I can see why gay, lesbian and transgendered people deserve to be protected. There are large numbers of people who cannot see them as citizens simply because they love a person of the same sex.  That being said, if one person seeks out gay people to harm or kill them specifically because they are gay; then yes, that crime is motivated by HATE and therefore should have more severe consequences.  In passing such a law, we only says that a crime perpetrated by a racial propensity should have greater consequences.  Such a law does not devalue any other human life and as should be with all crimes against any person, the maximum penalties should always be sought.

Both sides of this debate need to find a better way to bridge this gap.  If Pagans disliked and targets Christians, killing and harming them simply because they are Christians, then a law to protect Christians would be passed in order to erase hate as a motivator of these crimes.  It would be a lesson to teach society at large that crime perpetrated simply out of rage and hatred for that particular class of people is wrong.  The simple ideology behind such protection is to tell society at large that abhorrence is intolerable and those who hate must do away with the odium in their hearts.  The only people, who should appose such a bill, would be those who allow HATE to fill their hearts and might be the very people who would carry out a crime against the ones being protected.

HATE CAN NEVER BE RIGHT
&
LOVE CAN NEVER BE WRONG!!!

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Response to Derek: Rush is Wrong Saturday, Apr 25 2009

25^th April 2009

Response to Derek: Rush is Wrong

Hello Derek and thank you for reading my words.  I am sorry that “people like me” anger you so.  It is not I who angers you; it is that your ideologies and beliefs are under attack from so many people with you feeling the loneliness that surrounds you.  That hopelessness comes from believing so fanatically in a way of living that show hate within your heart.  The resentment you feel isn’t from my words, but rather from the world that is standing against your inclusive only means of living.

You prove my point about Rush with your very words.  I don’t believe that President Obama is perfect nor do I believe he is not a politician like all others in Washington DC.  But out of our choices for President, I do believe he was the better choice to change from the President that pushed this once great nation into the problems that we now find ourselves – President Bush.

The difference between you and I is less about our individual choices for President or even the ideologies that we live by; it is more that I feel even though we stand at opposite ends of the spectrum, I can find a way to RESPECT you for who you are!  You sir, you feel that because I don’t believe as you do and support your politics or ideology that I am evil.  That makes you as wrong as Rush and makes both of you poor examples of a soul within human form.  Search your soul and learn the lessons of LOVE, HONOR and RESPECT for all of your fellow humans, and stop wasting time attacking someone who stands at an opposite perspective than you do.

And by the way: BREATHE is the proper spelling for the word as is BREATH. You may see with the paste from www.dictionary.com.  Please forgive that my spell check is set to a broader dictionary than your own.  Many of my correspondence are from all around the world and therefore I use a European dictionary as apposed to a North American.  I hope I don’t offend your delicate sensibilities by pointing out your narrow mindedness or your ignorance.

breathe

Show Spelled Pronunciation [breethd] Show IPA , breath⋅ing.

–verb (used without object)

1.	to take air, oxygen, etc., into the lungs and expel it; inhale and exhale; respire.

Thank you again for your comments.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Submitted on 2009/04/24 at 10:22pm

You call people hateful bigots because they don’t agree with Socializing our system? Here are some examples, since you seem too lazy to , you know, READ.

The nationalization of our banks. The nationalization of our auto industry. The looming nationalization of our free press system.

Obama was a trainer and lawyer for ACORN, who stands accused of voter fraud in many states and was the recipient of billions of dollars from Obama the second he got a chance. You might have noticed that it was ACORN members protesting in front of AIG execs homes when Dear Leader instructed them to do so.

I stumbled upon this ridiculous article while searching out something else on Google, and feel stupid even commenting so late, but people like you are infuriating. I listened to Rush when all these news reports started coming out about how hateful he is and blah blah blah, and when you actually take the time to listen to what he’s saying, it’s in defense of the country. Maybe you should actually listen instead of spreading your ignorance around. And PS, you can’t even spell breathe.

Peace

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HATE has Taken Another Life Friday, Apr 17 2009

16^th April 2009

Hate has Taken another Life

Video New Link: Carl Walker-Hoover, 11 hanged himself when bullies wouldn’t relent

This, like so many other similar stories is gut wrenching and totally unnecessary.  Every person in this world comes into it knowing only one thing instinctively; how to LOVE! We learn everything else….HATE, LOATHING and DISGUST from those surrounding us.

We are taught how to hate things and people that are different and don’t conform to what we identify as similar to ourselves.  This is our own egoic mentality that provokes fear through learned behaviors.  It is our deficiencies that tell us when someone is different that we must fear them.  Fear, Ego and HATE are all fallacies that lead us to do dark, horrible things; like pushing an 11 year old boy into thinking his own life.  To make another person feel that the only way to be at peace is by killing themselves, you are as guilty as if you strung the rope up in the closet and tightened it around this innocent boy’s neck.

I hope the young kids that taunted Carl with daily criticisms feel within their hearts the pain they caused so many others.  An innocent boy was driven from humanity for no other reason but to make others feel stronger, fearless and in control.  The parents of these children, the principle of the school and the school board all failed Carl and are all responsible for HATE and FEAR Mongering.

Some of you who cleave to your Bibles and religious text will try to justify the HATE within your hearts by saying how homosexuality is wrong, but Carl was never given the chance to discover if he was a gay man or not.  There is no justification, regardless of the book you wish to use, that can rationalize when I life is taken.  It doesn’t matter if you directly took that life or indirectly caused it….MURDER is MURDER.  There can never be a justification for taking the life of an innocent person because he/she is not what you wish them to be….and there can never be words from any source that justifies the taking of innocence as was done to Carl Walker-Hoover.

Carl, I am sorry that your light was never given the chance to shine and that it was extinguished by vile, obtuse people that saw within you what they could only hope to achieve.  For the eleven years you graced this world, I hope that you loved more and experienced joy and peace within your heart during your life.  I am sorry to tell you that you will never escape the sad and growing ranks of those innocent people taken from the world by HATE.  The purity of your heart will live on long after today as you are added to the ranks of such amazing people like Matthew Shepard, Chanelle Pickett, Deborah Forte and so many other men and women who have been murdered or harmed for no other reason than the hate and fear within the hearts of a few.

Parents and Religious Leaders; you can teach your children and young adults your ideologies and also teach LOVE, HONOR and RESPECT.  You can educate your young that while you might not agree with something or someone, that does not give anyone the rights to take action against them.  That to truly be a person who is at peace with themselves and all others, you must find a way to respect even those you might appose.  You can tech them that greatness is not standing against an opponent with masses, beating them or killing them; but yet strength comes when you can stand before that which you appose and find a way to Love and Respect them for who and what they are.  Teach them that violence is a measure of last resource and should only be taken in defense, never aggression against others.  Explain and show them how HATE never belongs within the hearts and souls of truly great people, and is a sign of weakness.

While I write these words and know that within my heart they are amazing words to live by, I also know that many won’t ever believe in them.  If only one person changes their being, then they are worth the time and effort that pours from me onto this screen.  The students, parents and school officials that aloud this insidious behavior to continue; they are the weak ones.  To tolerate hate in order to feel better about ones self doesn’t show anything but cowardice….never strength.  To bully another kid because you can, doesn’t show anything but the lowest form of humanity and that truly deserves our pity, not our understanding.  There is no HONOR in what was done to Carl….and the school and school board for covering it up and not taking appropriate action until after a beautiful life ceased to exist, only shows that you have no right in positions to mold the minds of our youth.

LOVE, HONOR & RESPECT ALL – LOVE CAN NEVER BE WRONG

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Technical Support that Fails All Customers Thursday, Apr 16 2009

15^th of April 2009

Technical Support that Fails All Customers

I did not expect to follow-up on my previous post: “The Continued Failure of Corporate America with Customer Service,” but after the phone conversation I just had with Sai at the Dell Corporation (third level support), I need to tell the world of such atrocious service by the Dell Corporation. Sai blatantly refused to let me speak with anyone in Senior Management or to discuss the inabilities of Dell or Trend Micro to give decent technical support in the previous seven weeks. Sai’s exact words were, “I can not and will not escalate this call to anyone else, regardless of the reasons why!”

Sai isn’t the first to tell me “No” to getting a manager when I’ve requested one. Dell and Trend Micro have set policies that dictate that no support technician is to escalate any call to supervisors for any reason at all. I’ve heard over the past seven weeks and four days the word “No” far too many times when I’ve requested an escalation to a supervisor for intervention. This has been a trend that Customer Service departments for all major corporations have been setting as policy because their supervisors receive far too many calls. This was a growing trend in the early 2000’s because of the rising cost of customer service that cuts into profit margins. It is also the failure of those organizations that teach their support personnel this tactic or worst, don’t teach them at all, but chastise their customer service representatives when they escalate a call to anyone in management.

Companies like Dell and Trend Micro spend money for Web Site support and Knowledge Base data bases to stave off the number of people who call into their support environments. There is a calculated cost to every call that is placed to these support environments and that cost is not seen as a necessity to sell their products and services. That cost is viewed improperly as a degradation of their profit margins. I’ve been telling support environments like Dell and Trend Micro to publish on their web sites real time statistics that show how many support issues they work per day, per week and per month broken down by the different methods that support is given. Tell the number of issues coming in, how many could have been resolved by a search in the web site’s knowledge base and how many were truly issues that a support call was necessary. As people see factual numbers that show the average wait times before their issue is addressed, the average time for resolution to basic support issues; they will decide in advance if they wish to try and solve their issues with a search of the knowledge base or a web chat session as apposed to calling support. The fact is that most companies don’t want to release real-time numbers on their support issues and the statistics that would need to be published because they cannot hide their inabilities to support customers such as me. It should tell every business and every customer that is deciding to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on products from a company like Dell and Trend Micro, when they make policies such as No to escalated calls to a supervisor when one is requested and No, we won’t publish real-time support statistics because we have too much to hide. If a company won’t let a customer speak with someone in management and if that Corporation hides their Executives Names, email addresses, and means to contact them from their customers; then that is not a company deserving of your business.

I got so angry and upset that it was taking me seven weeks to get to a third level support person like Sai. During that time I heard the work “No” so many times I was hearing it in my sleep. Before reaching Sai, I had to deal with so many people at Dell like Brandy, a supervisor at Dells phone directory where she blatantly and very gruffly refused to place me on hold (given my circumstances and the facts that for ten days I kept being bounced between Dell Hardware Support and Dell Software Support because they saw the problem as one or the other and not both, like it truly is) and ask her boss if she could call direct for a supervisor in Software Support to take my call and assist in getting the appropriate person to support my needs. She told me over and over that she didn’t care about my problems, my only two options were to allow her to place me in the queue for Software Support (which I’d spend the previous ten days in that hell with no answers just blind transfers over to Hardware Support because they didn’t or couldn’t support my issue that was both hardware and software related (Trend Micro’s TMProxy.exe file is conflicting with the Dell Wireless drivers and causing a Vista system crash)). Wonderful Brandy doesn’t deserve to be considered a Manager because she has no concept of Customer Service, but I found more people like Brandy at Dell then I found that ever tried to understand or sincerely help. Management at Dell and Trend Micro have forgotten why they are in business. Yes they sell hardware and software, but CUSTOMERS purchase those products and Customer Service is a mandatory part of selling any product and services.

Seven weeks and four days my problems have persisted and even gotten worst after Sai made changes last Friday to my wireless network settings. Sanja at Trend Micro not knowing Microsoft Vista stepped me through formatting my hard drive and didn’t know what he was doing when he did it. That was the only time Trend Micro got me a supervisor after Sanja formatted my hard drive and I lost two weeks worth of work and two weeks worth of edits to my manuscript. Sanja was shocked and dumb struck when he found that Vista does not have the same abilities he was expecting in Microsoft XP, and he was stunned at the outcome, but had he worked with Vista before me, he would have known what he was telling me to do was not right.

I will never do business with either the Dell Corporation or Trend Micro ever again. My refusal is more based on deplorable customer service. When I had continued problems and my numerous requests for supervisor intervention continued to be denied, and then I was denied access to anyone in their senior management teams; why should I ever trust that company that obviously doesn’t care about my needs with support by purchasing their products? These policies at customer service companies should tell every consumer that if I cannot receive management assistance when I deem it necessary, that the company doesn’t deserve my patronage.

I wrote this second post because I am tired, just like many of you are, in the insidious means that companies try to deliver customer service. They want to insulate themselves as far away from their customers as they can, but yet they need us customers to keep them in business. Something in the mentality of how they do business must change in order for them to remain. If they refuse to change their customer service focus back to their customers, they don’t deserve to remain in business. I would rather the Dell Corporation fail and another manufacturer produce computer products, software and services rather than continue to deal with companies like Dell and Trend Micro who refuse to work with their customers. You cannot treat the ones you need to feed you, with distain and expect to continue being fed. You must respect who you’re there to help and those are the people that paid for the privilege by buying your products and services.

Good customer service doesn’t mean give me exactly what I want when I want it, but it does mean meeting my needs within reason. If I feel I am not receiving what I require, I should always have the opportunity to request help from higher management, up to and including the President’s Office if necessary. The Dell Corporation and Trend Micro both refused to allow me any access to anyone within their Senior Management Teams. I was even told by Sai at Dell that if I write to the corporate office, he will get my letter. Since I don’t feel Sai has given me appropriate support, I should be aloud to speak with someone above him who can determine how the Dell Corporation should respond. The Trend Micro Company also denied me escalations and won’t even return my calls.

BEWARE IN BUYING FROM DELL or TREND MICRO!!!

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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What Does Tomorrow Hold Sunday, Apr 12 2009

12^th of April 2009

What Does Tomorrow Hold for You

Much has been made lately of the end of the world or if you are religious, “End of Days”. While I sense changes in the lives of many within this country and in the world; I sincerely cannot attest to what that transformation truly is.

For most this manner of thinking is unfathomable. Some would even consider me crazed or delusional for entertaining such rubbish. It has me thinking about my life and that led me to wonder; how many would die in peace if today were your last day? Regardless of when our demise comes or how our passing arrives; what matters more is if it happened at this moment, would you have regrets? Would you leave people behind who knew that you loved them?

I care little if you are religious, atheist or what your personal ideologies may be; I only care that you honestly find peace within your own heart and a love for yourself. That sounds like a simple focus that some will say, “but of course, doesn’t everybody?” The answer to that would be “No, not everybody is at peace and even less love themselves purely. If you sincerely find that either is your fate, your waking tomorrow gives you another day in which to change that outcome and establish what is true.

If tomorrow comes and it is not your last day, look yourself in a mirror and see all that there is to witness. Take a good look of the physical presence that you grace others with and behold how you present yourself to the world. Are you ashamed of your looks? Do you think yourself unworthy, ugly, fat or simply consider your facade to be plain. My first question of you that should make one think deeply: if you do not see what is special about you, why should anyone else? If you cannot see the beauty, the strength and the heart and soul that is buried within your physique, how do you expect anyone else too?

We most often expect of others what we do not accept from ourselves. Why is that? How can we believe that someone else will see the physical beauty within me if I cannot see it? Regardless of how you were raised and what was taken from you as you grew up, if you wish anyone else to see you for the person that you truly are; you must first see yourself the same way. If you cannot see that you are so much more than just physical form, then how can anyone else see beyond that which you present to them?

People are far more perceptive then we give them credit for. We see wafer thin people in magazines, on televisions and advertising this product or that, but we were each made differently and that is what makes each of us great. We cannot all be Michael Angelo’s David or the Greek Venus de Milo. But we can all be exactly who we are…and be both proud and happy with the reflection that stairs back of us from that mirror is exactly what it should be. Start tomorrow by finding LOVE for ONES SELF first, and then you may just find the love you always wanted to have for others.

To find PEACE within yourself means taking each day as it comes and doing the best that you can. It will be difficult for so many who live with Ego as the main trust in their lives. Ego can be an amazing tool when someone is trying to survive. Most people do not understand that ego can be both awe inspiring and deflating. There is positive ego that inflates your presence to be larger than it actually is. There is negative ego that can drain the very life force from within you. Ego can be simultaneously both as a person presents themselves to the world being larger than they really are; while within their mind they see themselves as far more minuscule. To truly find PEACE, you must set ego aside and accept you for the person you truly are. That sounds difficult, but it may be easier than you know.

Peace comes from treating everybody else just as you wish to be treated (with Love, Honor and Respect). It is important that you realize truly how others must be treated. Some of us do not see that we deserve to be anything other than what we are within our own minds… and yet, we have no self image, no pride and no LOVE for who we truly can be. If we take each day with every encounter and sincerely treat each person as we wish to be treated; with respect regardless of our differences; then we will be ready to die a full and cherished life.

Let me know how I may help you find the Peace and Love within your own heart so that when ever your last day comes; you too may know that you are loved, that you have loved and that the true essence of your being may rest in peace.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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The Failure of Corportate America Friday, Apr 10 2009

09 April 2009

The Continued Failure of Corporate America
with Customer Service

I am writing this blog while I wait on the phone with the Dell Corporation on the other side. I’ve spent six weeks trying to garner support with problems on my new Dell Notebook computer with Dell Technical Support and while I am in the midst of this nightmare, it strikes me that this is one of the exact reasons so many companies within the United States are failing.

Corporate America has abused it customers for far too long. They care more about the bottom line and stock prices, that they cut every corner in order to increase profits and in turn deliver the worst customer service to its consumers. The American Auto Industry is feeling the affects of building sub-standard vehicles and then treating their clientele like crap when they bring their cars in for service. When a person spends fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty and even fifty thousand dollars on a car and two years later it sounds like it’s falling apart, they deserve better for their money.

Too many of our American Companies have been shipping jobs over seas in hopes of improving their profit margins without a care to what they were doing to the American people they sell their products too. We are the largest group of purchasers produced by any company in the world, yet one hundred percent of the companies that produce those American products manufacture them outside of the United States. Then when you need help because something is not right with the product or the support, your call on is taken care of outside of this country by a person in another country. The Dell Corporation has support mostly in Indonesia and while it is excellent support; these American Companies market their products to us, but they are made and supported by people outside of this country. That would not be a bad thing because investing in developing countries is wonderful for them and for the United States; but not when here in the United States we have the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. When a company invest in the people they market their products too, those people turn around and support the company they work for and get paid by.

Again we see how the American Corporation driven by greed and disgust where they care solely for their bottom lines as apposed to the people who built their companies so strong. Six weeks ago I bought a new Dell Notebook computer from Bestbuy stores. The new system had everything I wanted and while there was a very comparable HP notebook with all the same features for fifty dollars less than mine, the Dell offered a six hour batter life, which for the presentations that a software project manager must do, I paid the extra money for the vast battery life.

I immediately spent the next two my old computer onto the new one. I spent days importing everything onto the new system and ensuring that everything was perfect while I persisted with my new contract assignment. It wasn’t three days into my new system that I ran into problems. The next day the same issues, so I called Bestbuy and explained I didn’t have time to waist with their technical support, I just wanted to replace this notebook with another one from the store. They really didn’t want too, but the store manager understood my predicament and agreed to do so. I exchanged the systems and stayed up all night installing applications and transferring data again.

Two days later I continue to experience the same problem the other notebook had. I called Bestbuy support and all they would do is to take the notebook away from me for days to weeks with no real ability to determine what was causing the problems. Because I needed this system to be operational, I tried calling Dell Technical Support only to be told by the Indonesian support personnel that I didn’t have support on this system and that I could obtain support by paying for it. It didn’t matter that I had just purchased the computer and they refused to get me a manager. After days of working all day only to come home and spending hours wasting away trying to get support from online at (www.support.dell.com) and by calling Dell Support only to be told how I had no support on this computer and that support doesn’t transfer with second hand purchases. It took me over a week to understand that the Indonesian support personnel don’t know major retailers inside the United States, so here they are thinking I bought this computer from a friend, or worst stole it from the company I use to work at. I start calling the third party software manufacturer (Trend Micro) because they developed the software Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 that was preinstalled by Dell and is why the computer cost me fifty dollars more than the comparable HP notebook that I convinced my roommate to buy for himself.

The crutched of the problem is that Trend Micro Internet Security forces all internet traffic on the computer to go through their proxy software (TMProxy.exe). The proxy software is conflicting with the wireless drivers that are necessary to run the Dell notebooks wireless services. Because of the conflict, the system will crash if I am using any wireless network at all, but everything will work fine if I run on a wired network like in my office.

Trend Micro kept saying this was a Dell issue and at first refused to even talk with me saying, “you are the first to bring this situation to our attention (even though I have the crash dump files and the Vista logs showing the crashes).” It took me two weeks and finally yelling at them before they would even support the issue, but after a week, they walked me into formatting my hard drive without my prior consent or knowledge and because they did, it cost me weeks work and edits on my manuscript that were not backed up. Now, they won’t take my calls nor will Trend Micro give me to a manager in their organization so that I may complain about their hideous support.

At this point and time I’ve had my problem for four weeks and I’m angry, upset and tired. I can’t get support from Bestbuy, Dell or Trend Micro and these are three examples of American companies selling their products to Americans, yet their support is all over-seas. They won’t escalate a call to management and all hide their corporate offices information because they don’t want any customer calling their President’s Offices with complaints like, “I can’t get support!” All the while they want to yell themselves and go to the American Government like General Motors and Chrysler has done demanding billions in hand outs when they themselves have caused their own problems.

Every American Corporation should post to the own web sites phone numbers, addresses and email addresses for all of their top executives. This way when a person like me has an issue and cannot get appropriate customer service or technical support; the customer has a phone number and email address to escalate the situation. If they truly wish to improve their customer support, they will publish this information for disgruntled customers to escalate any issue when the normal means are not sufficient, but I can guarantee you not one of these three companies or any other corporation in the United States will take such drastic position, because they know they will be inundated with calls and emails due to such horrific services that are rendered by their own company.

I finally called back to Dell and when I was told I had to pay for support again, I yelled and threw one hell of a fit and finally they gave me to a manager. The first manager hung up on me, because how dare I be angry and excited after four weeks of hell trying to get support on a growing issue. I called back and called back and called back until finally one manager realized that I actually should be given support and what a huge mistake the Dell Corporation was making by denying me again and again. He transferred the support from the Bestbuy stores to me personally and apologized for their error and then placed me into a true Hell.

I thought for a brief moment that once I got to technical support I would get somewhere and my problems would be resolved; boy was I kidding myself. Two weeks now I have been transferred from one department to another to another and even another. Ninety-five percent of those transfers were blind transfer and I would have to tell my story all over again and again and again. Please while you are in this process of deceptive attempts at support, you the customer should never get upset, because that will only get you hung up on time and time again by those who don’t care to hear your rants or raves. When I did get to hardware support they pointed the finger at software support and blind transferred me over to them. Software support would point the finger at hardware support and at times both of them would say I had to go to Trend Micro because it is their product and therefore their problem, not that of the Dell Corporation. Trend Micro was pointing their finger at Dell saying it was obviously their problem and all the while I am not aloud to get angry, ask for escalation to a manager or dare don’t even think of getting to someone in the Corporate Offices for any of the three companies, because that just gets you hung up on.

After two weeks of this exact process, I blow up and yell and rant and rave over such deplorable support, but it still doesn’t get me to anyone at Dell Corporate, Trend Micro Corporate or even Bestbuy’s Corporate Offices. These companies wonder why the American people have a problem supporting them in troubled times like these, and yet six weeks I’ve been trying to get help with their products and software and I can’t get anyone at any of the companies to help.

When Corporate American pulls their head out of their asses long enough to see by not hiring American employees, there are no incentives for the American people to buy their products. When the bottom line and corporate profits are more important than the customer or the employee; companies like Dell, Trend Micro and Bestbuy will continue to see their revenues shrink and rightfully so. We the American Public are angry at being told consumerism is a bad thing, but buy our products. We are tired of supporting a company that treats us, the customer, like crap and as if we don’t matter. We are tired of the companies we are bailing out by the billions, bringing job after job over-seas while receiving tax benefits, discounts and all the while we can’t feed our families because there are no jobs here within our boarders. Corporate America, you want our support and our money to keep you going; then you need to start caring as much about us as you want us to care about you. That means create a support environment that actually supports its customers. When a customer asks for an escalation, then get the manager or even the corporate officer that is necessary to deal with the problem. It means accepting accountability for the customer and the fact that they just bought your products and services and therefore deserves to be treated with respect (even if they may not give it to you). With many of our largest companies filing for bankruptcy every day, each and every company needs to thank each of their customers and employees for making them survive. The Dell Corporation, Trend Micro and Bestbuy needs to be aware that they are only one customer away from bankruptcy or salvation and it is their customers and their employees that make each day they remain in business possible.

I still don’t have a resolution to my notebook issue and at this point in time, I personally won’t ever buy from Dell, Bestbuy or Tren Micro ever again. I’ve been treated horribly and every time at Dell I ask to speak with their Corporate Office, I’m told “No” and “I don’t have a number, but you can send them a letter”. It exemplifies the horrendous support and customer service that has gotten so many American Companies in the bad shape that they now find themselves….and they sit in their board rooms wondering why?

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Is The Economic Stimulus Bill Good for the United States Thursday, Feb 5 2009

3^rd of February 2009

Is the Economic Stimulus Plan Good for the United States

The United States Congress is weighting a bill that the US House of Representative’s passed. The Stimulus Plan that President Obama has been pushing since before his inauguration, has me greatly perplexed and wondering when the Change in Washington is going to take place!

I agree that the stimulus package won’t cure the waning US economy; however, it is a good first step towards stimulating growth. That does not mean that I place my support behind this stimulus plan. Our glorious House of Representatives have conducted Washington business as usual when they shackled this stimulus bill with a ton of PORK (junk that has nothing to do with the original bill, but that Representatives and Senators wish to hide in a bill that has greater opportunities to pass).

I have always respected and enjoyed Representative Pelosi for her straight talk and ability to withstand the Good ole Boy’s Network in Washington, but when I watched her on C-Span try to justify additions to this bloated stimulus bill, she lost credibility. We need Washington to put forth only those bills without any PORK. Vote on a separate bill for Smithsonian funding, for sex education and for abortion funding. Let those bills withstand their merits by themselves and focus our attentions on each subject matter per bill. It is a sad day when the House of Representatives and the Senate can drown any good bill with trash used to burden that bill down or pass unnecessary legislation. This is what I believe President Obama spoke about when he said, “I will change how Washington does business.”

President Obama, I feel this stimulus bill is important for the average American. We as tax payers have bailed out so many corporations that don’t even appreciate the billions of dollars we have given. Now it is our turn to help save our houses, pay for increases or longer terms for unemployment allowances, as well as funds that will help small to medium size businesses grow. This bill needs to put America back to work as soon as possible, not be swamped with unnecessary junk that needs a free pass. This bill has enormous implications in how long America will be out of work and how many lives are ruined by a disastrous economy. All of the PORK that has been added by the House of Representatives needs to be removed. If it has no ability to help grow the economy or pay for those that are unemployed or underemployed, it needs to be deleted. If the House or the Senate refuses to remove wasted and unwanted PORK from the bill, Mr. President, you need to deny signing this bill and ask for one that just focuses on stimulating our economy.

As for Mrs. Pelosi and every member of the House of Representatives that added crap to this bill in hopes of a smooth passage; shame on you. Each of you needs to be concerned with your next term in office. Citizens of the United States are watching and we are angry with frivolous spending, poor management, unnecessary spending and we are demanding you change your ways or get out!

WASHINGTON NEEDS TO CHANGE – now

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Rush Limbaugh is Wrong Thursday, Jan 29 2009

27^th of January 2009

Rush Limbaugh is Wrong

I am the first person to say even when I don’t agree with the sentiments; radio personalities have the right to say what they believe to be true. However, when the message is a bought and paid for message that is over flowing with hate, it should be stopped. Rush Limbaugh hasn’t given our newly elected President a chance to breath, much less to factually find a reason to hate the man; but that hasn’t stopped him from calling for a boycott against the Presidency of the United States and any policy presented from it.

Rush, you’ve gone too far. I didn’t care of our last President, but after he won his first election, I gave the man a chance to prove himself positively or negatively. In my opinion, George Bush was a puppet idiot that decimated this countries economy to pay back his daddy’s corporate crony friends who paid to elect George W Bush. Rush wants us to believe that President Obama is going to destroy this country, but I what want to know Rush….what is left for him to destroy.

The problem is when men in positions of authority or positions that grant them an audience use that ability to do harm as apposed to doing some good. This country is at a pivotal point and we need to stop the partisan politics and once in for all unite. I don’t care if that is to unite behind the man who currently occupies the Presidency or behind Mr. Obama the man. We need people in positions such as you, Mr. Limbaugh, who will openly speak to unite America and bring these two opposing sides together, not to undermined, stir up dissention, scare people into believing that hell is about to open up in the country that is known as the United States of America.

We have some very serious problems that will continue to worsen if we don’t find a way to set aside our differences and move in a common direction. That won’t happen when big mouth, hate filled bigots like you – Rush Limbaugh pushes his own private agenda that is authored by the very self serving corporate interest that destroyed this country over the past eight years.

The problem adds to this scenario when the press is questioning whether Rush is the new face of the Republican Party. We must have a two party system for balance, but Mr. Limbaugh, if you are the new face of the Republican Party, it is the same face they’ve used the past eight years and I would have thought that the message of hate and segregation with the sole intention of never allowing the populace to organize positively unless it is behind you; that this message would get it’s speaker in trouble. But I guess Rush, you think all of your listeners are just dumb idiots like the last President was. That your listeners will just follow any voice that guilts or goads the listeners with fear and loathing with the intention designed to scare them into action is fine by you.

I have more faith in the American people than you do Mr. Limbaugh or that the Republican Party does. I have faith that the next four years will be spent repairing not only our failing economic hardships, waist and corruption, but finding a way for people to accept each other regardless of our differences. Now I know that won’t be what you like, because it means they won’t be listening as intently to your narrow minded focus as they have over the past four years. I have faith that eventually even someone as harsh and narrow minded as you are, that even you will turn your hate on himself eventually and start looking within to change instead of trying to change the world to look, act and be just like you. The greatest thing about this country is that we are all different human beings, free to express ourselves as we like…and that is fine by me. I can have trust in another man even though he doesn’t trust in me. I can love another human being, even though he hates me…and I can support the man who occupies the Presidency of the United States even when I don’t agree with everything he does. I’m a big enough man to do so, even though you are not!

America Needs Uniting – Not Dividing

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Holiday Wish of Peace & Love to All Monday, Dec 22 2008

22^nd of December 2008

Holiday Wish of Peace & Love to All

It is a mute point if you are religious, atheist, Buddhist, Pagan or if you have yet to decide on an ideology by which to live ones life. On the 25^th of December, may the world revolve with PEACE at its core, Love for all and Joy unto each who inhabit this planet!

Politics, philosophy and ideologies are irrelevant to the peace we wish upon every living soul. Forgive all those who have ill-treated you on this day and ask that they find unconditional love in their hearts. Find it within you to give LOVE, so that it dispenses to you in abundance.

Peace is the season; Love is our future…start 2009 wrapped in the warmth of those, the greatest gifts we may grant to all others….

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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A Barium Enema for the American Auto Industry Thursday, Dec 11 2008

11^th of December 2008

A Barium Enema for the American Auto Industry

I am the first person to say that we must not allow the American Auto Industry to fail! It would have devastating consequences to an already shattered economy with ramifications throughout the world.

Because of that statement, you might think that I am all for the bill passed by the House of Representatives, but has stalled in the Senate. This bill provides low-interest loans to Ford, General Motors and Chrysler; however, that would be an incorrect assumption. It is right for the Senate to stall this bill and it was wrong for the House of Representatives to pass it so irrespective of agreed upon plans with how the auto makers will prevent major job losses, unemployment rates from climbing substantially and the US Tax Payer from loosing billions that would be squandered by management only in to increase their already prevalent elitist status.

Not one of the big three auto makers delivered any substantial plan during the committee hearings, giving the American people assurances or security for the future of these companies. Executives from each company flew on private jets, rode in luxury limousines, and ate at the finest establishments without regard to thousands of people who are counting on their jobs for tomorrow. It deeply saddens me because history has taught us and the world, that when the United States is the under-dog, when we have everything to loose and the struggle for gain seems to be beyond our grasp; that is when we excel the most. I know it sounds harsh, but when the United States is riding on the wind, we do foolish things as we have the past eight years. However, when we are in a struggle for our very lives; that is when we flourish for not just ourselves, but for everyone around us.

The millionaires who manage the auto industry have no clue what it is to struggle. They have been with such luxurious means for a long time that effort isn’t about loosing a single home; because they have five others. So, before the auto industry wishes for the Senate and the American people to supply billions of dollars to bail them out, come to us with a plan that includes some of the follow:

1. Sell all corporate jets. If you own your own private jet, you may use it, but the reimbursement for that flight would be only what a first class ticket would have cost and nothing more.
2. Give up your hundred-thousand dollar car allowance that places you inside luxury automobiles that aren’t even built by the car companies you manage. I agree that all senior executives deserve a car allowance for your time and efforts, but that means driving one of the very vehicles that is produced within your plants and sold to your customers. I’m not talking about a Cadillac or Corvette Mr. GM; instead I mean you should be driving a Chevy Impala or similar. I don’t mean a new Chevy or GM automobile every week or month, but to spend six months to a year in each automobile. Better yet, drive one that is two years old, so that by the time that vehicle hits its twenty-four to thirty-six month anniversary date and starts to rattle, sounding like its falling apart that you know exactly what the customers who invested in one of your cars feels like. If you wish to improve the quality of your cars, drive them to see why people are flocking to Honda, Toyota, BMW and other better built and better maintained automobiles.
3. The entire executive officers should be spending a minimum of twenty percent of their time on the factory floor. Yes, Chrysler President, get your butt, out of your thousand dollars tailored suit, put on the gloves that are needed for welding, and spend an eight to twelve hour day on the floor doing the job. Work shoulder-to-shoulder with the person doing the job and talk with them. Get to know their stories, just as you post your biography on the company web site. You want to hear about innovation; try listening to the person doing the job for twenty years. You want to find out what makes a difference in building the next car, listen to the woman who has three children and an elder parent that she must earn enough money to support says about doing her job. Get your butts out of the office and work with the ones you count on to do the daily job!
4. Reduce your salaries by at least twenty percent or more. The President, CEO, CFO’s and all senior management teams should give up fifty percent or more of their salaries. When I say that, I am the first to acknowledge there must be an incentive, so increase the stock options each executive will receive. Establish bonuses that will be paid out not as golden parachutes, but paid in the two to three year period based on achieving the objectives that you manage too. No other bonuses are paid until those objectives in the established time should be paid or received.
5. Develop and publish a solid plan and show your progress openly on your web sites to the American people. A plan that every America citizen can follow. You want my tax dollars and my support; then I’m one of your shareholders and I expect a plan and progress reports weekly on your web sites. Reports that may be verified by a governing committee that we the people choose, not just the United States Government chooses. If you default on your plan, you loose all stock options that we the people hold as collateral for the loan you must repay.
6. Place a chuck of preferred stock in the name of the American people…not the US Government. The American people are the ones providing your bail-out money and are the new shareholders that you must report too. You get our money and receive a two to three year deferment on repayments. That time is giving you an effective amount of time in order to re-organize and produce cars the way you should have been doing the past twenty years. If you don’t make one of the payments when they are due, that stock is forfeited and can only be repurchased at a much later date. The US Government will also hold the titles and deeds on land, factory and equipment as collateral securing the debt you will owe the American people. Default on the loan and we have the right to take the plants, equipment and maintain them with building the same cars you currently build at them.
7. Open the sale process of automobiles. I mean the twenty thousand dollar car that should have been selling at fifteen thousand is over priced. The invoice should show exactly what the cost of building that car and what it cost you the manufacturer for every option on the vehicle. An honest profit margin shown on the invoice for every car should be listed on each invoice. Me, the consumer should be aloud to pick and choose only those options I wish on my car. A just-in-time sales and inventory as apposed to placing millions of dollars in incentives to the dealers for holding inventory and then selling that inventory. Streamline the sales and pricing process for each automobile. Also give me, the consumer, a way to buy your car direct from you without the necessity of a dealer if I so choose. Many will still want a dealer, while others will choose to buy direct and save thousands of dollars added by dealer fees and services.
8. Break all contracts with suppliers, dealers and vendors. All of you have locked suppliers, dealers and vendors into only dealing with you. This is a free market economy and if you want our money, open up the process for a part manufacturer to be bid on by others. Also allow that vendor to make parts for other companies and not just beholden to you. Allow dealers to sell your cars, as well as others manufacturer vehicles, because if you build the best car, that is what the people will buy.
9. In two years from the day you receive our money, you promise to deliver ten percent of your vehicles with a MPG of forty or greater. Three years that number should increase too fifteen percent or more of the automobile offerings, but with an additional five percent of your cars making better than fifty MPG. Within four years of that loan being received, you must provide the American public with automobile alternatives making greater than sixty MPG or with alternative fuels. Each year the numbers must increase until the bulk of your fleet of vehicles are making better than fifty MPG with some upwards of one hundred MPG.
10. There should be many other requirements, but this is a good start to what you must do to receive my money and my continued support.

To the Unions:

You are not without fault in this situation. I am the first to say that Unions were a necessity in the tens, twenties and thirties of this country; however, you are part of the growing problem and like the executives must trim your position. There isn’t a company in the United States where the employees do not pay for part of their health care. In most companies, employees pay upwards of thirty percent or greater towards their health care. That fact that the Insurance industry is one of the most corrupt in the world and is out of control is a complete side issue; because they are, health insurance is the greatest expense by every company in the United States. You must share in that cost just as every other employee must do. I submit that all unions be placed on hold for a time period of three years. That the pay rate for those three years be equal too the average pay received by the workers for those auto manufacturers that are not unionized. If the Line Forman at Toyota, Nissan, Kia and Mitsubishi is fifteen dollars; then that is what the Line Forman for Ford, GM and Chrysler should be as a pay rate. Before you yell, think about it this way; fifteen dollars per hour is far greater than zero, because if Ford, GM or Chrysler fold, that is what you will be making.

I know there will be many sacrifices that workers must make, but if we keep Ford, GM and Chrysler in business; then you keep your jobs and benefits. It will take you helping management decide how to build a better, more efficient car. It will take improving on what you do and how you do it, so that “Made in America” becomes a symbol of pride once more. Help the American people by helping your company to survive, flourish and grow.

House of Representative – Mr. Barney Frank:

Sit your fat, flatulent ass down from pontificating and espousing your point of view over saving the Auto Industry. You are the worst kind of politician, BOUGHT and PAID FOR! I was once your constituent in Massachusetts, and I remember the day you came into the Metropolitan Gym on Columbus Avenue in the Southend of Boston. A very gay gym, but in all of your visits, you never seemed to make it out of the steam room or sauna (which were very cruisie at the time and where many guys went for blow jobs and hand jobs). You were changing in the locker room with a towel wrapped around your fat ass, when I had a problem with my student loans. I excused myself and asked you a question. You never allowed me to complete my question, you flew into a tirade about, “you voted in the Republican Party, so don’t ask me for help with your problems until you vote in the Democratic Party again.” You said some other things and stormed off before I could close my mouth, much less correct the fact that I voted for you and a Democratic Senator, in that year’s election, I did not vote for one Republican. You are only behind this because the auto industry has lobbied you and I am sure, paid for your services in some manner. I don’t care what it is you think you’re doing, SHUT YOUR MOUTH until you can actually lead the American people with facts that are not tainted by money and greed!

Congress needs to re-evaluate the current bailout, establishing some guidelines that prevent the executives at Ford, GM and Chrysler from using our money for privileges like corporate jets, trips to islands or even functions that cost thousands to millions. Establish some parameters that if Ford wants to take all of the executives somewhere, that they ask permission and that the American people aren’t paying for things like we have for AIG. The US Senate should only pass this bill when those added line items I’ve listed above are considered.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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The Meaning of Christmas Tuesday, Dec 9 2008

14^th of December 2007

The Meaning of Christmas

The true meaning of Christmas should always bring a smile to your face and peace in your heart. During the holidays, a grin is used by people who normally scowl. A gift is left by those who normally expect to receive. The feel of snow as it coats the ground, the sound of a roaring fire that warms your cold extremities, the sweet taste of roasting nuts and the smell of winter green wafting through the air from the trees filling the air like a blanket draping over a cold body on a frosty night. Your ears hear the sounds of music from carolers as you shop for Christmas goodies at every turn and your senses feel the harmony floating in the air each day closer to this one time of year.

Anything that brings peace to three quarters of the world, even if only for one day, is worthy of everyone living among the souls present today.

Christmas = WORLD PEACE

Christmas may be a Christian holiday, but when peace is abounding the world around, the holiday should be celebrated weather you call it Christian or call it a day of PEACE.

I celebrate Christmas in a very special way; by paying homage to my Great Grandpa Lalka. I do so by repeating the acts of kindness he performed later in his years. Helping those who needed a guiding hand while simultaneously keeping my great grandpa’s legacy alive is giving new meaning to Christmas every year that I am able to place a smile on the face of a child who might otherwise go without a blessing on this day.

Great Grandpa Lalka (Paul Lalka), his family (sons, daughters, brothers and sisters) lived in the Washington (Tacoma) Valley area after moving from Czechoslovakia. My great grandpa had a coal business and his brothers owned various stores like a shoe cobbler, a furniture maker and each had his own farm. Because of their businesses, they knew the families in the region who needed a little extra help. In the old country, the family trade was carving and all of the Lalka men whittled. They would fashion toys year round and put together a basket of food to accompany the toys for each needy family. These baskets were left on the doorsteps of homes on Christmas Eve awaiting the children the on Christmas day. Continuing the legend of Santa Clause was but a secondary thought, but isn’t it an amazing legacy to carry forward.

The Lalka family persisted to give year after year eventually garnering attention to their generosity happening throughout the Washington Valley. As word spread of their good deeds, my great grandpa took on a new persona for himself and in his duplicitous nature; he felt he needed a suite that exemplified his role. He and his brothers created an authentic Santa Suite.

They used crush red velvet for the jacket, pants and the hat. My great grandpa trapped rabbits and used the white fur to line the lapel of the jacket, the cuffs of the sleeves and the brim of the hat. One brother created a very wide belt and another made a huge brass buckle and hand carved buttons for the jacket. My great grandpa didn’t need any padding; he had just enough of his own. He had thinning snow white hair with a long naturally flowing beard.

The family lineage dates back to the fourteenth century and was not our original surname. The last name Lalka was given to the family by a princess as an ancestor walked in to a small village during her visit. As he waited to meet the Princess, she was taken by his alabaster skin, rosy red cheeks, beautiful eyes and striking good looks. She called him lalka meaning doll because she thought he was as beautiful as a doll. The name was taken by the family to honor the princess. This being said, great grandpa Lalka had alabaster skin with rosy red cheeks and a crimson nose. He was the epitome of Santa Clause with the suite that portrayed the jolly man within.

My great grandpa was offered money by every major department store on the North West coast, but he reserved his gifts for those who truly needed them and pandering money to perform acts of kindness was not his motivation. I was honored to have found his legacy and more so to feel the desire to continue keeping it alive. When Great Grandpa passed away, he was given tribute by every major news paper on the North West coast with many reserving front page headlines such as the one in the Seattle Tribune, “Santa Clause has Died”!

No one could know that this simple man born in to the meager means of a Czechoslovakian family would have such a positive impact on so many lives. He was a real man who made many mistakes, but giving true love to those who needed it was not one of his misgivings. Striving to be just a little more like my Great Grandpa on a daily basis is what Christmas means to me.

While I know it is a Christian holiday, it has pagan roots, but more importantly, when any one day can bring peace and serenity to three-quarters of the world, it deserves to be shared and enjoyed by all. I don’t care if it is referred too via any other name, but enjoy the day – share in the enlightenment of the moment and give freely to those who don’t share your gifts.

More importantly, for those parents who wish to teach their children of the true meaning of Christmas…ask your child to give just one toy of their choosing to a child in need. Show them by example with donations to charities who help the less fortunate or something as simple as donating your time to feed the homeless. Children learn when we aren’t teaching. They learn more by our examples then any lesson we choose to teach. Lessons on compassion and what it truly means to give will do so much in the way of extending the legacy of Santa Clause or someone more down to earth like Paul Lalka.

Christmas is meant to be shared and enjoyed by all and to me that is giving to someone who might otherwise go without. Spread the Christmas Joy and extend this message to all you know and love.

May each and every one reading this be over-come with Love and Peace for the holidays, and each and every day you believe in my message. Thank you for sharing in my meaning of Christmas and may it give you meaning within your life too.

~~ Warmest wishes for everyone on this day and every day to come~~

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Are All Christian’s Haters: Response to Neil Friday, Nov 21 2008

20^th of November 2008

Are All Christian’s Haters: Response to Neil

Hello Neil and thank you for reading my post. I’ve had a number of people send me emails and comments that have made the exact challenges that you do, but after spending a little time on your site, you are the perfect example of a Christian, that needs to come down off the pedestal you’ve placed yourself on. You believe because you deem yourself a CHRISTIAN, you know all there is to know about salvation!

Being a Christian is a wonderful thing and something that each Christian should celebrate, but under no circumstances does it mean that you (the Christian) are superior to anyone else in society. Regardless of our beliefs, everyone is exactly the same as everyone else. People are tired of the general, stereotypical stance that if you’re not a Christian, then you are somehow less of a person.

Jesus Christ never denounced anyone. Jesus Christ never picked up a stone in order to cast it at a sinner. Jesus Christ had the ability to raise the dead or kill anyone he felt was unworthy of his grace. He never addressed a crowd of people asking that only those who believed his message, believed in him remain while he snapped his fingers and the rest died on the spot. And for those who have said that my belief that Jesus never denounced anyone is wrong; I ask again, show me when he stood before a person and told them they were wrong, but with this subject of how homosexuality is the antichrist, show me how Jesus denounces homosexuality.

I’m no idiot and I know the bulk of Christianity is simply the flock, following Sheppard’s, but just like everything in this world, some of those Sheppard’s choose to mislead and to guide their flock in horrible directions. One of the worst such redirections was the formation of the Council of Nicaea. It was the easy way out of a difficult situation. Instead of bringing together all faiths, religions and beliefs in one setting to create a way for everyone to respect other ways of life, they chose to create one religion out of many. They forcefully sold Christianity to the world as the church Jesus Christ built. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if they adhered to his teachings: Love, Honor & Respect.

So Neil, I had to laugh at your response, because it is such the Christian Cliché! Almost verbatim, exactly how any Right Wing, Christian Coalition personnel would think and believe. Several people who feel as you do, but are not as heartless and demeaning as you’ve stated. It is funny how most Christian does not hate fags; they just believe we are wrong. As much as I would like to say I detest someone like you, with your superior air and smug, polished smile, but I feel for you as I do for all people; I wish you UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and FORGIVENESS, which are the two things you and much of the Christian world won’t give to me or any other homosexual.

Unlike you, we don’t want to be superior, just accepted for who we are and able to live our lives in peace, with love and grace just as you wish for yourself. We don’t wish for anything special, but we do expect what is right and true. You believe you have these words defined by Christian beliefs and because you call yourself a good Christian that you are right and everyone else is wrong. That is your arrogance and is your Achilles heel and that is why you Mr. Neil, will be the last to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Most gays are good, honest, loving people who try to do the right thing and live their lives accordingly. We don’t put Christianity down, we don’t attack your way of life, and we don’t pre-suppose that a book gives us anything other than the right to live our lives. You and many other Christians drew the line in the sand. You misinterpret the Word of God to meet your needs. You pervert the name of Jesus Christ and wish to blame others for the failures that you cannot accept.

So, let’s answer your list:

Prop 8 absolutely denies our rights to share in the same privileges that our founding fathers granted every breathing citizen.

To deny the Right to marry with the over 1900 privileges that come with the ability to wed is a civil issue. You can claim religious exclusion, but because of that simple piece of paper signed in 1776 declaring our independence from an oppressive tyrant, that document granted each of us the vary rights that you wish to with hold.

If the government does not need to regulate marriage as you indicate, why then does the Christian Right have to push through in state after state legal measures like Prop 8, DOMA Bills and other such discriminatory acts with the sole purpose to deny the very rights you claim the government does not need to regulate.

Neil – if I was you, and I am truly sorry that you are you, I would stick with other people who won’t make since of your negative dibble. Please remember that what you send out will come back to you one hundred fold. To all other people, Christian or non-Christians, Love is Love and it is a wonderful thing to share. It is so much better than HATE! Let us love whom we wish, so that all of us may find peace and happiness.

Everyone deserves Love

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

“Homosexuals seeking the freedom to share their love with another person of like sexual preference.”

Prop 8 doesn’t impact that at all, so why use it as an argument?

“I have yet to successfully have any religious zealot explain to me how the marriage of two gay men or two lesbian women threatens the sanctity of the matrimony between a man and a woman.”

I know that the “rights” talk makes for a good sound bite, but what rights are we talking about? The right to relationships? You’ve got them. The right to be married? Uh, sorry, but you already have the right to marry a living being of the opposite sex of the same species under certain conditions (i.e., no incest, bestiality, polygamy or necrophilia). And who are you to pull up the drawbridge after gays get these “rights” and leave the other groups hanging? Do you hate them? Why else would you oppose their rights?

The gov’t has no need to regulate “gay marriage.” By nature and design heterosexual couples produce the next generation, and gay couples can never provide a mother and a father to a child. Why would the gov’t encourage something that can never be the ideal?

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Response to Dancethespears: Freedom from Oppression Starts with Each One of Us Tuesday, Nov 18 2008

17^th of November 2008

Response to Dancethespears:
Freedom from Oppression Starts with Each One of Us

Thank you for reading my words and taking the time to exchange these thoughts with me. I enjoy your reply and hope we may continue a conversation. Please correct any of my historical knowledge with facts that I may research and validate. I will continue learning and if what I believe to be factual is incorrect, I am grateful to any soul who takes the time to offer such training to me.

You point out the dichotomy within my post. It is okay that I find religion a wonderful and powerful focus for the human soul; even though there are aspects of some religious organizations that I disagree with. More specifically, I disagree with certain people’s interpretations that are put forth as factual when they are not. I dislike when passages within books, like the Bible, are taken out of context and the true meanings are misconstrued with the sole purpose of misrepresenting for personal gain.

I believe there is an Almighty God, and thank him daily for his role within my life. I am a gay man and know with ever fiber of my being that I am made in his image, perfect in every way that he crafted me. That being said, I know my sexuality was never a choice. Here is a major point that much of the Christian world will disagree with me about, and it is their frailty, their arrogance and their impunity that slaps them in the face every time. They believe they are made in Gods image, but yet I, the homosexual man, was made as they were and while I choose to live my abhorrent life, they’ve never had to make any choice, they are just perfect. Not one heterosexual person has ever told me the date and time they chose to be straight. I have asked thousands and many will entertain the conversation, however, not one person has been able to point to a time in their life where they chose to be straight. I am that I am, simply stated as their manifesto. So, why do you believe it is different for me? On this subject alone, God never asked me to make a decision, he created me in this life to learn certain lessons, and it may be the best way for me to learn the lessons of this lifetime is brought about by me being gay. The only choices I consciously made were when to accept me for who and what I am; exactly the way God made me and proud to be his son?

It is not God or Jesus Christ who taught Christianity to segregate homosexuals apart from the remainder of society – - man made those choices all on his own. If you wish to be factual about the life of Jesus Christ, not one time that he was faced with what others perceived to be God’s laws and thereby the punitive damages of those who break his laws. Jesus not once allowed his followers to punish as they felt obliged in doing. He countered every harsh word that was cast in judgments, using it as an opportunity to teach Respect of others. When those among him lifted stones to chastise “the SINNER”, Jesus used his words to teach them how to Honor themselves and those indomitable SINNERS. When his followers did not understand why he opposed the religious laws that governed much of the land, he used their examples to teach them how to love the SINNER. Jesus told them to judge not, but that is what some Christians do when they say that Homosexuality is a Sin and we must cast out the SINNER! I must repeat that Jesus told his parishioners whenever they took a stances against those who broke God’s Commandments or the religious based laws of the time; Love, Honor and Respect the man who has failed himself in hopes that he will find his way towards the light. When did Jesus Christ himself ever denounce Homosexuality – - NEVER!!! In fact, during his trip to Rome, he was approached by a high ranking Roman Solider who requested that while he was not worthy, would Jesus save the life of his male slave. Jesus knew that this young man was not just the servant of the soldier, but his sexual companion. Did Jesus tell the valiant man NO! You are a sinner, a faggot and are thereby unworthy? Jesus simply asked to follow him to his house where he performed a miracle saving the life of a HOMOSEXUAL MAN who LOVED and Served another man.

My point with this story is that while religion is an amazing part of every person’s life, it is those followers who interpret the word of God for their own making, that need to fear judgment. Jesus said that Christianity and Governments were not good partners, that they were both corrupt and united would be absolute corruption. That has not stopped many Christian organizations from trying to influence and even purchasing their own President or to influence world leaders. Jesus also said, those who call themselves saved will be the last to enter into the kingdom of heaven! The vary people who say that they serve God’s work while they oppress homosexuals, denounce others for their sins and pass judgments against you and me; they will be the last ones to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is not God who denounces me or my kind; it is the men and women who claim they do so in his name. It is not Jesus who shuns the love two men or two women share; that is done by the men and women who claim to be doing God’s work. I should be welcomed at any church, synagogue or temple; but I must first find the ones who feel I am abhorrent. I should welcome people wishing to share their ministries at my door, but I must first find out if they are actually following his example. If they cannot show me Love, Honor and Respect, then I politely request that they leave.

I personally believe that we are all in this world in the service to God. Even those who claim that they do not believe in him, serve his name in the life that they live. We may call him by a different name, we may dedicate our devotion to deities that were created by him and thereby serve him too. We may even claim to not believe in him at all, but regardless of our faith, we are here in this life to learn those lessons our soul is required to learn. The best way to learn the lessons of this life time may mean it is at my behest to be a non-believer. I have other posts that describe my faith in greater details, but suffice it to say, religion can be an amazing and wonderful focal point for each of us, it is, as everything is, left to the perversions of men to taint, to turn and to lead others down deplorable roads by examples of religions abuses when they oppressed women, oppressed blacks and now in the oppression of homosexuals. Eventually, we will overcome even those who wish us harm and call it the will of God.

As for your ending points, if you jump from a 40 story building, why should God stop you from splattering across the surface of the globe? These are all man made issues that has little to do with God, but he did give us the most amazing gift of all – - FREE WILL. You may choose to leap from the building, you may be the person who creates the tastiest treats for all to eat, that are healthy and good for you. You may choose to eat that which tastes good, but is not good for you. There are freaky jetpacks and if you have the money for the pack and the fuel, I am sure NASA or other such agencies will sell one to you. As for the ability to disagree with religion or God – he gave each one of us the ability to do just that. I disagree less with God then I do the men who brought about the wrong concepts to believe in. God was not one of the 300 in the Council of Nicaea, picking and choosing what chapters to place within the Bible, what holiday we celebrate and why to rejoice in the birth of Jesus Christ at a completely different time from his actual birth. It is what they put together and what came afterwards that perverted Christianity, not God!

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

“Before you send me emails telling how the words in these religious books are righteous words given by God to worthy men and are absolute; let me disarm these arguments immediately. These books are truly great books, however they are written by men. Men are fallible and thereby may have made mistakes during their interpretations and or how they experienced or perceived the word of God.”

Actually, I would wager that most people that are opposed to your position in the way that you write about would disregard your arguments. There are plenty of varied denominations out there that include infallible inspiration in their doctrines.

Also, your history of the canonization of the Bible isn’t exactly accurate.

Furthermore, your entire post rails against the evil of oppressing others. Yet you also claim that religion is a wonderful beautiful thing, and that inherently oppresses people. How is it wonderful and beautiful, but it’s inherent evil inspires an entire post?

Lastly, if religion is correct, and your line of reasoning is correct, then people have quite a bit more to complain about.

Why did God force us to die when we jump of off 40 story buildings? Why do I have to exercise to remain healthy? How come everything tasty seems to be bad for me? And most grievously, it’s 2008 already, where are the freaking jetpacks?!

I don’t mean to poke fun, but if you are upset about one rule that the God of religion imposes on you that you disagree with, then you should be able to disagree with all of them.

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Freedom to Marry – CA Prop 8 is Wrong – Hate is Always Wrong Sunday, Nov 16 2008

27^th of April 2008

Freedom to Marry

The magnitude of this issue has grown so far out of proportion and driven by two sides fearful beyond recognition that the other side will win. Lies and disinformation are the tactics used to cause fear in this battle over rights and privileges that were granted by our founding fathers. Fear tactics have been used to control societies for centuries and with far more precision.

You see, the side of RIGHT will always prevail victoriously when faced with evil and vengeful people. Currently both sides are claiming that they are right and will reign triumphantly, however, only one side may claim success and that side will have truth and courage as its companions.

Rectitude can never be claimed while people are being oppressed. So how can both sides allege virtue as they declare with conviction, that their way of life is being attacked? It doesn’t matter what is cleaved when you force others into subjugation. That which you cling may be a book, but each and every book may be replaced with another claiming to be of more authority than the one before. It behooves the question, how can one grouping of words make such a difference in a war stripping away the very rights and privileges that you hold dear to you and yet would gladly deny others?

Our two opposing sides are the Religious Right, the side of indifference and those Homosexuals seeking the freedom to share their love with another person of like sexual preference. The religious right feels that gay and lesbian people will diminish the love they share with their married spouses. They cleave to their Holy Books (the Bible, the Quran, the Tora and others) quoting verses that they say denounce homosexuality and even more dubiously asserting how marriage is between one man and one woman. I have yet to successfully have any religious zealot explain to me how the marriage of two gay men or two lesbian women threatens the sanctity of the matrimony between a man and a woman.

If anyone can shed light on how the wedding between one man and one woman is shaken to its core if two men or two women are able to also share vows of love, please tell me now! For centuries homosexuals were persecuted as being perverse and sexual predators. It doesn’t matter that according to the psychiatric association 85% of all child molesters are self identified heterosexuals. The gay community is said to recruit others into its midst or that we choose to live this way. The religious right cannot accept that a gay man is born instinctively loving another man. If they acknowledged this to be factual, that would mean God created gay men and lesbian women in his image and therefore perfect just as they are. That would vilify them for stating how homosexuality is wrong.

Before you send me emails telling how the words in these religious books are righteous words given by God to worthy men and are absolute; let me disarm these arguments immediately. These books are truly great books, however they are written by men. Men are fallible and thereby may have made mistakes during their interpretations and or how they experienced or perceived the word of God. While I’m not able to argue against the Tora and Quron; I can assert that the Bible was argued over and constructed by 300 religious leaders and politicians around 325 AD. They chose what chapters make up the New Testament. The Council of Nicaea edited and reorganized what we know as the Old Testament. So how do we validate the authority of the Bible when so many men argued for years over what was to go inside? Even if this argument is not substantial enough to make the most devout Christians wonder, I can then take words that were written in a book twisting them, emphasizing them differently and espousing a completely different set of meanings for the very same phrases. We are not even talking about the interpretations of those words.

Logic tells us that while religion is an amazing and wonderful thing in our lives, it uses and exploits people by oppressing and denying even the most basic rights. Such as the right to love whom you choose to love. I would think since Love is the foundation to the Church Jesus Christ wanted us to be a party too; how can any religion denounce the rights of two people who simply wish to share that love together? What can justify the refusal and the fight against the joyous celebration that two people wish to share?

In two documentaries focusing on each side to this fight, the religious right claims the Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman. I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover and can’t find those words written inside its pages. How can Christianity fear the love two men or two women wish to share?

I can respect an opposing point of view, even though it is against my own. I can admire a person who sees things differently than I do. Good people will find a way to respect an opposing perspective even if they disagree. We are able to live our lives with our own values in deference and honor of each other. I would never try to oppress their thinking (yes I might try to rationalize differing thoughts to my way of thinking); however, I would never denounce their principles because they differ from my own. I can value our differences without oppressing their beliefs based on our dissimilarities because I can live the principles that the Bible stand for – LOVE, HONOR & RESPECT.

No matter what side you reside on, think about the following: how does the love two other people share detract from your own? How can you justify the bigotry held within your heart that perpetuates the denial of two other people and the love they share? How is denying their love going to strengthen your own?

The religious right wants the rest of society to believe that the love two men or two women share degrades the matrimony a man has with his wife. They want everyone to believe that two men or two women cannot make good parents and that marriage is set forth for procreation only. Actually, more than 45% of all people, gay or straight, are unable to reproduce. If you are straight and cannot have children, does that mean you are aberrant, wrong and bad just like gay and lesbian people are? Why then does religion absolve two kids of opposite sex who crawl inside the back seat of a car even before they hold a license to drive, only to share in a single sexual act that produces a child? As long as they don’t have an abortion, they’re forgiven because they’ve proved their heterosexuality. My question is how many gay men are married to women and have children, but slide outside the home several times a month to have sex with other men? Many do – -the numbers are staggering, but two men can’t wed because it will disintegrate the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. The only thing that can destroy the vows two people take is themselves. There is nothing that can limit what two other people share and there is nothing – I repeat nothing - that can minimize what you share with another human being – - except one of those two people. Two men or two women exchanging vows and living in a loving relationship can in no way diminish the love you share with your wife or husband.

To exasperate the subject further, some see that the denial of these rights is incorrect, but they cannot agree by allowing two men to marry; however they comfort themselves by granting separate rights like domestic partnerships. How can any group be happy with separate but equal rights when there is no equality in what is granted? You cannot marry, but we will let you share in domestic partnerships. There are over 1900 rights that a man and a woman immediately received when they say “I Do”, yet Domestic Partnership only grants some 400 to 600 of those privileges. What are we to do with the number of rights that are denied to the gay community? How is it fair and justified to say we hear your plea for justice and equality only to be granted separate rights that are not and will never be equal? Equal Rights means that each person has exactly the same abilities as every other person!

I must ask again, how can the religious right deny and oppress other human beings if the only thing they fear is fear itself?

Everyone Deserves the Same Rights & Privileges

Let Love Flow Freely

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Be Cautious of the Energy Your Dispel Friday, Nov 14 2008

9^th of November 2008

Be Cautious of the Energy you Dispel

I’ve been espousing for much time now, that something as simple as a thought within your head, pushes forth as energy outward to those surrounding you. This energy will eventually come back to you one hundred fold. This is not an ideology that many people think about daily, however, once you accept the belief that thoughts are energy, it takes little for you to change the way you think.

I am aware of just how easy it is to think that the person who cut you off in traffic after a long day working is a bad person, however, just the thought pushes that energy outbound regardless of it being spoken. Yes, giving words to thoughts will increase the intensity of the energy that was pressed outward, but it starts with a simple thought. Actions give movement, but thinking is action unto itself, so how do we become mindful of our thoughts, so that we create the world we want and not live a life filled with regret?

The principles that I espouse are the same as in “The Secret” or the Laws of Attraction. This is not new, but I want you to grasp that you are responsible for your life. If it is not exactly what you want, review your thinking, and start by changing the thoughts within your very mind first.

~ The more I love, the more that Love is returned to me ~

Some of you are thinking this guy is NUTS, while others of you are intently reading to see what comes next. Do me and you a favor; right now take a sheet of paper and at the top of it, write “WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME”. Stop and don’t ready any further, take as long as you need and write everything that is wrong with you!

Wow! That is a long list, and it may surprise you at what came through you mind as you documented every little fault. Turn that paper over and write at the top of it, “WHAT IS RIGHT WITH ME”. Don’t read any further until you’ve written everything that is right about who you as a person.

Remarkably this list is not as long as the list of your faults! Because you could not find as many things that are correct about you than you found that are wrong about you, proves one point – - the way you think is not positive towards yourself! Flip the paper over once more and review the many things that you scribed as being imperfect. Read the items and take note at all of the negativity on this piece of paper. This exemplifies how you think, not just about yourself, but about your life, the people in your life, your job, your family and all the things that make us who we are. Because your negative list is longer than your positive one, it should make you realize one thing; “I NEED TO CHANGE HOW I THINK!”

~ I forgive myself and love all who affect my life ~

The first step in changing anything is acknowledging there is something to change. Watch the words you use in daily conversations, creating a list of those words and phrases that are vocalize with negative connotations: SHOULD, CAN’T, MAYBE, WHY, NEED, DESIRE (I need more money, I can’t find a good job, I always attract the same type of person – the wrong person, I can’t break this cycle, I desire a true love) and the list grows. By documenting these words, reviewing it often and adding as you become mindful; your vocabulary begins to become more positive by the day.

~ My Healing is already in progress ~

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what do I do to prevent my fall? While my pun is laughable, it is also the second step in how to change the energy you emit. Stand in front of a mirror seeing the person staring back at you, and verbalize aloud positive affirmations that speak to some of those negative aspects from your list. Start with affirmations such as the following:

~ I love you very much [Your Name], you are perfect just the way you are ~

~ I am motivated by love ~

~ I trust my inner wisdom ~

~ I am willing to forgive myself and love those who surround me ~

Deliver these affirmations from your heart. Believe what you hear as you reflect with the comfort of a familiar voice reassuring you with positive words. It is important that you not only say positive affirmations, but that you believe what you hear. Saying the words does not make it so – you must believe those words as well.

Affirmations work when there is belief behind them. You must also say more positive affirmations than you think or hear negatively. If you have no self confidence and think you are ugly, saying a positive affirmation once, twice or three days daily does not match the number of times you think, say or believe that you look bad. To cancel out the bad thoughts, to cancel out the comments that you say, hear and/or agree with; you must say and believe more positive affirmations. Change never happens over night, but it can happen for you.

~ The more grateful I am, the more reasons I find to be grateful ~

Every day in every way, be the person you want to be. Life is meant for living, so stop letting what other people think about you affect what you think about yourself or others. Start today by believing you are worthy of everything that is out in the world. Tell yourself, until you believe “I allow myself to be loved – I allow myself to be successful – I allow myself to be the best person I can be!” Find or create the affirmations that speak to your heart. Take that first step by changing the way you think, and allow the positive thoughts to bring back the many aspects in life you truly deserve.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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US Bishops Challenging Obama on Abortion Rights Tuesday, Nov 11 2008

11^th of November 2008

US Bishops Challenging Obama on Abortion Rights

The New York Times’ Laurie Goodstein wrote an exceptional article yesterday explaining how US Bishops after eight years with a President who not only catered to the Religious Right’s message, but joined the chorus and sang deafeningly off key.

The Bishops are already scheming over how to challenge President Elect Obama over what they find as his lacking Christian determination for supporting a woman’s right to choose. They were so close, with President Bush in the White House, to reversing the US Supreme Court’s ruling, “Roe v. Wade”, that they could taste victory. Now that their President is vacating his post without another Christian Right crony in the wings, the Catholic Church wishes to assert its influence over a new President Elect Obama.

I love organized religion and hate it all at the same time. Religious convictions were never supposed to be so fixed with ideologies and rituals that stopped serving their parishioners. I believe in a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. That doesn’t mean I don’t dislike abortions. I would much prefer that every soul wishing to grace this world has the opportunity to teach us those lessons it is destined to edify, while learning those lessons it should discover.

The Catholic Bishops must learn one of the lessons in that good book they cleave; “the greatest of these gifts is charity.” I never understood why Christianity would put forth such a massive effort in fighting a judgment that was right for the people it protects. They disagree with the ruling, which I understand goes against those principles. There is away to deal with something that is in opposition to your beliefs, and that is to respect your antagonist while you hold tight to your values. If Christianity spent as much money, time and effort towards educating young women about their options and on placing those new born babies with loving parent(s), then the numbers of abortions would have decreased years ago. Christianity is so single minded that they cannot see how accepting and respecting those points of view that differ from their own, does not confer defeat. It simply means their role in changing the face of America and the world should be vastly different.

The Catholic Bishops would rather toughen their resolve around an incoming President because his campaign voiced reason and respect for those women who have earned this right. These privileges were paid for by the deaths of many women forced to back alley abortions that were delivered improperly because society shunned the women who found themselves as non conformist. Open your hearts and your minds giving your organization a new voice. A voice that respects a woman’s right to choose while it ask that she consider the alternatives. If Christian groups that apposed abortions respectfully worked with the doctors and clinics to counsel woman on their options while they also worked in conjunction with state and federal agencies ensuring that every child born as apposed to aborted were placed in a loving home. Their role would be favored as apposed to scorned. Open your hearts to today’s definition of a good parent, accepting and respecting that LOVE is the most important aspect for any child. Open your hearts and your minds to the facts that this LOVE may be delivered from the hands of a single woman, a single man, two loving parents of each sex, as well as two loving parents of the same sex.

Catholicism and Christianity have wielded some amazingly wondrous influence over the centuries, but have become stagnate with its own views. That is evident in their zeal to approach a newly incoming President in hopes of changing his mind or intimidating him with the treat of voter lead disapproval. My advice to those Catholic Bishops who will meet with President Elect Obama, view the challenge from the perspective of the fifteen year old girl who finds herself pregnant. Open your hearts and your minds on how to effect positive change while respectfully disagreeing with the current laws. You may find that your voice resonates louder when you don’t alienate those you wish to help the most; the unborn child.

Hope and Love are what President Elect Obama offers this nation, so to the US led Bishops who wish to confer with him, join his message or get out of his way!

~ Love, Honor & Respect All People ~

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Response to Len Kloth: Our Founding Father’s & Homosexuality Monday, Nov 10 2008

9^th of November 2008

Response to Len Kloth:
Our Founding Father’s & Homosexuality

Hello Len and thank you for taking the time to read one of my posts. This is an old one, but one that I rather enjoyed writing and remain closely tied too even today. As this nation sits poised on the precipice of reclaiming a positive leadership role, yet we continue to fight amongst ourselves with idiocratic dogma that divides our nation. I often wonder, how can we be leaders against injustices throughout the world, when we are unable to grant all United States citizens with the same rights and privileges that our founding father’s bestowed to each and every one?

As I’ve read through your comments, I find it extremely well thought out, extremely articulated with absolute agreement. I will let you know that I differ with our own sedition against other religions and those we feel do not believe. We have a long and harsh history of persecution. Please keep in mind that some of the original colonies were very old (some approaching two hundred years old) by the time of out independence. In that time and long after our successful separation from a tyrannical King, this country continued persecuting other religions. An example that I laugh at every time I read about it, tell others of it; is the quiet take over of an Anglican church in the southern portions of Boston. The Boston government denounced Catholicism with such distain that if a priest was caught outside the church, they could legally be subdued up too and including death. The Catholic Diocese owned approximately twelve mansions all around and outside of the city and within each of these mansions were hidden passages and cubbies. The Boston government leaders detested the Catholic Church so much that they diverted an above ground subway (all but one section of the Boston’s subway was below ground) and ran the tracks to run directly in front of the one Catholic Church inside the city of Boston. They ran trains every Sunday during church services ringing them bells with the intent of making as much noise as possible. This city organized harassment was in the early to mid 1800s, which was long after the death persecutions of the sixteen and seventh centuries. I was in one of these Catholic owned mansions with friends who were house sitting as the Diocese was attempting to sell them when I leaned against what appeared to be a simple wall, but when I moved away, so did the wall itself. Much to everyone’s surprise, this was a hidden cubby. The opening was small, only large enough to crawl into. Inside was slightly larger and had a small mirror on the wall (each of these mansions was loaded with mirrors and I’ve yet to understand the significance as to why Catholic priest required so many mirrors and why they were on ceilings, walls, floors and in other conspicuous places), but there was also a small stool to sit on with a bible dating back to the sixteen hundreds. There was a handle on the inside with a latch, but that was it. In the fifteenth, sixteenth and early years of the seventeen century; a catholic priest could be arrested or at first they could be killed.

This wordiness is to disagree with you that the United States has persecuted many in the name of religion. While you may still feel that we have not done so to the extent that much of Europe has, we’ve been on an accelerated path in our young years. Regardless, any persecution in the one name of God is unjust and absolutely does not befit the lessons of such a deity. It is a mute point to what religion you believe in or if you believe in any religion. We are each in this world on our own journey and that differs for the individual, but is in service to him none the less. Even if you are an atheist, you are here in this lifetime to learn the lessons that you agreed to learn before your birth.

That is why I feel it is important that we learn to accept each person for who they are and for how they may contribute to society regardless of their individual beliefs.

Thank you again for such a wonderful add to this post. I hope I hear from you again.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

There is so much confusion about America, if it was founded as a “Christian nation” or not. One can ask the first several generations of black people brought to this country. One could ask any generation of Native American. They all dealt with Bible toting clergy who used the Bible to defend their oppression, and subjugation. This is what is so traditional in Christian history, as what the founders knew. Religion and government don’t mix; they corrupt each other, as Christian history dictates again and again. As to slavery the Protestants were on both sides. Northern Baptist, using scripture, and ‘led’ by the spirit fought against slavery. Southern Baptist, using scripture and ‘led’ by the spirit, fought for slavery. Today the Baptist still divided between north and south. Someone is confused.

Through far, far less religious strife happened in this country than ‘Christian Europe,’ there were exceptions. Some violence by Protestants against Catholics and Jews, the vicious persecution of the Mormons. The sectarian ‘Christian,’ be he Catholic or protestant has offered what can be called a ‘mixed bag’ in the last two centuries. Civil rights, the temperance movement, and other movements were all church led. In the nihilism of this secular age the void has been filled with leftist (socialist). Big government fills the void where religion once did. The left has an ‘agenda,’ the right has a “godly mandate.’ The right bans a book for being, ‘Godless’ and the left bans a book for being ‘politically incorrect.’ At the end of the day, it’s the same thing. As a libertarian I despise both the anti-freedom agendas of the Theo-fascist fundamentalist and the rabidly-secular-socialist left.

The Founders, I suspect would spurn both as well. Let them speak for themselves; getting beyond the rhetorical haze.

As I see it the Founders were no more secularist than they were Fundamentalist. Both secular people and fundys claim the founders represent them, both are wrong. I go straight to their own words to cut through the rhetorical haze. Secular people claim the founders wanted separation of church, and all religion from public life, that is nonsense. Fundys claim they wanted a Christian nation, if not a theocracy, more nonsense.

First Amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
John Adams, Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved–the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”
James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance
“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”

Thomas Jefferson, “The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom”
“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry. . . .”
Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia”
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg…”
Thomas Jefferson, “Statute for Religious Freedom”
“…no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise.. affect their civil capacities.”
Thomas Jefferson, autobiography
“(When) the (Virginia) bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protections of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantel of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hondo and Infidel of every denomination.”
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short
“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology.”
James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments”
“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”
Benjamin Franklin (from his autobiography)
Some books against Deism fell into my hands….It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”
Benjamin Franklin, “2000 Years of Disbelief” by James Haught
“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its beginnings.
As this will be the last annual message which I shall have the honor of transmitting to Congress before my successor is chosen, I will repeat or recapitulate the questions which I deem of vital importance which may be legislated upon and settled at this session:

First. That the States shall be required to afford the opportunity of a good common-school education to every child within their limits.

Second. No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community. Make education compulsory so far as to deprive all persons who can not read and write from becoming voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, however, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the time this amendment takes effect.

Third. Declare church and state forever separate and distinct, but each free within their proper spheres; and that all church property shall bear its own proportion of taxation (emphasis added). (A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Vol. X. New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., 1897, p. 4310)
“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it. Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others. Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work. The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends. The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind. The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal, and this implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.” (emphasis added). Thomas Jefferson

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (emphasis added) United States Constitution.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. (Richard Emery Roberts, ed. “Excerpts from The Age of Reason”. Selected Writings of Thomas Paine. New York: Everybody’s Vacation Publishing Co., 1945, p. 362)

20 GREATEST NAMES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
• John Adams – Spoke favorably of Freemasonry — never joined
• Samuel Adams – (Close and principle associate of Hancock, Revere & other Masons
• Ethan Allen – Mason
• Edmund Burke – Mason
• John Claypoole – Mason
• William Daws – Mason
• Benjamin Franklin – Mason
• Nathan Hale – No evidence of Masonic connections
• John Hancock – Mason
• Benjamin Harrison – No evidence of Masonic connections
• Patrick Henry – No evidence of Masonic connections
• Thomas Jefferson – Deist with some evidence of Masonic connections
• John Paul Jones – Mason
• Francis Scott Key – No evidence of Masonic connections
• Robert Livingston – Mason
• James Madison – Some evidence of Masonic membership
• Thomas Paine – Humanist
• Paul Revere – Mason
• Colonel Benjamin Tupper – Mason
• George Washington – Mason
• Daniel Webster – Some evidence of Masonic connections
Summary: 10 Masons, 3 probable Masons, 1 Humanist, 2 Advocates of Freemasonry, 4 no record of connections.
SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Known Masons (8): Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, Robert Treat Payne, Richard Stockton, George Walton, William Whipple
Evidence of Membership And/or Affiliations (7): Elbridge Berry, Lyman Hall, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Nelson Jr., John Penn, George Read, Roger Sherman
Summary: 15 of 56 Signers were Freemasons or probable Freemasons.
It’s true that this represents only 27% of the total signers. But this 27% included the principle movers of the Revolution, most notably Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the primary authors of the Declaration. The former was a Freemason, the latter a deist and possible Freemason. If one were to analyze the Declaration, he would see the humanistic influences.
In any event, there is no evidence that even 27% of the signers were true Christians.

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Sarah Palin Hanging in Effigy Thursday, Oct 30 2008

27^th of October 2008

Sarah Palin Hanging in Effigy

I find this the perfect subject and time for a little enlightenment! Mr. Morrisette indeed has the First Amendment Right to voice his opinion about any individual. Should we chastise him for his thoughts about Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin? Before answering that question, give me the ability to make several points.

All political pundits are fair game for disgruntled citizens to voice their opinions. If Mrs. Palin is offended, then she should stop by and discuss the matter with Mr. Morrisette. It would actually make for a comical play on the terse situation if she showed up in the same dress that the mannequin displays with press in tow! All of those who are blasting the Los Angeles City government and Mr. Morrisette for allowing this display to remain; remember that if you do not answer to the name Sarah Palin, ask yourself why do you allow what one man thinks to distress you? If Mrs. Palin is hurt by Mr. Morrisette’s effigy, have the courage to speak with him so that you might either change his mind, or at the very least allow him to see you for the person you are.

I’m not chastising Mr. Morrisette for his political message. In fact, I understand why he might feel Mrs. Palin deserves hanging in effigy such that he displayed. She has been outspoken during all of her campaigns (Mayoral, Governor and Vice Presidential) against gay and lesbian people. Her view of us is as short sighted as many feel Mr. Morrisette’s is of her. She doesn’t know him or me, but she openly speaks in derogatory terms about all homosexuals. Mrs. Palin equates us to second class citizens and is very openly homophobic. Hate by any name is still revulsion, and someone running for the second most powerful position in the United States should have more grace and honor as to openly show disgust for any group of citizens of the country she wishes to represent. Does that mean that I agree with Mr. Morrisette – - not exactly? I wish he might have used his creative talents in a far better manner than to hang a symbol of the lady running for Vice President of this great nation. I believe he could have found a healthier way to show his distain for the lady that was not so vulgar, but the sentiments are the same regardless.

I wish to use this situation to garner a lesson to us all. All of the greatest civil rights leaders have taken the high road when faced with opposition such as that from leaders who only perceive what they wish too and refuse to observe the people behind the labels. We can label Mrs. Palin as Uptight, Christian Right or just simply Hate Monger, but I digress and wish to remain positively focused. I believe that we are all in this world on individual journeys. It behooves each one of us to take the misgivings of those who refuse to see that what they do is to oppress part of society because we don’t look the same, sound the same or act the same. There is nothing we can do that will make every person in this world look, speak or act similarly. The greatest gift that everyone receives the moments we took our first breaths was FREE WILL. Due to this gift, we will never be a homogenous society. Therefore, we must learn to accept everyone for who they are and not what we wish them to be. I would prefer that Mrs. Palin be open and accepting of all people. I wish that she would be an honorable person who fights for ubiquitous rights for all citizens. It would be nice if all people could love and marry whom ever they wished; sharing in all of the same privileges that every United States citizen was bestowed by our Constitution. We must allow Mrs. Palin and Mr. Morrisette to be the people they were meant to be regardless of our own sentiments.

That does not mean that as a gay man I won’t stop fighting for my rights to be seen as an equal by all people around the world. However, I can see others for whom they prove themselves to be. That is the lesson I am learning and it is incumbent upon all of us to discover that it is OK for people to be different. It is OK for someone to be that which you cannot understand or even like. It is OK to see the difference within each of us. I have said many times before, it is not our similarities that connect us, and it is our differences that will unite us.

~ Accept the differences within us all ~

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Google – Cavia Emptor – Bad Customer Service Sunday, Oct 5 2008

03 October 2008

Google Services – Cavia Emptor

It never seizes to amaze me how true customer service is Non-Existent in today’s society. You see it in every department store, food service establishment and forgive me, but I haven’t found a government office that knows or cares what servicing their customer’s means.

It is partially all of our faults in that North Americans are so involved in themselves and their lives that we demand everything now. We have no patience and if the answer isn’t YES or OK to exactly what we expect all the time, we don’t discuss it rationally; we get angry and throw fits. We yell, rant and rave and the person receiving our tantrum is only doing what they were told to do by someone in management that has been so far removed from servicing their customers that they’ve forgotten what it is. So, yes, we have more to do with why customer service has become dirty words.

I understand this and while I’ve never proscribed to the theory that “The Customer is Always Right”, I have a strict since of right and wrong and when customer service is bad, it infuriates me. Phone support and customer service becomes even harsher because people can’t read body language and most behave better when faced with the person as apposed to a faceless persona non-grotta.

What I just experienced with Google is the antithesis of good customer service. You would think that such a prominent company would strive for exceptional client service, but what I experienced is so bad that I had to write about it and warm the blogging community not to fall into the same trap I ran into. My blogs have been growing and I have a friend working on a new web site, but because of the increasing numbers, I decided to use Google Adwords to place advertisements on my current sites. The focus was to generate some funds that might mitigate the cost for the new site. I’ve always had a Gmail account, so I logged in and quickly discovered that my years in the IT industry meant nothing because I didn’t know you needed a degree in advertising to setup Google Adwords. I went through the configuration or so I thought and immediately received numerous error messages. I worked on it for several hours, but the error messages meant nothing to me, but in typical geek fashion, they were specific to advertising. The average person like me had no clue what they messages meant or how to correct them. The technical issues also made little sense either given that I gave all of the appropriate information, but Google didn’t like my information. The messages couldn’t explain why they didn’t like my information and because they refused to give a support phone number, I couldn’t explain why my answers were what they were and why I didn’t want to do what they demanded in their menu screens.

I was frustrated and tired so I started looking for a phone number to call for support, but (and I should have known from this point that things would never work out for the positive and I should have given up right then and there), but Google doesn’t publish any support phone numbers. Much later I was told by numerous people at Google that they cannot support people via phone because of the number of people calling in would be too high. Now I know my answer is common since, but make your product and services good enough to warrant not needing support and therefore it cuts down on the number of people who require it. The other aspect is to treat your customers with respect to meet their needs the way they need them met – - but that would be called CUSTOMER SUPPORT! I know that flies above the heads of the Google Executives who are making decisions to not have phone support, to not allow their support people to call clients (as I was denied calls too many times to count). The only way for you to gain support is to email them. Google also doesn’t want you to have a copy of your email, which is why companies place the fill in the blank form as email. If you fill in the blanks, you can’t keep a copy of the message that shows their incompetence in responding to their customers. My first email for support didn’t get a response for over two weeks and even though I requested a phone call and that they email my home email account instead of the Gmail account that I never check, but after waiting two weeks for a reply, they refused to call and sent the reply to the Gmail account I never look at.

It was like they were purposely doing everything to screw up the support issue and in the mean time; they charged my credit card $5.95 as an initiation charge when all of this was being done in June/July. Now, I never corrected the errors, but three months after the support nightmare, I see another charge on my credit card from Google Adwords for $5.10. I’ve been told by two different support people that the charges are for clicks on Ads and the initial non-refundable charges. When I was first told it was for clicks through Ads, I question vehemently how I could receive charges from a site that had errors and did not work. I never saw ads on my blog sites and I’m on the sites every day as both Administrator and Reader so that I know what the site looks like from the perspective of the reader. I never received answers to my questions (via email because Google Support refuses phone support), but the next message I received then said the $5.10 was for a setup fee. I thought that was what the $5.95 was for back in July, but they tell me they have no record that my credit card was ever charged $5.95 back in July. They keep asking for dates, times and reference numbers for all charges, even after I’ve been told that the charges will remain and are non refundable. In other words, charge me, charge me again three months later and claim no record of the initial charges. I found out in researching this problem with the credit card company that there were two different account numbers. I never went back into Adwords after I found out what the error messages actually meant because of the difficulty in receiving support. The account number was changed at some point over the three months, so that explained to me how they can justify charging me for two different initiation fees.

Nothing about this support issue is good. Google claims they can’t provide phone support because the numbers are too high. That speaks volumes in how Google management views their customer base. We want you using our products and services, but we don’t care about supporting your needs. Even when I found a support phone number for Google (866-246-6453 or 650-253-0000), but the young lady who answered the call only wanted off the phone as quickly as possible. The longer I was on the phone, the angrier I became because it was obvious that while she kept saying I want to help you, she refused twelve requests for a Supervisor, she refused to say anything about my claims, she refused to get me anyone else saying she would have someone call me back. But at that point and time, how could I expect anyone to call me back when Google Support takes two weeks to respond to emails. I will say that I received one return call and the briefest message I’ve ever heard telling me she was sending an email and to read it. The email originally went to my Gmail account also even though everything I’ve sent them requested that all emails go to my personal email account, but that I prefer speaking with a live person and my phone number. The lady who called me back (Marti) refused to give me a Supervisor or anyone in management and after multiple emails telling them I expect a refund, all she kept saying was that the charges are non refundable and that it says so in the Agreement that I accepted.

Everything Google is doing is borderline FRAUD. By not delivering anything while they charged me for services that were never received. They hide all of the charges as non refundable and because you give them your credit card (the only way you can receive services from Google is to give the credit card up front), you’ve authorize them to charge you for services you never receive. While the Attorney General’s office says their actions are highly questionable and they’ve received many complaints from others about Google and their charges for services, when you click on the Agreement of Service, they hide their ability to screw you over within those statements you must answer YES too. They hide behind it Agreements and bad Customer Service and for every person like me, they bank millions and never deliver a service. There is nothing legally that can be done even though I never received the services or support I purchased.

Wow, what a great way to rape and steal from people. Promise to deliver services, but never deliver them. Don’t allow support and hide it all within the Agreement you must click YES to move forward. We are use to these agreements and I don’t know anyone that ever reads them, but now you have a reason too! Google once held a place of great respect with me, but after this horrendous ordeal, I will use anything but Google for everything on the web. A company that thinks so little of its customers like Google does, they don’t deserve my support. In fact, they have earned this SLAM and I hope others will learn from my mistakes before they find themselves in the BLACKHOLE called GOOGLE!

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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Honor without the Love of Family Thursday, Sep 18 2008

18^th of September 2008

honor without the love of family

My last post, “If Your Family is Bad – Read This and Compare” is a horrible post and not representative of the man that I am. I was angry and hurt by a continued campaign of dishonor and lies meant to discredit me with the other people that I love; such as my grandmother. Am I justified for my feelings, yes! Am I warranted in my post, well that may be up for debate and even I am unsettled with my hasty reactions.

Before you judge me too harshly or likewise those I once called family. The generations that reside on this planet are at great odds with one another. We have the elderly that derive from two generations and they saw family divided at the end of the twenties and thirties. A second world war devastated the American family even further and when this country was on its road to recovery, the age of love and peace was shattered by another war. The Vietnam War was our first overtly audacious and politically charged war that was wrong from the beginning. There was no reason for the United States to be a primary player in this conflict other than the CIA was loosing a great deal of invested capital, time and effort that was dishonestly making hundreds of millions of dollars. It was a dirty war that fed unworthy ventures for all the wrong reasons steeling from us our fathers and brothers as it destabilized our economy and plunged the United States into hard times. We invested millions into a war that was unscrupulous, immoral and only helped to keep the CIA and NSA working in illegal businesses funding their illicit operations. There are a number or correlations with what happened in Vietnam and what is happening now in Iraq that should have everyone demanding to have our brave men and women home.

The effects were destructive to the American family entrenching a greater split between philosophies and the connectedness brought about in the late fifties and sixties. Because of the economic hardships, the family plummeted to new lows with some grabbing tight to values they thought held them together while others threw away all values based on the lack of structure, support and love that the family normally provided.

My family was just one like many who cherished it’s faith as a means to disguise all of the failings within the core of its foundations. Our family at its core was broken and wrong. They were fundamentalist Latter Day Saints with men at its powerbase. The boys were taught to hate their women and display their loathing by abuse. When I mean hate, I mean a repugnant torment, to mistreat (even physically) and control them at all cost. To control a person takes lies, distrust to strip away their self worth. My grandfather taught his sons what to do with results being nothing but problems with their wives. My father was taught by his father to treat your wife with contempt, disdain and never allow her to build confidence or a self worth. These same tactics were used on him by his father and each of my siblings suffering greatly due to the same abuse.

My mother came from her own hell that was similar and even more demonstrative if you can imagine. She endured misery from her family and in turn gave the only thing she could to her children – the same anguish she received and more. One parent can generally save children from the torment of another, but when you have two unstable parents, hell bent on the only thing they know, controlling their kids via manipulated, lies and mistrust. My parents were not bad people; they were just doing the job of raising their children the only way they knew how. Repeating in the exact manner what they experienced as children themselves.

Unfortunately, my parents never garnered enough desire, self worth or knowledge to break the cycle of abuse handed to them by their parents as they continue believing they did a good job. Their refusal to mature beyond the singular thoughts they had as young adults only provides a shield protecting them from the change. As we grow up, it becomes incumbent upon each of us to learn from the mistakes of our parents. Unfortunately for my siblings, my parents embraced the ways they knew with no courage to change. My siblings were faced with the same questions; clinch to the life as it was taught to you, or choose to become a better person by facing our frailties and putting in the efforts to change their manipulative ways. In my family, with the way we were taught, if you don’t like someone, you spread lies to discredit them. You don’t relent and it doesn’t matter if you have to manufacture evidence to prove your lies, everything is justified by your success over your victim. They refuse to see how their lives are driven out of dangerous needs to control every aspect and all of those surrounding them.

I am a major treat to their way of life. I refuse to go back to either being manipulated or finding the needs to manipulate those in my life. To truly love someone does not need control or manipulation. To truly love someone, means you do everything but manipulate or control them. It has taken me many years and I am still fighting these instincts. It is not easy, but I want something that is different than the hallow existence that I see in the eyes of those I once called family. I am feared and seen as the nut and the brother, son and uncle with the problems because I see life differently than they do. I will continue to work towards peace with true love in my life and that will always threaten what my family feels is their way. So I understand their trepidation as I empathize with the errors they repeatedly make.

If you find yourself at odds with those who should love you regardless of your differences, take the time to trust your own judgment. Trust for your life, you instinctively know what is best. With that confidence, love yourself and learn how to live a good, just life. I must specify that changing the tides of abuse comes in so many forms. Most of my family cling to a book (The Bible) and claim their Christianity defines them as being superior to me for a number of reasons, but trust that no one is greater and no one is lesser; we are all just people striving to live and love one another.

Love yourself and no matter who stands against you, know that you are right for you.

Love, honor & Respect begins with Yourself

A person willing to improve themself must be prepared to scratch beneath the surface. People like my family, are too scared to scratch at the surface, terrified that the house of cards that is their life, will come tumbling down around them. I challenge you to not only scratch at the surface, but to turn the soil until you find a better way of living!

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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If You Think Your Family is Bad – Let’s Compare Tuesday, Sep 16 2008

15^th of September 2008

If your family is BAD – Read This and Let’s Compare

I saw my Grandmother today, and while that is a wonderful experience for most people, it seems to always bring out the worst in my family. The average, rational person would think that a woman in her nineties would be difficult to spend an hour with every two weeks, but she is in charge of her mental faculties. We enjoy ourselves with each visit, but with every hour I spend in her company, I find more treachery brought about by my family towards me.

I went to see her ten days ago and noticed that there were several cars in my aunt’s driveway, but since I was there, I went around the back yard of the house, to the basement apartment for grandma. In walking up the driveway, around the front of the house and around the side of the house, and as I strolled, I passed two adults that were in rooms with one watching me as I passed, but no one answered the downstairs door. It did not astonish me when there was no answer at the door, because my immediate family, more specifically, my older sister, younger sister and eldest niece seize every opportunity to bash me for my crimes. I’ve yet to fully understand my crimes against the family, but the rage and hatred that flows from these women sends out enough negative energy to cause all of the one hundred and seventy-three earthquakes that have taken place over the past seven days.

Yesterday, grandma answered the door with a noticeable gash above her left eye. As she welcomed me inside, I asked what happened and she explained how last week she fell in the bathroom. She described in details as we walked into the living room, how she has a very persistent and enormous bump remaining on her left back hip with bruises up and down her entire left side. I asked her if the Life-Alert she wears helped, only to hear the perfect commercial explaining how if she didn’t have the Life-Alert, she would have bled to death before anyone got home. I felt for her as you could tell how the pain she endures days earlier was fresh on her mind.

We no longer sat, when she asked very directly, “are you still writing?” I answered her respectfully, “yes, I’m editing a manuscript and I publish blogs all the time.” She asked harshly, “do you put those on the Internet?” I answer respectfully again, “yes, I have multiple blogs that I publish them too with a vast readership from around the world.” Her words were sharply harsh as she asked, “do you use names when you write?” I answered as I always have, truthfully, “I have not used names within blogs since the end of last year, and I promised an aunt in Seattle that I would not use names within the text of a blog.” Grandma blasted a statement at me that both surprised and angered me, “if you are using names, then I won’t ever talk with you again!” I paused for a second, because the path I’ve been on is teaching me better ways of dealing with negativity such as my family feeding lies to an elderly woman. I took a deep breath as I realized that this had to be something that was said to her recently (over the weekend), because she has trouble remembering the conversations we had over our last visit three weeks ago. I responded in a respectful manner, “grandma, it is ashamed that you would allow the lies told by family who hate and loath me for no other reason than I write about my experiences. It says something about your character if you let others determine who you wish to see and speak with given your age and everything you’ve endured over your lifetime, but if you wish me to leave because the people who should love me want to lie and spread half truths, when to the best of my knowledge I’ve never lied to you and don’t intend on starting now, but if you wish me to depart, I will graciously go.” Grandma thought about what I said for a moment and said, “that would be ashamed, because I love your visit and enjoy our conversations, they have been as equally surprising as they are thought provoking.” “Thank you, but if you seriously wish me to leave, just say so, because not one person in this family will stop me from publishing my blogs. I receive emails from people all the time that read my blogs and obtain something that they need in their lives. These are not just kids that are coming to terms with their homosexuality; they are people of all ages who have read about the physical and mental cruelty I suffered growing up. Some people are incest survivors and some have sexual problems. I have received emails from parents with kids who know or believe their child is gay and they don’t know what to do or how to handle their child. I’ve received emails from many people who read about my experiences and are inspired for another day. That is why I write my blogs and that is why no matter what anyone in my family says, it’s all worth it.”

Grandma was nodding her head during all of that and she responded, “there is so much that this family has been through, and it would be good if others can learn from.” “Yes.” She added, “you know I’ve been through a great deal on my own.” “Yes grandma, I know you went from an abusive father to another horrible existence with Grandpa. I think the best day for you, please forgive how this sounds, was the day he passed away. You finally became a free person, able to determine for yourself how your life was to be. I was just thankful that you were in such good shape physically that you’ve enjoyed a long time to be free and able to spread your own wings.” She replied, “I don’t know what keeps me here for so long.” “Perhaps grandma, there are lessons yet for you to learn during your journey.”

She and I moved on to other, more joyous topics for the remainder of my stay. It struck me as I navigated out of the neighborhood that my family really SUCKS! I haven’t called them, written them or written about them since my other grandmother passed away in May. It is interesting that I’ve been fine not thinking about the family that can’t just let me go, but chased me away with one problem after another. They can’t seem to leave me alone. Without reason, they continue spreading lies, mistruths, half truths and disinformation about me for reasons I have yet to understand. I don’t speak ill of them to others, I don’t speak of them at all. I can’t for the life of me understand why they keep pulling me back into their lives only to rip me to shreds as if I am provoking their retribution.

It finally becomes clear to me that the only way these sad, pathetic half humans can feel better about themselves is to have someone they can continue to put down. Their lives are so filled with negativity and darkness, that the only rays of hope they can feel is while they torment someone else. This pattern was obvious; I just didn’t connect all of the dots in time before moving back here to be close with them. But they can’t just be happy with themselves. My older sister takes the reins as the matriarch of the family and tries to control every thing and every one. When I was in favor with her, she had to have a problem with someone in the family and I watched it bounce between my younger sister, my mother, my father (the sperm donor) and my brother; yet it was a constant rolling feud. I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t one of us who was at odds with her for some reason. The bottom line was that from her ivory tower, she couldn’t just see that we were trying to live our lives the best way we could. If what we were doing didn’t match what she wanted, she has a problem.

My mother, well she can’t live in the present and remains entrenched in the past as the victim, the martyr; unfortunately she can’t see that the martyr is a willing participant in the suffering she continues through. My younger sister, wow, how can I sum her up? She continues to hide her alcoholic addiction and will do absolutely anything my older sister says or does in order to remain in her good graces. My little sister is the mouth piece for the group. She is easy to manipulate and set out on her course of action. She has a very short temper, a loud mouth and never thinks through her actions. She is merely a pawn used by the controllers of the family games and as always expendable. My aunt in this escapade, I can’t tell you if she refuses to see or speak with me because I am gay and that doesn’t adjust with her good Christian beliefs. I only know that when I moved back here seven years ago, I was in desperate need of help to morn the loss of my relationship. I was clinically depressed and while I didn’t expect her to see me (as it being her profession and practice), but she never would take my calls or return the messages I left for the better part of two years. It is ashamed that someone will judge you by the words of others as apposed to allowing you to define yourself with them directly.

All of these people wish to talk trash about my blogs and their greatest weapon is that I use names in the blogs. Not one of them has ever fully read any of my posts. They don’t want to see how I’ve portrayed them before now with empathy and understanding. How I’ve wished for nothing more than for them each to find in their journey’s a way out of the pit of despair they know they are in, but refuse to work out of. How I would have given my life for each and every one of them and never thought twice about it.

Since I cannot speak with any of my family and they will relish this blog because I aloud myself to sink to their level – LEAVE ME ALONE! Don’t talk about me, don’t think of talking to me – emancipate me from your lives and leave me alone. Do what I’ve done over the past years when asked about you, I answer “I don’t know, I haven’t spoken with nor do I see you.” I don’t tear you apart and I don’t want to start. Stop thinking about me, stop talking about me and stop even considering me in this FUCKED UP FAMILY! Forget that I exist and outside of when grandma passes away, you won’t ever have to see me again! You see, I know when you speak despairingly about me. I feel when you rant and rave and feel the need to rip me apart to another. Just leave me alone and I will do the same.

THIS IS FOR GRANDMA:

I promised an aunt in Seattle that I would not use names within a post and I am walking a fine line, because I have not used any names within the body of this post. But since after a year, the same rants that I keep writing about the family – libeling their good names with lies in each and every post I write. If their names are so worthy, then I need to go ahead and list them all. What should scare the family more is how because of their efforts to ridicule, taunt and lie about me, I just changed every name in my manuscript back to their original names. Yes, I changed the names in my book out of consideration for the family, but if I’m going to be dammed by doing something I’m not doing; I might as well do what I’m being convicted of!

Here are the Dobson, Jacobs, Covington and family members that can’t seem to set me free and who feel it is appropriate to slander a name regardless of honest actions.

Dobson:

Kenneth A Dobson Sr. (Ken Dobson): Sperm Donor – definitely not a father – Horrible wife Cheryl (Two Faced) Dobson
225-262-1654 dkdobysr@aol.com
7730 Prairie Dr. Greenwell Springs, LA 70739

Waunita Jacobs (Waunita Dobson): Mother & Martyr – husband John Jacobs
770-806-1830 404-272-0982 wmjoc@bellsouth.net
3731 Willow Mill Dr, Lawrenceville, GA 30044

Tonya Dobson: Younger Sister & Alcoholic – hot headed mouth piece
770-823-3593 tonyaacrow@msn.com
Willow Mill Dr, Lawrenceville, GA 30044

Covington:

Kimmy Covington (Kimmy Dobson): Older Sister & Control Freak – Husband Michael Covington
770-497-1767 770-843-2150 kcovington@charter.net
3451 Drawbridge Ter, Duluth, GA 30096

Melanie Covington (Melanie Arceneaux): Eldest Niece & Vengeful Spoiled Brat – Soon to be husband Jared Arceneaux (May GOD be with you)
770-825-0192

P.S. What should really scare the family is if I’m accused of lying about what I’ve endured, I might as well start lying. Each and every post after this, you won’t be able to tell when I’m lying or when I’m not – but I will be using names until you leave me alone. Stop accusing me and I will stop using names as I agreed to do. Until then, my writings are about what I’ve experienced and from my perspective, take me to court and prove I’m lying or else shut up and leave me alone.

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Response to Doug: McCain/Palin cannot Deliver Tuesday, Sep 9 2008

08^th of September 2008

Response to Doug: McCain/Palin cannot Deliver

Hello Doug,

Thank you for responding to my blog. It took time and thought, which I appreciate. As I’ve indicated before, I don’t believe Mr. Obama to be the perfect candidate, but we haven’t had a perfect Presidential hopeful in such a long time that I don’t know if we could trust one. I have also acknowledged that there are issues that I disagree with Mr. Obama on, but in the scope of things, there is less disagreement with him than I have with Mr. McCain.

Every President has waffled on issues they campaigned against and could not later deliver. It is part of the disillusionment that the people have with Washington today. When we cannot trust our elected representatives with our common good, we loose hope and respect.

In your list separating Mr. Obama from Mr. McCain, we can volley back and forth and never find a common ground. I find less offense from the stances by Mr. Obama than I do Mr. McCain. I find that Mr. McCain has jumped more fences then usual. That tells me that his vote is for sell to the highest bidder and he has no courage to stand up against anyone unless there is money involved. That signifies the heart of the problems in Washington where our elected servants sell their vote instead of doing what is right for the people. Mr. McCain has changed his position on so many issues that it scares me the most about him. He now sells his votes to the Christian Right and where he was not perfectly aligned with them before, now in his bid for President, he is perfectly aligned in order to win their votes as the Republican Party tells him he must do.

Is Mr. Obama perfect and does he sell his vote. I have seen far fewer instances where he has reversed his original stand on issues and has sold his vote in the Senate. Do I also see partisanship that scares me, yes, there is example of partisan voting that concerns me, but I am less fearful of partisanship as I am outright selling a vote. When you are willing to sell your vote, you have no integrity and I question the veracity of Mr. McCain.

In all final analysis of each candidate I must see at the very least an attempt to speak with and for all of the people that make up this nation. We are vast and diverse and all have different needs, so I understand the great dichotomy it demands to speak with, to speak to and to speak for such diversity. Mr. Obama has made efforts to speak with, for and about all of society in an effort to represent us all. He has spoken about bridging the gaps between us and even though it will be hard for some, how we must care about our neighbors and their needs. What scares me the most about Mr. McCain is that he has not even made attempts to speak with some communities? He has rejected others simply because they tend to offend his greatest backers, the Christian Right. When a politician cannot find the voice for every group they represent, their denial to do so speaks to their ability to serve up freedom for that voice. When you reject a voice because it does not repeat your message, you do not represent all the people. If you cannot represent all of the people of this nation, you do not deserve the top position in this land. The President must stand firm in its representation of all of the great people who call this nation home.

No Doug, Obama is not perfect, but his voice stands tall against those of oppression. He may not have the perfect plan for energy right now, but that is why we have three branches of government to pass laws in this country, so that where policy may be light, he has two groups to educate him on what is right for this country. I would rather send a man who is willing to learn, but listens to the people rather than a man who is neither willing to learn or listen to her citizens.

Mr. McCain will continued failed economic polices that Bush ushered in with tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. The wealthy and most large corporations are spending far more money abroad then they spend at home, so why continue to cater to their needs. Mr. Obama will change the tax benefits to the middle class who spend it here as apposed to abroad and he will eliminate tax incentives that pay corporate America to bring jobs outside this country. Incentives for creating jobs here will put more of those unemployed back to work in this country. Tax incentives to small businesses and grants that help start more small businesses will jump start this economy and have it moving in the right direction as apposed to how Bush and McCain structure economic reform. Mr. McCain will continue funneling trillions of dollars away from stabilizing a US economy and spend it over-seas in a war that we cannot win in Iraq. It is an unjust war that we the people were manipulated into supporting by Bush. McCain has always stood firm with Bush on being there, which tells me his is as corrupt as Bush in the real reasons we invaded a country that stood against terrorist as much as we do. Iraq under Saddom Hussein was a bully, but stood firmly against the very insurgents we went to the region to fight. The American people will never be truly served when our government cannot be trusted. When Iraq has a trillion dollar surplus in revenues for the country while we barrow money to meet our current debts as we fight a war for them and on their behalf, we will never win anything that we pay so severely for! That is not even mentioning the cost we pay with lives of friends and family and for what – the cost of oil.

No Doug – Mr. McCain is not a just man. He doesn’t even attempt to serve all of the people who make up this country. This is just about the two men themselves, but now that he chose a bigoted, racist running mate who I believe will turn out to be the greatest albatross he could have ever imagined. When the people start to find the skeletons in her closet, their white knight that has elevated the McCain/Palin ticket in the polls, will be the dead weight that anchors them to the bottom. The only true race is can those skeletons be brought to the surface before the November elections actually happen. I hope they do.

A President Represents ALL The People ALL The Time

When the man running for President cannot represent all of the people, he needs to step aside and let the man who can take the job. Mr. McCain has denounced the voices crying from positions of injustice far too long and refuses to hear their cries for liberty. Even if Mr. McCain had perfect policies, without liberty and freedom for all, he can never deliver this nation out of the harm Bush has placed us in. Bush refused the cries from those suffering injustice, and look at the devastation he has placed this great nation in – - McCain proves to do more of the same. You cannot UNITE when you refuse to hear.

VOTE FOR CHANGE ~ VOTE FOR OBAMA

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

————————————————————————————————————

What kind of change does Obama offer?
During the Rick Warren forum an example was asked of the candidates of when they went against their party. Senator Obama cited an ethics bill that he worked with Senator McCain on that was not popular with his party. There was one fact that he neglected to include in that statement. He ended up voting against it. John McCain voted against Reagan’s idea of sending American troops as peace keepers in Beirut. He has voted against George Bush and the Republican establishment on taxes, immigration reform, troop levels after the invasion of Iraq, campaign finance reform, subsidized bio-fuels, and environmental issues. To be frank I disagree with McCain on some of these issues but he clearly has a record of putting the country first even if it means going against his party. Senator Obama will implement more of the same democrat party big government programs. They are dusting off the great society playbook from the 1960s. If that is the change you want then Senator Obama is your man. If you want proven reform then I would go with John McCain.
What economic program has Obama offered?
On taxes he wants to roll back tax increases that were implemented during the Bush administration. That will increase taxes on any family making over $31,850 by 3%. His income tax plan will adversely impact small businesses. He wants to increase taxes on capital gains. Well the last time I checked a majority of Americans own stock specifically in their retirement accounts.
It is easy for a politician to be generous with someone else’s money. Hold on to your wallet when they talk about fairness. As for the definition of the rich look at the mess congress has made with the AMT.

On energy Obama was initially against drilling, fuzzy on Nuclear power, and has a supreme confidence in the federal government to architect a new economy powered by “clean” energy sources. This centralized planning will most likely quell any chances for economic recovery.

From McCain/Palin cannot Deliver, 2008/09/08 at 2:18 AM

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McCain/Palin cannot Deliver Sunday, Sep 7 2008

07^th September 2008

McCain/Palin Ticket cannot Deliver

Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin both delivered eloquent speeches during the Republican National Convention. But I noticed something that cannot escape my ears and after swearing to swoop in with my last blog and remain focused on my manuscript, I must follow-up my words with some pain staking truths – - that McCain/Palin will destroy America with more of the same in Washington!

When a person has no substance to prove their points, they rely on fear and smear campaign tactics to bring your focus away from the subjects that require detailed discussions. In comparison to the speech delivered by Mr. Obama where he spoke in details to topics like national defense, economy, jobless rate and the energy crisis, neither Mr. McCain nor Mrs. Palin announce any detailed plans for the future of this country.

Mrs. Palin attacked Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden ridiculing their stance, but not offering any substance on how the McCain/Palin campaign would decrease the highest jobless rate in the past fifteen years. Mr. McCain neither offered any account on how he would build new jobs as Mr. Obama referenced creating new jobs as one of his highest priorities. Mr. Obama in contrast spent far less time picking apart is opponents and more time on job training, education and creating new jobs in new industries that would bridge the chasm that has destroyed so many families across the United States.

We need a President who will speak to the issues this country must find answers too, but he must deliver a clear path that the average citizen can not only agree with, but see themselves in the middle of. While Mr. Obama spoke in general terms, he spoke in greater details than either McCain or Palin. That is why I know the Republican Party is scared and they should be. They have no real plans that can change the position this country has been plummeted into by a reckless President Bush. Because they have no desire to change the current course, they can only challenge and chastise Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden with personal attacks to move the campaign away from the issues that require substance and not hype.

I don’t begin to imagine that being a politician is easy. In fact I rather see it is complicated and harsh at best, challenging to the absurd at the very least. When you collect the facts and design a solution that delivers to the true issues, the finicky citizens driven by fear and dislike can change their focus on a whim and in your favor one day, but trashing you the very next. Your exceptional solutions may find deaf ears when someone else is stirring fear into the mix simply to garner an outcome that lines their pockets. It’s a wonder that the American people have lost all hope with Washington given that the majority of the politicians signed back door deals where the only ones winning are the companies and politicians. We don’t know any longer who is lying to us and what is of real substance nor where the lies begin and end. When our government no longer serves the people, but their own interest and that which is paid for by corruption with greed, we need to heed the words by Thomas Jefferson, “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

Mr. McCain has offered nothing but sound bites and buzz words on the issues of jobs. In the Republican National Convention I heard seven people spiritedly announce Mr. McCain’s qualifications start and end with his patriotic service as a soldier, captured citizen and politician. While the story is moving and poignant, it does not qualify Mr. McCain to lead this nation away from war. I see just the opposite when the Republicans spend such much time touting his brave war time service, that they have no intentions of bringing the War in Iraq to an expeditious close. Actions speak the loudest; because words have a tendency to be twisted in the direction the orator wishes them to drive the listener. However, actions show precisely the truest direction someone is leading, and with seven people standing at the Republican National Convention proudly waving Mr. McCain’s war-time services to all of us, I see the direction to be devastating to the people of this country. I see by actions that the Republican Party has no intentions in closing down the War in Iraq until they achieve exactly what they set forth to conquer, and that is control of OIL. This is driven by corporate greed and is culpable in the harshness of the United States economy, the increasingly high jobless rate and the blotted cost of crude and with it the even higher cost for gasoline.

The McCain/Palin campaign continues to use the buzz words that garner a boisterous endorsement from the American people, but can they delivery with actions. I fear they have no intentions of distributing actions, just more of the same. If as a Senator Mr. McCain voted over ninety percent of the time with the failed policies and direction of the Bush administration, how can we the people honestly expect him to CHANGE! Even if we are lured by his steadfast words that he will bring about CHANGE in Washington, can McCain be trusted to change more than thirty years insider deals with the very corruptions he deems to change from?

We must speak of what I consider to be the greatest failure within the McCain/Palin campaign; their desire to refuse any of the citizens in this nation. Thomas Jefferson once said, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” McCain has tied himself with the rightwing, conservative and Christian focuses that disallow him to address the violations in denying rights to citizens of this nation they do not care for. A true leader is the person who seeks to bridge the divide between two vastly different sides. A true leader will find a way to deliver justice to both sides in a way that satisfies the majorities. Mr. McCain has sides with the conservative nature of the Christian Right in denouncing the rights of gay citizens on many fronts. McCain has also chosen a running mate who is not quiet in her derision for gay people. Mrs. Palin has openly denounced the gay citizens for the great state of Alaska, but within the few words she speaks publicly, she continues to bash and criticize citizens of this nation who like all others, demand equality and acceptance. If Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin feel so free to speak in such disregarding manners about citizens of the country they wish to run, how can anyone feel truly free under their tyrannical rule?

Mr. Obama has delivered substance to the issues mattering most to the American Citizens and while I don’t agree fully with every proposal, his failure to squander those opportunities announcing his plans gives me hope that he might just be able to deliver CHANGE that is so greatly necessary to make this country great once more.

VOTE FOR CHANGE ~ VOTE FOR OBAMA

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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A President for the People Wednesday, Sep 3 2008

02^nd September 2008

Republicans vs. Democrats: A President for the People

I haven’t been blogging for a while due to the immense time spent editing my manuscript. I hope that means it will be great, but you’ll soon find out.

I’ve been reading, watching and searching all information possible about our Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. I am but one person in the midst of millions where half of them won’t listen to reason and the other half doesn’t care. This election is far more important than sitting on your butts and hoping someone else votes. I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat, Independent or non-decided; register to vote and be counted.

It matters little who you are or what political affiliation you claim, the first important step in this election should be to get angry over the state of affairs in Washington. We have one of the worst economies since the 1920’s. Partisan politics has passed little legislation that actually makes a different for the average citizen. Our brave men and women who elected to protect us have been killed in numbers that rival those in the Viet Nam War. Those brave soldiers have been forced to serve even after their terms end, and have come back wounded only to receive substandard services, wrongfully discharged or thrown out of the armed forces in order to save the Federal Government money on the support they earned. These heroic people have lost hope for reclaiming the life they left behind.

This country must do right by our men and women in the armed forces. We must prevent our government from extending their tours of duty. We must demand to give these brave men and women the support; medically, psychologically and personally that they’ve earned. We need to prevent Corporate America from shipping jobs out of the United States only to receive huge incentives from our Government for every office they open and every person they employ and train in a developing country. Corporate America has spent the bulk of their efforts building global divisions as they take advantage of tax breaks instead of investing in us, here and now. We need to reform our elections process and how our politicians receive contributions (soft and hard pack monies). Politicians need to go to Washington out of a call to duty as apposed to a lottery ticket given to them by their constituents. We have far too many politicians heading to Washington from jobs making less money than the average family does, only to be making millions a few years later. We need to ensure that every citizen has equal opportunities for jobs, education and healthcare.

The serious failures that have gained notoriety deserve to be addressed. We the people of the United States of America deserve a government that works on our behalf. That means we need to DEMAND CHANGE in our government!

I won’t try to convince you that either of our Presidential candidates are alter boys, or that we have the best choices before us. They both have their American Dream stories compelling a tear or the thought of Hope. For me, the equations come down to individual attention to details. They both claim to be the servant of Change, but which one speaks to the entire population of the United States? We need a leader who will unite the people of this once great nation and bring back her glory. We need someone who can find a way to respect the person yelling that which he disagrees with the most and yet still finds a way to defend him. We require a leader who will show two opposing sides a way to find the common ground that rest between them, so they can start talking together instead of continuing their defiant hostilities. We require a leader who will chastise his own people when they do something wrong and cares as much about his opponents as he cares for himself.

Because of these reasons and the very issues listed above, I will be voting for Barack Obama. While neither man is perfect, I don’t expect perfection. He has some issues I don’t agree with, such as: I agree the ecology of the world has been seriously disregarded for decades, but currently our energy crisis demands we invest in other energy sources such as Nuclear Power and he opposes doing so. I don’t disagree that we need to find better means of working with nuclear waste. Primarily with a focus on reducing the percentages of waste by-products significantly; however, until we can produce more energy than we use, thereby decreasing our dependence on foreign oil; we must use the technology we currently have available to us. One of our top issues needs to be decreasing our needs from outside energy sources.

Mr. Obama has refused more than once to degrade himself when called to do so by responding to negative ads delivered by the McCain campaign. No, Obama is not perfect, and he has slipped several times, but he has done so enough to show that when it’s necessary he has a back bone and will come out fighting. Mr. Obama has been inclusive with his messages to all people; regardless of what the polls tell him will cost votes. Being a true leader means standing against the masses when it is justifiable in doing so. Treating all citizens equally and respectfully is provocation enough to stand tall when shouting the names of groups that may drop polling numbers.

The reasons I won’t vote for Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin: you cannot run a campaign to represent all US citizens, but shout out to the masses that Hispanics, Immigrants and Gays are not counted. You cannot espouse Change, when you also concur with the failed policies and procedures that exemplify the broken political machine. Using buzz words like Change and Unite only have meaning if you believe in the definitions they invoke. Saying the words does not make them so, but also speaks of the hypocrisy of the person and the campaign that uses them with futility. Mr. McCain has voted many times against the gay citizens he claims to represent. Mrs. Palin has done more than just vote against gay people; she is an outspoken bigot from the great white state. While she hasn’t been photographed with a Rebel Flag between her arms, she might as well come out saying that anyone that is not white doesn’t deserve her time or energies. I believe Mr. McCain found the one person in America that actually makes his alabaster skin seem slightly tanned. The basic failure in the McCain/Palin campaign is that when you disrespect any portion of your population, you disrespect them all.

When will we learn that we are all interconnected with everyone else in this country and in this world? Until we can garner respect for the people we dislike, we will never – ever be truly Free. If one citizen is hated, we are all hated – if one citizen is denied, we are all denied!

VOTE FOR CHANGE – VOTE FOR OBAMA

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Response to Eric: Freedom is Possible Ministry & the Hate they Convey Monday, Aug 11 2008

11^th of August 2008

Response to Eric:
Freedom is Possible Ministry and the Hate they Convey

Hello Eric,

Freedom is Possible Ministry

I am one of the first persons who will fight for your rights to believe what you do as long as your ideology does not hurt others. Even though I disagree with those values, it is one of the greatest privileges we share within the United States. With that being said, I don’t believe any organization has the right to prey on innocent people who, because of religious organizations twisting the true meaning of good book such as the Bible, for the sole purpose of humiliating, taunting, stripping people of their dignity and removing from a person who is already going through an arduous time in the life, any self confidence they may still vest.

Jesus Christ never once denied or denounced any person he came into contact with. In fact, he often times corrected his apostles, who said and felt as society, told them to believe. Not even when Jesus was traveling throughout Rome country-side and approached by a high ranking soldier who asked for his help. Jesus was advanced upon by this officer who got down on one knee, pleading how he knew he was unworthy, but requested that Jesus save his gay sex and servant boy. The officer was willing to give anything and everything he had for Jesus to heal his sick and dying servant. To a high ranking officer in the Roman army, that servant directly and indirectly meant gay love slave and this point everyone in the gathering knew. Jesus did not tell the officers NO, you are gay and love another man, so I will not help you. Jesus did not condemn the man or the servant for their homosexuality, as you do all of those who find themselves fighting their natural instincts. Jesus did not tell either the officer or the gay boy that their lifestyle was wrong and he could cure them by making them straight.

No, our savor did not pass judgments, as you do to all those men and women who being children of God, were born just as they are and perfect as they are. No Eric, Jesus did no such thing. Instead, Jesus commended the officer for his true love within his heart, and followed him to his house healing this servant boy – gay slave.

I do not hate you as you do me. I do not cast aspersions upon you as you would do to me and all others who find the love within their hearts belong to a person of the same sex. No sir, but I do hold you responsible for taking advantage of people who are tired, hurt and feel so very alone that they would do anything to feel a party to any group of people. I do blame most religious organizations for casting doubts, hate and placing these vulnerable people in isolation due to no other reason, but revulsion within themselves. You can bring out the Bible and quote chapter and verse for every standard religious section, but I can refute them verse by verse and word by word. My ability to do this is not via my sentiments, but rather the educated research done by countless men and women who have devoted multiple lifetimes to honestly understanding the Bible from the original text. If straight men of the cloth can say there is nothing in the Bible that denounces homosexuality and all text that you would quote has been misinterpreted and misconstrued purposely by religion, then I will stand by their educated research.

No Eric, I won’t deny you a voice, but I can and I will stand firm against any organization such as Freedom is Possible Ministry and Exodus that twist the minds of people who need love, understanding and affections as apposed to judgments telling them their life is wrong and you can change them. You cannot undo what God has set forth. If you want to make a difference in the lives of others, teach them how to find themselves. Teach them how to have self value, strength and self love. When you can honestly show me and the world that is what you wish to do instead of to tell innocent people you can change them from the way they came into this world; that is when I will ease my campaign against you.

Until then we are at opposite sides and while I must respect you for your beliefs, I don’t have to like you or what you do.

~ LOVE CAN NEVER BE WRONG ~

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

————————————————————————————————————

> We totally respect your right of free speach as written above. But let me

> ask you this? Who ever told you that we “prey on young people”?

> Our mission is to proclaim freedom from the bondage of homosexuality

> through CHRIST JESUS. Each time you write an article you seem to always

> leave out our message. Christ is who we as “Christian’s

> follow….Christ is who we obey. Please be reminded that just as you have

> the same right to proclaim your view, we also have the right to proclaim

> the truth that is written in the bible. God offers true hope, this

> ministry proclaims that HOPE.

>

> Thank You,

> Eric

> Freedom is Possible Ministry

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Love, Honor and Respect – - The Book Saturday, Aug 2 2008

Please follow this link outside of WordPress and let me know what you think about my Manuscript:  Please be aware that there are some very interesting and sexy parts to this manuscript…it is not for the faint at heart!

http://www.webook.com/project/Love-Honor-Respect

Thank you for letting me know what you think,

Todd M. Dobson

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Disguising Hate as Help Sunday, Jul 27 2008

27^th of July 2008

Disguising Hate as Help

A MySpace friend with whom I hadn’t spoken for a while called me two days ago. We became friends about a year ago with one of the reasons he was speaking with me pertained to him coming to terms with being Gay. As with many young people today who are in the same process of discovering their sexuality, they must find support with their friends and family. Unfortunately, his small town family was not accepting, neither were most of his friends. Leaving him scared and alone at a time when he needs love and support the most.

He, like most other young gay teens use sites like MySpace, Friendster and Facebook as a place to find other people of like minds. Social networking sites such as these are wonderful for giving small town youth a view of the world. They are able to see that they are not alone even when small minds in small towns isolate and treat them as if they have leprosy.

What moved me into writing this blog instead of editing my book was that in our conversations, there was an obvious undercurrent of Christian focus; and yet, he was still hanging up on our phone conversation every time a family member came to his room. As if he would get into trouble for speaking with me, our exchange was interrupted each and every time a person opened his bedroom door without knocking. It was also obvious that his family thought something was odd with his behavior and different people kept opening his door as if they knew he was chatting with a gay man on the phone.

This teen lives in fear that if accepting the natural feelings within his heart and soul, he will be breaking some family, friend and religious code of honor. He emailed me a quick note yesterday with a couple of religious singing groups like Jason & DeMarco that he enjoyed listening too. While I was catching up on his site, I came across two other religious groups called Freedom Is Possible (www.freedomispossible.org) and Exodus International (www.exodus-international.org) as friends on MySpace.

He is confused and scared while his family has already betrayed him. He feels isolated and alone with no other gay boys close to his own age anywhere in the surrounding areas. If there are any examples of other homosexuals close to him; they are stereo-typical gay people. While I will be the first to support all gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgendered people; for a young boy growing up in a small town, he needs an example that looks, feels and passes as you’re A-Typical societal normal person. This young man does not have anyone as an example by which to gage homosexual living and the only examples he has of people are the close minded bigots who call themselves family and friends.

This is the perfect candidate for groups like Freedom Is Possible and Exodus. They prey like vultures on young people who are disillusioned with coming to terms with that side of themselves. Young people who have unsupportive family and friends that isolate them by forcing them to live Heterosexual lives when everything in their body, mind, heart and soul tells them they are Homosexual run straight to their local clergy for help. Parents scared their child will be something they don’t want them to be, run to religious groups such as their local church, synagogue or religious leaders desperate to preventing their child from being such an abomination are then sent to organizations like Freedom Is Possible and Exodus.

It is ashamed that instead of local clergy using their good books to teach family members love and acceptance, they would rather spread the filth of HATE by sending those parishioners to groups promising change. Freedom Is Possible and Exodus promises that sexuality is a choice and they use tools like coercions, isolation, fear, electro-shock therapy along with extreme measures to associate same sex partners with pain. The problem with any group such as these is that their methods are nothing but cruel and in-human while their results are temporary at best, if at all.

The one thing organizations such as these refuse to understand is that while a person can reject accepting that part of their lives for a while; they can never disallow it forever. It will remain a constant, nagging treat against their life that eventually they will be forced to address. It is the same reasons when visiting any cruise area, the larger number of people congregating in these areas are married men who reject their homosexual feelings, marry women and have children; but can’t seem to shake that natural tendency to have relationships with people of the same sex. You can suppress emotions for so long, but you can never discard them permanently. Eventually you will need to face the truth your mind, heart, body and soul has known all along.

Vulture organizations that use fear, isolation and torture to subjugate people into believing the life they have is less than one of love doesn’t deserve the freedoms this country grants them. Now I say that out of anger because of the torturous place they have positioned a young teenager who only wants to be loved and accepted in. They claim a status of religious based organizations, but there is nothing but hate at their core. They hate anyone who isn’t just like them. They fear everyone who doesn’t accept their heterogeneous beliefs, goals and objectives. They can’t do this with adults who are not confused, so they prey on kids, teenagers and the minds of adults who have been tortured by their own family and friends and are desperate to be something they are not – STRAIGHT!

I keep going back to the same questions I’ve asked time and time again – - when will we learn to LOVE, HONOR & RESPECT all who share this wonderful world. Love your children as they are. Regardless if they become exactly what you see them to be. After all, it is their journey, their path and their life they must live. Honor each and every person that shares this world with us. It should not matter their station in life or from whence they came, only what they do with their life. Respect the people around us for the ways we are similar, but more for the ways we are different. It is through our differences that we learn, grow and become better human being. Last question that I must continue to ask, because for the past several years I have yet to receive an answer – when will religious people and organizations start to live the lives they know to be righteous as apposed to one guided by fear, hate and indecency?

~ LOVE IS NEVER WRONG ~

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Response to Leo: Gay Staph Infections Wednesday, Jul 23 2008

Hello Leo,

Your comments strike me as odd; you see I would be among the first to stand up if and when anyone would use something of your life as a means for fodder to sell news papers. An injustice is an injustice and it doesn’t matter whom it is against.

To take any part of society and twist it, exacerbate it to scare the public. Any time people’s lives are used to provoke fear in the hearts of those who are scared, it is wrong. Honor dictates that reporters write the truth. They don’t extend its reach because fear and bigotry sell more news papers.

Leo, lets dissect your response to me and why you felt the need to send such a hostile comment. With the words you wrote your anger is racist in nature because I am gay! So what about my life infuriates you so much? I won’t wish you harm that you don’t do to others, but I can wish that you would find out what living in fear is all about. I can hope that some way you would be forced to live a life where the ancient musings of 325 men decided that the love shared by two people is wrong and should be denied.

Leo, you came into this world knowing how to love, but we choose to learn how to hate. You and only you hold that hate deep within your heart and every time you write a message of hate – every time you bash someone that you feel is less than you yourself – - you HATE a piece of yourself too! Stop finding the means to hate others and find it within yourself to LOVE yourself!

~ Love Can Never Be Wrong ~

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Todd M. Dobson

Words of wisdom don’t derive from you mind….they originate from you’re heart.

Read My Words: http://tmdobson.wordpress.com

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dude, shut up. you’re gay. it is such a blatant fact that most of the media is so liberal and pro gay. so quit your crying because the vast majority of the media is on your side.

From The New GAY Disease – MDR Staph Infections, 2008/07/14 at 10:31 PM

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Happy Independence Day Friday, Jul 4 2008

4^th of July 2008

Happy Independence Day
But Are We Truly Free in the United States?

I am reminded on this great day, the magnitude and burden we must shoulder that in celebrating our independence from a tyrant king oppressing those choosing a different path. It is ironic that inside the boarders of a once truly great nation we must ask the question, are all of her citizens free from oppression?

I contend that as long as a nation allows one citizen to subjugate another, freedom is but an illusive dream and we all wear the shackles dominated by false hope in a stagnate sea of acrimony. Can we not truly feel the grip of deceit as that which is called TRUTH willingly controls the minds of so many who have given up their ability to reason, or to honestly open their hearts to what they know deep within their souls is wrong? Any who claim that Truth, and yet use it as a device to manipulate for gain should heed the warnings of a once proud King – Truth while it oppresses will garner nothing but vengeance from those you think you have power over!

If you seek true Independence as we celebrate this day of reckonings, you must set free that which scares you the most. Only through liberty can your fears be met by a loving embrace of acceptance. Then…and only then… will we all truly be liberated!

I write this in honor of the countless men, women, boys and girls who had their lives taken because they chose to freely love whom they desired.

Love can never be wrong – so when will you set us Free?

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Celebrate Father’s Day Wednesday, Jun 11 2008

10^th of June 2008

Celebrate Father’s Day

You may be wondering why and how I can instigate the celebration of Father’s Day. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know my immediate family is the antithesis of a first-class example. That doesn’t mean that growing up as a child or now as an adult that I don’t dream of having the perfect father!

As you think about Father’s Day, go back in time and remember your dad and the things he did for you during the time you were growing up. Please don’t judge him, just recall those happy times and the events where he showed his love. If your father, like mine, was not the cherished example of parenthood; it is easy to fault him, blame him and remember the fights, the anger and in some cases like mine, the physical and mental abuse. I challenge you to find the times where he said something without anger – something that made your heart beat that one extra beat. Search for the moment where his pride created a compliment that he said to you instead of just about you bragging to others. If you have that father and can’t image what I’m talking about…I am so happy for you and assert that you need to cherish the man who gave you a loving, nurturing environment to be a child in.

I believe having children is a gift that not everyone deserves. There are many men who do receive such perfect treasures; and yet are not prepared or don’t wish to be the benefactor of such delicate riches. I wish every child born into this world could have all of the parents who want to be fathers lined up and they get to choose the father they wish to be with. That way the men who can’t have children, but wish to provide love, nurture and everything else a child needs can fulfill the dreams in their life while providing that which every child deserves.

If you find yourself estranged from your father or like me refer to him as the donor, think about something that I believe with all my heart – don’t look at your dad into your past from the eyes or with the heart of the child. Look into your past as the adult you are right now. As you remember the goings on of yesterday, think about several things: 1.) the men of our generation, our father’s generations and the few before were all parented to be ultra-masculine men. The set manner a man acted and interpreting things was devoid of feelings because men were not supposed to have them. Only now are men finding that it is good to feel and to be a complete person one must sense and learn to do so with their heart. 2.) Men have only been dragged into the parenting phase of life in the last two generations. Most have been fighting, but some have found that the greatest gift in having a child is being there, witnessing their growth, and holding their tiny hands as they shakily take that first step. 3.) It is incumbent upon you and me to show our dads what true unconditional love is by thanking them for bringing you into this world.

I cannot tell you how liberating it is to do something as easy as buying a card for your father (it doesn’t have to be one of those mousy cards dripping with sentiments of love for the perfect father) that simply tells him that you thank him for being the reason you’re here – and as you send that card, forgive the man who gave you life along with all of his inadequacies. He is not perfect and he may have been wrong, but when you can forgive and love him regardless, you are the one who receives the gift on this Father’s Day! Unconditional Love will always set you free.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson

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How to Discuss Religion with Devout Followers Thursday, Jun 5 2008

4^th of June 2008

How to Discuss Religion with Devout Followers

I have found there is very little discussion with devout religious people and there is even less gray space outside of their beliefs. It doesn’t matter what religion they claim, but devout followers cannot consider any other supposition that does not equal their own. It is there way or no way without any wiggle room. If the message doesn’t get pushed from the pulpit, then it isn’t true.

I wrote a response earlier today that was a mild slight against Homosexuality written and posted by a devout follower. I purposely forwarded my response to all of the many people who gave kudos to the author of this post. I was surprised by a variety of responses I received. However, many people responded and several expressed their apologies for the post (which was not warranted), with some chatting about the original post and my response (which was wonderful because I love a good exchange of ideals, even if I disagree with some of them), and there was a small group who responded with a trained Christian retort (I Love the sinner, but hate the sin).

As many times as I refute the same tired, clichéd arguments coming from Christians who wish to use words to spread hate, it never seems to diminish the flow espousing that significance. Let me clarify the sentiments that people may hold an assortment of degrees of bigotry. Some people discriminate just a little, while others are blatant homophobes with hate dripping out of every pour of their skin like a rabid disease. Make no mistake that odium is hate and when ever you refuse to accept a person or group of people based on general stereo types without getting to know them; it is revulsion.

Understanding that those Christians who refuse to accept any person due to their life or a simple part of their life, they are defying the very foundation of Christianity. Leave the judgments to God in the afterlife and accept the person for who they are and what they may bring to your life. Jesus never agreed with hate nor did he exemplify it when approached by any person….ever.

As for the reproachful response that so many Christians have been taught to deliver without ever thinking of the awful hypocrisy within their statements, “I hate the sin, not the sinner”. There is nothing wrong with me or my life. This statement supposes that I choose to be gay. I have argued this so many times with Christians and not one can honestly reflect about their teen years and if they chose to be straight. It is not a choice and is something you are born with just as the color of your eyes, the color of your hair, the hand you naturally use along with the genes that will determine other aspects of you as a human being. Not one person that has ever been honest with me can ever remember choosing their sexuality and why would anyone wish to be gay. Religion has made sexuality such a horrendous subject for so many decades that young people today are messed up by the mere mention of it. We cannot separate the person from what is natural to them neither can a gay man indefinitely do what is abnormal for them. Yes, a person can fake their sexuality for a while, but eventually natural tendencies will always become prevalent.

When someone finally accepts that sexuality is not a choice, then that only leaves the standard verses that all Christians are thought that exemplifies the aberration with homosexuality, so let’s discuss those texts from the Bible here and now, and let’s finally decide what the Bible really says about homosexuality.

The first thing everyone must understand about reading the Bible and truly understanding its meaning, you must place yourself in the day and time each chapter was originally written. The second thing to know is that the Aramaic language the Bible was written in has multiple meanings for each word. The groupings of words can have numerous and different meanings and larger sections of phrases and sentences together may mean completely different. So with any interpretation of the original text, you must delineate all of the possible variables and choose which selection is the most plausible given the attached words, phrases and sentences. It can be complicated and with every sentence that we read in the Bible, there may be completely different meanings that are not disclosed and those are chosen by the editor of the Bible we read. We also have literal, liberal and historical interpretations of the Bible and they all tell slightly different stories.

That being understood we can start with the tale of Sodom and Gomorra from Genesis. This is probably the story from the Bible that most people feel is so definitively stating that homosexuality is wrong and God dealt with it by destroying both villages. God already decided that Sodom and Gomorra were destined to be destroyed, but being the gracious deity that he is, he sent two angles to Sodom. The two travelers were brought to the Lot house and he took them in as guest. The custom or law during that time was to you never turned away a guest from your door. More importantly than turning them away, was that you treated visitor as the king of your house while they remained. The Lot family did this of the two angles and when the local community came demanding that Lot hand over his guest, he refused to turn over his guest. By defying the people of the village, Lot saved his family from destruction. The angles sent the Lot family away as God reined destruction down on a village that would break its own laws. The story speaks of the continuation of the village citizens that would disregard their laws and their customs. It was a lesson of inhospitality that brought about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra and it had nothing to do with anal intercourse between men. While this doesn’t seem like a despicable offense, for the time, this was one of the most offensive laws they could break.

Leviticus tells us that “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination”. If you read all of Leviticus it details those things one must do in order to be a good and pious Jewish person. You are not aloud to eat shrimp or pork as well as many other foods. It was considered to be a Holiness Code for the time it was written. There are many Jewish persons who do not adhere to all of the items listed in Leviticus, so unless you are attempting to be a good Jewish person, Leviticus has no proper implications to Christianity in today’s times.

Roman’s is the only chapter where the text of Homosexuality is directly spoken of. It is curious the words that were used by Paul when he wrote the Letters to the Romans. Paul did not want to offend the Greek culture and the words that he used in his letters held different meanings during the times. Had he offended the Romans it would have had consequences that could have changed Christianity as we know it today. The word that we know as unnatural actually meant in the time not normal. It gives a completely different connotation when you know that Paul was telling the Greeks that homosexual acts between two men were not normal in Jewish customs instead of unnatural.

1 Corinthians and 1 Thimothy speaks of abusive male-male sex. It is argued among scholars because of the words used in the texts, but almost all scholars agree that there is so much ambiguity in the text alone that both chapters do not conclude anything at all against homosexuality. There are several other verses referencing homosexuality and the grand conclusion by theologians from all over the world is that there is nothing in the Bible that denigrates homosexuality as most Christians have been told.

These are not my arguments against homosexuality; they are the findings by teams of noted and highly respected religious researchers, theologians, historians, linguist and archeologist that have spent years finding the absolute truth.

Now that the text within the Bible concerning homosexuality has been dispelled, lets discuss the Council of Nicea and their role in the formation of Christianity as well as what we know to be the Bible. In 325 AD Constantine the Great, the Emperor of Rome called together over 300 of regions top leaders and politicians who argued for years over the formation of one religion. They were the true instigators of what we know as Christianity today. Over the centuries the different faiths have segregated again, however, they were once brought together as one Christian religion for everyone. These leaders discussed everything from the holidays we now celebrate to the content of the Bible as we know it. They decided on each chapter in the New Testament and even went back with edits of the Old Testament. It is so frustrating that many Christians are literal and believe every word in the Bible as if God used a megaphone to speak them down to us. That is not what happened and to top it off, there were many other chapters used by the different religions of the time that were rejected. Chapters that had more significance to the life of Jesus and his teachings, but because they did not speak of him the way the Council desired those chapters were denied. There is much information in these chapters that still tells us about Jesus and the church he truly wanted Christians to practice. Because 300 men thousands of years ago disagreed with them does not make them less authentic then what we read in the Bible. In fact I would argue because the Council denied these chapters, they were not edited and their content is pure as apposed to the desires of over 300 men some 325 years after Christ gave his life for you and I.

This and many other reasons diminish the authority of the Bible, but I don’t refute religion as a hole. On the contrary, it is an amazing focus for humanity and we deserve everything that getting closer to Christ can bring us. I use the Bible as a means of reminding me how to live my life. As someone said in a message to me today, it is a guide. Now I was told this in a completely different context, but I agree with the words. Religion is an amazing part of our lives and should be a means of striving to live a better life, making us improved people. The true foundation to the church Jesus Christ wanted us to be a party too, is the one with Love as the foundation. He taught of to Love, Honor and Respect all humanity and that does not mean segregating any of us for any reason. It also does not mean “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. Hate is hate and it was not a word Jesus taught.

To those people who told me how Christianity and the Bible refutes homosexuality and it is wrong. Read what I have to say and then come back to me with any arguments that prove me wrong. I can respect you for what we have that is different, but more because of what we are that is similar. It is our commonalities that make us strong, but make no mistake, we are all interconnected and loathing me because I’m gay means you hate a part of yourself too!

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Response to David: Religion & The Homosexual Problem Thursday, Jun 5 2008

04^th of June 2008

Response to David: Religion & The Homosexual Problem

A friend made me aware of this blog post on MySpace (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194028640&blogid=394910215). The original post is below and before you read it, get angry or congratulate David on the sentiments of his message, please read my response. David is not a bad person while he blindly following what he truly believes is Christian doctrine. The hate that spews forth as dribble from religious leaders who would rather propagate disgust as apposed to the real doctrine taught by Jesus Christ – Love!

I responded to Nate (MySpace Friend who made me aware of this post) reminding him that we must refrain from blaming the blind followers such as David for the errors in their faith. Faith in God is never wrong, but it can be misguided. It was Christ himself who said those who deem themselves the chosen will be the last to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. This was said not because their faith is wrong, but because they choose to blindly follow those who purposely miss-direct. Organized religion has always had two masters and only one of them is God. They also are in the service of themselves, and that service has nothing to do with faith, but yet their love of money and power. Can we learn by those who intentionally mislead our faith in a less than positive direction? Yes! We can learn and many followers do. So how is religion failing all of humanity and what can we do about it? Why should we hold back in blaming people like David when they perpetuate the hate and loathing they are being taught by some religious organizations?

We must look beyond people such as David who are intelligent enough to truly read the guides we have such as the Bible and other text with an open heart. Interpreting those words for ourselves and exterminating exactly what the right message is teaching us. North America is a continent of literal Christian followers who blindly allow other people to establish what they believe. In doing so, they hand their faith over to someone else regardless of the biases within that person. Most people can’t tell you much more about their clergy other than their position within the church and most religious leaders have learned how to hide what is truly within their hearts. Even when they have the best of intentions, some leaders are often time also just followers to those who set direction. These leaders are simply passing down to the congregation the messages the church decrees for them. Because of these reasons, we have a nation of blind followers with the numbers diminishing as it alarms the folds.

Religious organizations can’t understand why young adults are leaving the flocks by the droves or why they can’t stave off the flow. Our young adult’s mock people like David because they are reading and interpreting for themselves what the Bible and other text actually means. They’ve learned to think for themselves and they’re following their own hearts. They are leading in a new religious focus of actual truth with faith in ones self first and that is not diametrically apposed to Christian teachings…actually it is exactly what Jesus had in mind. They are finding a way to love themselves first and with that love they have for themselves, they are finding faith in God through Jesus’ Love. That is the true meaning of Christianity and religion as a whole. These young men and women are defying the church with their messages of hate by showing the world around them that the true meaning of Love starts with ones self.

I can argue the horrendous points verse by verse with someone like David who will quote Genesis, Ecclesiastes and Roman as to how God denounces homosexuals. I can also bring your attentions to those same verses and show how religious leaders use literal translations to garner the meanings they desire as to push forth fear, shame and a hate that drops more money into their offerings while urging followers who might better understand the Bible and its true meaning. I don’t find fighting against unfounded charges from bigots who are so unhappy with their own lives that they find demoralizing someone else as a means of making themselves feel worthy and somewhat closer to God. What they do is exactly what God and later Christ warned them against and is why those who call themselves followers will be the last to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

When we approach faith with love and an open heart, we don’t buy into false demigods such as hate and we aren’t forced to use tactics such as oppression to enlighten our soul. When we approach faith with love, we know that we are closer with God by loving all of his creations equally just as Jesus showed by his example. Trust yourself to know when even those people we normally agree with are delivering false praise and using the Bible as a weapon instead of a divining rod to teach the true meaning of religion to all who might believe…LOVE!

David – I know you went out of your way to appear kind to homosexuals because in your heart you don’t hate us. I also know without a doubt that your knowledge and faith in God is based on a foundation of lies and misdirection taught to you by organized religion. To prove my point to you, ask yourself this simple question; if Jesus were in front of me right now and I asked him for his love, what would he deliver back to me as a response? Did he ever once denounce or reject anyone who reached out to him? When his apostles made comments or discussed someone or something in a negative manner, was it not Jesus who always brought them back to a place of Love and Acceptance? If Jesus would not reject me…why do you?

There are several other comments that need to be corrected in your text: the word gay was originally used as a derogatory term to put down queers, faggots and homosexuals. It was only in the late 50’s and early 60’s that we turned the negative connotations of the word gay to be used in a positive means for our community. As for the history of the Pride Flag (Rainbow Flag), its originations cannot be traced because it has been used throughout most of time by those being oppressed. While the gay and lesbian community has use of this representation of Gods Love, it was used before us by those South Africans who were oppressed by a government and killed for the color of their skin. It was used by slaves before them here in America again as a symbol of freedom and also by the Underground Railroad as a marker by those seeking to relinquish the shackles of their owners. Its history is long and all who have regaled this symbolic rainbow have done so while they fight oppressive people who deny freedom and liberty from them. I am sure that when the homosexual groups have finally received true equality on these shores, its colors from heaven will be used by another group who is unjustly denounced. As for you respectful words and opposition to our group; it doesn’t matter if your words are as spiteful as those from Mr. Phelps or as you write in a more respectful manner. Hate is wrong and is never the way to God and absolutely never in reference of him. If you wish to express hate for a group, have the courage to use your words and speak from your heart and don’t claim to be the messenger of a deity such as God. Neither you nor anyone else is worthy of his name!

As for the position the California Supreme Court takes, it is their job to ensure the laws for the state of California do not unjustly oppress any group of her citizens. It does not matter if those laws are passed by a Congress, Legislature or by the citizens; justice is blind to the events except to those where justice does not serve. The Judges did as they need to do and should be followed in every state where the citizens were scared into voting for bills that create inequality for any of the citizens living within her borders. I can only hope and pray that all states that used its people to vote in hate legislation has a judicial body courageous enough to strike down those laws that denigrate any group of citizens.

I have disseminated enough information that counters your very thoughts and I shall leave you now. I can only hope that you choose to read my message with an open heart and an open mind. If you are angry for refuting your ascertains, please think of one final thought…would Christ denounce me for who I am…or would he ask you to love me because of who I am?

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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So most of you have probably already heard; the gay marriage ban has been overturned by the Supreme Court in California “paving the way for California to become the second state” to legalize gay marriage.

Well first off, gay marriage has not only always been legal, but in fact encouraged. It’s actually homosexual marriage that has been made acceptable in the eyes of the so-called Supreme Court. Ya, the word gay has been hijacked by the homosexual community.

My first response was shock, then sadness, then anger. I wanted to be mad at the homosexual people. They are after all, the ones in blatant sin. And through that sin are unwittingly helping to destroy our country.

I could be angry that homosexuals hijacked the word gay. I could be angry they have mocked God by using the rainbow as their symbol.  I could be appalled at the way they flaunt themselves at their “Gay Pride” parades (and I can’t help but think about the verse from Philippians 3:19 “…and their glory is their shame.”).

I admit I’m tempted to say hurtful things and more. I won’t though. I won’t stoop to the level of the Westboro Baptist Church, the knuckle head here on myspace who proclaims himself to be a mountain preacher or those like them that teach that God hates certain people.

I’m definitely ticked at the California Supreme Court. How could they go against the majority of the American people on this? What arrogance! What ignorance! It’s nothing short of liberal fascism.

However, I can’t really blame homosexuals who are just doing what those outside of Christ do – rebel against God. That is the “natural” thing to do if you’re not a believer.

I know that those who defy God will get theirs; at some point anyway. This is not to the pleasure of God, but to His justice.

I know too, that the so-called California Supreme Court will be held accountable by God for the failure to uphold that which is right. The four who voted for this are despicable. They will surely answer to the true Supreme Court – God.

You know who I’m really ticked at? Christians! That’s right, Christians. All those who suppose themselves to be, yet deny the Word of God and have been conformed to the views of the world, the culture.

Shame on us! How we have failed the world, our country, our fellow man, our families, and our God.

The liberal mind-set of those who claim to be Christians disgusts me to no end. The ignorance, the twisting of the Word of God or the flat out denying of it is deplorable. It’s the same reason that abortion has been allowed in this country, that God has been booted from our schools, that the farce of evolution is taught as fact, that every belief in this country is tolerated except Christianity, and much more.

That so many Christians have gone to the side of Satan on these and other issues is why they have been allowed to legally prevail.

So how did it start? What is the real problem or problems? These events are just symptoms after all. What is at the root of the problem?

Is it just the twisting of Scripture? Using one or two passages to create an entire philosophy for the acceptance of abortion or homosexuality? And this despite the clear evidence that God hates these sins?

Is it the flat out denying of Scripture? The fulfilling of Scripture that many turn away to words and beliefs that tickle their ears?

Is it the failure to pray? This is severely neglected and keeps the Christian thinking, working, and creating in his own strength and wisdom.

Is it the secularization of the Christian community, the Church? Secular is not the elimination of God like many think. It is putting Him second! We are however on the way to eliminating Him in our culture. Today was one more step in that direction.

Is it the neglect and/or ignorance of Scripture? This too is pervasive among Christians. Not just liberals, but conservatives as well. However, we do see many more liberals among certain denominations like Episcopalians or Catholics. Not to pick on these two groups and I know it does not speak to all of them, but they are at the forefront of Christian liberalism. It’s shameful!

And what’s with this Pope? I try to keep on good terms with Catholics and emphasize those truths we agree on, but for crying out loud – aliens!? He was already on my bad side for taking the position that true salvation is only found through the Catholic Church in violation of Scripture. But aliens? What nonsense. He would do good to read the Bible and stick to that and leave the alien garbage to the Sci-Fi channel.

(Now I know the Pope himself did not make these statements. However, nothing comes out of the Vatican without his blessing. My point it this: many Catholics defy the Word of God on the issues of abortion, homosexual marriage, etc. even though the Pope speaks out against them. So you would think he would speak more about these things than allow the Vatican to release comments telling Catholics it’s ok to believe in aliens – it’s a ludicrous distraction from that which is truly important).

I don’t know what exactly the root cause is, but I do know that it both starts with the Church and is a result of liberal un-Biblical thinking.

Am I overreacting? Am I too emotional over this? I don’t think so. I mean, I do know God is in control. I know this didn’t catch Him off guard; He was not shocked as I was. I do know He’s not pleased though.

I know too that as our country descends into a deeper state of immorality, that we all suffer.

While I despise much of the teaching by Reverend Wright, when he said after 9/11 the chickens have come home to roost, I agreed! I just disagree as to why. While I can’t tell you for sure why, I would say our killing a million babies a year could be a strong possibility. The point is, it will get worse as God withdraws His protection on us to allow His discipline to us for our failure to love Him and to obey Him.

So it’s a sad day here in America, a sad day indeed. We the Church, have only ourselves to blame.

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Find The Common Ground Tuesday, Jun 3 2008

2^nd of June 2008

Find the Common Ground

It occurred to me today as I found mistakes in many of my recent posts, that my message has been translating into daily events; however I have been identifying issues in a manner that is not how I wish them to be received. I personally manage people in a more positive approach and dislike when I must be stern. Even when teaching in a way that will direct someone due to negative conduct, I still try to position my lesson in a more positive demeanor.

I was thinking about the messages I’ve delivered as I reviewed many of those posts. It hit me that I’ve been asking you to find the common ground with those among you that find you and your life unacceptable. It is unfortunate that some people live with hate in their hearts. It is even worst that some of those who hate so prolifically turn to great books of religion claiming that these books told them to take such egregious action against sinners.

It doesn’t matter if the person offending you is someone who cuts you off in bad traffic on your way home from a hard day’s work or a neighbor who doesn’t like you based on something as simple as the color of your skin, your sex, your nationality, religion or even the way you comb your hair. Regardless of why this person abhors you, take the time to find something that you share with this individual. Chances are you may never have the opportunity or the ability to change their mind set, but to change the way you reflect upon them makes all the difference in the world.

That is a power statement and one that took me many years to discover. We grow up trying desperately to fit in with the crowd and we care way too much about what others think about us. I’m not telling you to completely forget about this philosophy, but when you learn that it is far more important to care about how you think of yourself. When you make the extra steps to forgive the person who can’t see who you are as an individual, it is empower for you to witness true unconditional love in that exoneration.

Please don’t get me wrong, if it comes to defending yourself or those you love, the context of this message will not suffice, but with the absence of physical treats, forgiveness is freeing to your soul. Hate wishes to take from you the peace and the love you feel for others and most importantly, yourself. Don’t give HATE or those who subscribe to it the ability to diminish the love in your heart and the peace within your soul.

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Response to Daniel: NY Governor’s Executive Order a Move Towards Nazism Friday, May 30 2008

30^th of May 2008

Response to Daniel: NY Governor’s Executive Order a Move Towards Nazism

Hello Daniel,

I was deeply saddened by your post and then by your entire blog. As I read the words you placed on this page, the hate in your heart is so apparent that it drips from you lips like a rabid dog frothing and eager to decimate its prey. Now I ask you, how much like Jesus is your blog? Would Jesus in today’s time be writing and denouncing so many people and is this what he would call a Christian way to live?

I won’t even address the vile manner in which you attacked a politician, because I can believe it is within your rights to express your dissatisfaction with the way an elected official is performing their job. I believe your words to be crass and unjustified, but then I found many of the things stated in this post and others to be similarly amplified. I am hoping that you will grant me this opportunity to openly discuss the foundation of your hate and what makes it such a powerful and driving force in your life.

Let us start by dispelling the very first facts you might point to as a driving force and that being the Bible. I am a man of God and hold spirituality firm in my heart just as I imagine you do. I’ve read every word in the Bible and for years thought as you do that the Bible spoke ill of me while denouncing who I am and floundering in my life because I had a problem believing God would create me demented, perverse or just simply wrong. If he created me in his image, and my sexuality is not a choice for me just as it wasn’t for you, then how could I be bad by birth? Years of this thinking kept me away from religion because so many of the faithful, yell and scream from the pulpits and the pews of my evil existence just as you stated in your post. However, I started reading the good book again and this time my mind wasn’t referencing what religious leaders have been using as a bullying tactic to increase their coffers and place larger numbers of butts in their seats. I spoke with noted theologians of many different religions and people who have dedicated their lives to the study of Christianity in hopes that I might garner some decipherable explanation to the words within the pages of a book.

In my search for the real truth about religion I found that most learned people who have truly studied the Bible and its writings have all said that the context of its lessons has been purposely taken out of focus and knowingly done so by the very leaders we look to for guidance and support. When this reality hit me my world changed because it was as if the message was starring me in the face the entire time I questioned it. I always asked in my prayers to God, how could you make me imperfect and yet still be in your image? If being gay was a choice, I would have chosen differently, but yet I never had the ability to choose heterosexuality or homosexuality. I knew of my differences long before I knew what it was that made me different. But as I stammered with my newly found enlightenment, I realized that religion today does not truly represent the church that Jesus Christ wanted us to attend. Please tell me of any time in the life of Jesus Christ where he denied or denounced any person he encountered? When did he allow the ill statements of his followers to be delivered to their subjects? When did Jesus say that homosexuality was wrong and when did he deny the love shared by any two persons?

On my account the living example God sent to show us how we should strive to live our lives did nothing but extend the hand of love to all who would accept it. So with that understanding, why do you believe you are more worthy than Jesus Christ in denouncing homosexuality? If God set you forth on this earth as a profit to teach the world please tell me, otherwise I would find us both men and being children of God and thereby both having the same rights, privileges and capabilities. If you are not the lost profit and we are thereby equal, please tell me how you are anointed with such privilege that you can sit in judgments over me?

If the harshness of your post is out of our systems and we can both agree that Christianity and religion can do without the hypocrisy, then let’s deal with real issues. When did you choose to be straight? At what age were you when you made the active choice to be heterosexual or did you experiment with both boys and girls and then decide after investigating both sides determining that you wanted to be a straight man? If you never made that choice just as all other people that I’ve asked this question too, why would you believe that sexuality is a choice for me and not for you. Don’t you think God would make it the same for everyone? Why would he give me a choice and not give you the same choice? If sexuality is chosen, why would anyone want to be gay? I don’t know anyone who would want to choose to be so different from how everyone else in society tells them to be. I know as I was growing up I didn’t want to be so different from everyone else. Life would have been so much easier had I fit in with everyone else including all of those within my family. I wouldn’t have chosen to be isolated by the ones I loved the most and I would have preferred having friends as I grew up thinking that I was just like everyone else. So if we can understand that sexuality is not the choice that you and Christianity wants everyone to believe that it is, that solidifies that I am made by God in his image and thereby perfect just like you!

If we have dispelled two of the primary beliefs against homosexuality, that brings up to the point, why shouldn’t we have the exact same rights as you? Why should we be unable to share the love in our hearts with the person we fall in love with? Why should our local and Federal governments deny us the rights granted to all people by our founding fathers with our Constitution? If we are truly the same in the eyes of God, why can’t we be the same in the eyes of our Government?

I also need to dispel one thing that you point out numerous times and that is that our government is beholden to God. I hate to dispel this point, but the words of Jesus Christ said that we must follow the laws of the church as well as the laws sanctioned by our government. He also preached for a separation between religion and government.

Daniel, I know you are doing what you believe to be right, but can you truly, deeply and honestly tell me that you are doing exactly what you know Jesus himself would do? If that is your belief then I can respect your stance even when I know in my heart it is wrong. Love is how we need to see everyone else in the world…not hate. I would hope that something I’ve said makes you think or asking questions about what you think you know. My rule of thumb has become, can I see Jesus taking my stance, saying my words, writing my words and teaching what I believe…and I can honestly from the depts. of my heart say unequivocally “Yes” I can. Thank you for reading my words as they refute yours own I bid you a life filled with peace and love as Jesus would have wanted it.

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

NY Governor’s Executive Order a Move Toward Nazism

May 29, 2008 · No Comments

New York’s governor, David A. Paterson, is following the path of pre-Hilter Reich led by the Kaiser. He was notorious for bypassing the processes of a Democratic government. In order to accomplish what he wanted often in opposition of the duly elected legislator, he employed the dictatorial tool of the executive order. It is only dictatorial tool available to the executive provided by a democratic form of government. Hitler was democratically elected. Once elected, Hitler took the common use of the executive order for making public law to its final purpose.

The move toward totalitarianism is already blatantly practiced by gays and their supportive politicians. Gov. Patterson has taken the next step toward a totalitarian state. When people with a moral conscience are no longer permitted to freely criticize the behavioral politics of sexual immorality, their Constitutional rights have been usurped. When moral or religious people are fired for the same reasons, the supposed liberal right to employment becomes non-existent. More importantly, so does their right to assembly in term of economics. When employers are forced to hire those whose behavior offend their religious or moral beliefs, business owner have lost their 1st amendment rights. When ex-gays cannot freely speak at churches, college campuses, or in other public without fascist gays disrupting their meeting to an extent that riot police must be involved, American of opposing views have in-effect lost their free speech rights. That is especially so because typically police do not forceful remove radical and violent gays from the premises of those public forums.

For public officials to abolish the moral bases of social law is to violate the very principle of our Republican form of constitutional government rooted in natural law and religion. Consent of the many does not make constitutional law when it violates the other part of Declaration of Independence that speaks of appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions and ith a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.

Besides, gay politics claim civil rights to justify their politics. Yet, civil rights law founded on the 14th and 15 amendments are directly linked to the Declaration of Independence. The equality spoken of in the Declaration is part of natural law as given by the Creator, Providence, and Supreme Judge– in other words, God. God did not create homosexuals. It is obvious to both Reason and Revelation that God make male and female for sexual relations, which is the a major reason for marriage. Natural law states that any practice contrary to nature is evil. That what gay politics is all about.

Leading the totalitarian charge is gay organizations like Amnesty International, Gay Straight Alliance Network International, GLAAD, GLSEN, Human Rights Campaign, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Lambda Legal, Marriage Equality, Stonewall Democrats. They are supported mostly by those of the liberal, humanist, and socialist persuasion including organizations like Democratic party, United Nations, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, many corporations, American Civil Liberties Union, and the like. Senators Obama and Clinton officially support the gay agenda.

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Turmoil In The Democratic Party Wednesday, May 21 2008

20^th May 2008

Turmoil in the Democratic Party

I’ve been hearing and reading about problems inside the Democratic Party for several months, but these tribulations are not what concerns me the greatest; rather it is what I’m hearing from the voting public that heightens my anxieties.

Yes, we are desperate for a single candidate to appear victoriously rising to the challenges of organizing this election. Both candidates have strong qualities and they’ve both made enormous mistakes while on the campaign trail.

While I have comments to both Senators Clinton and Obama, the voting public needs to hear a couple of statements: Our current President Bush has put this nation in such a disastrous mess that I’m concerned anyone accepting the job may require one term to just to undo the harm caused by a greedy zealot. His administration has lied to the public numerous times to garner what they desired politically. We are loosing our sons, daughters, husbands and wives daily in two countries that not one person can authoritatively discern if we absolutely needed to be in either. I don’t even question if our presence has done well for the residences of Afghanistan and Iraq, because I know their liberation has been welcomed by the individual citizens. However, the good our soldiers have done, does nothing to alleviate the veracity of the Presidential administration that has engulfed this country in a war that has no ability of ever winning a victory – only loosing the lives of our valiant soldiers. This war has devastated what was a thriving US economy and perpetuated the destabilization of our economy via a confrontation over fossil fuels that will have the price of gasoline rising for the next few years exponentially. The actions of this President have decimated our Gross National Product while increasing our dependencies on imported commodities. We were once the greatest producing country in the world and now we are the neediest country in the world with President Bush attributing enormously to those changes.

Our current President catered recklessly to Corporate America giving to his petulant children all the riches within the US Treasury. This was payment in full for two terms of one Presidency that will go down as one of this great nation’s worst ever when the history books have reviewed his record. President Bush personally drained the once vibrant reputation of this great nation around the world and has ubiquitously tarnished our name to the point that it lies in the gutter with the remaining waste.

To those voters who are now saying that if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, they will not vote or they will vote for Senator McCain and to those voters who are now saying that if Senator Barrack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, they will not vote or will vote for Senator McCain; I question your resolve. If you feel as I do that the Presidential Administration currently in office has destroyed this country and thereby must be removed from influencing political efforts in the future; then how the hell can you vote for Mr. McCain. He is a Bush III and will continue every one of the current policies for an additional four years.

This country has been damaged and its citizens have been harmed far too much and a President that will usher in healing as well as changing our downward spiral into a positive change economically and spiritually. Threatening to pull a vote and even worst to vote for a candidate who will not only continue our downward spiral, but add to its velocity and longevity is incredulous. Not voting because your candidate is not amongst those viable for this election will only give weighted means to an already horrendous tenure of policy and practices we good citizens have endured, not to mention spits in the face of all those citizens around the world who fight for the freedom to choose their leaders.

No, our election systems are not perfect and I for one wish to push through with our new President a bill that would change the means of electing the President of the United States and place that right back into the hands of the American citizens as with the popular vote. Currently the popular vote is null and void giving way for the Delegate and Super Delegate votes as the means of choosing our President. This process has failed us greatly in the past two Presidential elections when the popular vote chose one candidate and the delegate/super delegate vote inducted into office a devastating example of a bad President. However, our right to vote for the ruler of the largest country in the world is a privilege that less than fifty percent of humanity can exercise, which I for one will not take for granted.

I understand that you might not agree with everything in any one candidate; however we must remain optimistic that as long as we move away from the politics as usual in Washington DC currently, then there can be hope for our future. If you feel that Clinton would be the better candidate and she is not the Democratic nominee, ask yourself if Obama can do the job better than President Bush? Likewise, if you feel that Obama would be a better aspirant, however he does not receive the Democratic nomination, would Clinton do a better job than President Bush? If your answer to either question is “Yes”, I don’t understand the statement that some would not vote or would cast their vote for McCain in an act of vengeance.

We are not voting for someone who will go away in a week or two if he/she is not liked. We are electing the President of the United States and their administration will direct the policy of this great nation. This election demands action from its citizens and moving this country to a better place then where we’ve been the previous eight years. I personally would vote for my dog, Jake, before I would vote for another Bush in the White House. McCain is exactly that…another Bush that will continue the eradication of the American economic landscape.

In closing a strong message needs to be sent to Senators Obama and Clinton. This vendetta as a campaign needs to come to a close. In the process of closing it down, both candidates needs to stop attacking each other and pull together (if you like the other or not) to build a cohesive party that has the stability and momentum to fight Senator McCain and to win the Presidency. Without making a determination on who I personally wish to win the Democratic nomination, at this time the candidate who is loosing momentum and delegates/super delegates should be the one who works on an exit strategy with a definitive and short time table. That means with the numbers as they are currently reported by the media, Senator Clinton needs to exit gracefully instead of pushing for new ground.

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Response to ThatsElbert: California Courts Impose Their Immorality Sunday, May 18 2008

18^th of May 2008

Response to Thats Elbert:
California Courts Impose Their Immorality

Mr. Elbert, I find the premise of this post lacking support, but most importantly it is devoid of honor. You see Mr. Elbert morality has become so ambiguous and arbitrary to all who exist in society that what you see as immoral, I believe to be living my life.

The first misguided premise in your post and with most fundamentalist Christians is that you can’t believe that sexuality is not a choice. Just as you did not wake up one day in your formative teen years and decide you were going to be straight, neither did I choose to be gay. On the contrary, if there was any way I could be straight I would, but it is not a choice. The only decision a homosexual has to make is do they have the courage to come to terms with their sexuality or do you hide from who they really are.

If Christians like yourself actually agreed that sexuality of a human being is not chosen, but a part of who you are by birth just as your skin color, hair color, eye color; then you would be forced to accept that gay people are created by God, perfect in his image just as they are. Setting this aside for a moment, the main point of your message is how the California Judiciary placed a judgment against that which you believe yourself.

I see the justices doing their jobs as it is written for them to carry out. The state Supreme Court is set aside and above the Legislative process as a segregated function to protect its objectivity. The job of the judges is to hear those cases that cannot be determined by the lower court systems and also enforce the State Constitution. That demands from the Justices to determine when laws are passed that are unconstitutional. When either the citizens of California or the Legislature pass laws that subjugate any group of the population, it is incumbent on the states high court to make a ruling on the constitutionality of those laws. The California State Supreme Court rendered such a verdict that restores justice to a state that passed laws restricting the rights of a group of her citizens and thereby did what Lady Liberty ensured they should do.

You may not like what the court system did, but I suspect that you should see the righteousness in their actions. If you can not, I venture to say you are unworthy to call yourself a true Christian of Jesus Christ. Our savor never once isolated anyone, denounced them or denied them. He was accepting and loved all who came to him and true Christianity should be living by his example and let me be the first to tell you none of the people you quoted live a truly Christian life.

As for your quotes:

The latest polls from California show that more than sixty percent of all California citizens do not agree with this amendment. It is common when an injustice is forced on any populace that eventually the rest of the people in society learn from their mistakes. The climate is changing for the good of humanity and that will always go against those who perpetuate oppression. Always be on the side of right…even when that side is being oppressed. Eventually right will always win the day and history has shown us that many times over.

James Dobson – I am sorry to say this miss-led fundamentalist is a relative of mine and I cannot apologize to the world enough for the sadness he has caused and the hate within his heart. I have already argued against Mr. Dobson’s statements and nothing more needs to be said.

Family Research Council – Tony Perkins: It is ashamed that hate prevails in the hearts of so many who call themselves Christians. The church Jesus founded was entirely based on the principle of Love, Honor and Respect. Until we can find a way to give those to the people we do not agree with, we will never really give tribute to his church.

You can argue the Bible to me and I can respond verse by verse; so save yourself the time and effort. You can refuse to post my comment, but I am posting it on all four of my blog sites: www.tmdobson.wordpress.com. You may disagree with me and I am sure that you do, but that doesn’t make, what I say wrong. I will leave you with the words of Jesus Christ himself as he said those who call themselves believers will be the last enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Hate is not a Christian value and absolutely not one Jesus Christ taught. Please think about your response and I hope that I have given you something to consider as apposed anger you. We may all teach love to those willing to open their hearts to the lessons of life.

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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Original Post:

California Courts Impose Their Immorality

There is probably nothing to be added to the news about California’s Supreme Court overturning the will of the California people. What liberals can’t win in the ballot box they impose via the courts.

Californians passed Proposition 22 in March 2000, defining marriage as one man and one woman. This measure won with 61.4% of the vote. In real numbers, the spread between the yeas and nays was 1.7 million votes. That’s around two times the population of Delaware! The California Supreme Court said no to their decision.

Here are some widely varied stuff from around the internet.

James Dobson said in response to the decision:

“The will of the people has now arrogantly been declared null and void,” he said. “In so doing, the justices have undermined and endangered the basic building block of society, which has been honored and preserved in every nation on earth through most of human history.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins:

“The California Supreme Court assumed the powers of a legislative body by imposing same-sex ‘marriage.’

“This decision put marriage at risk all across the nation and again highlights the need for a Marriage Protection Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that this divisive campaign for the oxymoron of ’same-sex marriage’ will be ended once and for all.”

From the decision:

…in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.

and a reply from Outraged Richard:

Except for the fact that there are innumerable studies and psychological, philosophical, and religious writings to show that children not raised in a loving home of a married man and woman is detrimental to them.

More from the Outraged one:

The error of equating race and gender discrimination with sexual orientation discrimination is an exceptionally glaring one. Race and gender are genetically and biologically based standards that establish a human being, while sexual orientation, or more precisely, non-heterosexual sexual activity, is an extremely vague characteristic that has no immutable genetic or biological foundation.

An American Indian or a female can never stop being of that race or gender, and because those are integral unchanging human qualities there should be no discrimination against them because of it. In contrast, sexual activity, especially non-heterosexual activity, is an action that is performed, like hanging tinsel, and is subject to the same scrutiny that other acts are under—some of which have been declared unlawful.

Some pages of note: Hot Air | Prop 22 on Wikipedia | Citizen Link | Protect Marriage (CA)

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California’s Gay Marriage Saturday, May 17 2008

15^th of May 2008

California’s Gay Marriage

I was encouraged today while reading the news and listening to CNN as they announced that the California State Supreme Court found the ban renouncing gay men and lesbian women from marrying was unconstitutional. This is but one step that hopefully will have a domino affect with all states and our Federal Government granting equality to a group of citizens that has been denied justice for too long – HOMOSEXUALES.

California as with the state of Massachusetts can no longer deny the equality of its own citizens and is making the proper steps to open the doors of liberty where they were once closed. This action should never be necessary; however, as this case ignites in the media, I am reminded at just how much hate remains in the hearts of so many people across our once great nation. People like Mr. Tony Perkins who argued unsuccessfully how the marriage between a man and woman will degrade when California allows homosexuals to marry. He never can answer the questions by Anderson Cooper or Dan Savage at how allowing two men to marry will cause such an institution to collapse. Mr. Perkins does say that in all of the countries that granted separate, but unequal rights such as domestic partnerships (England being one), marriage has seen a decrease in the number of participants while domestic partnership has seen an increase by heterosexual couples. I must thank you Mr. Perkins for adding to the arguments against separate, but unequal rights that some feel will placate the homosexual populace across North America.

California sits at the precipice of truly remarkable times for gay and lesbian citizens who deserve the honor and respect of equality that has been fought for and denied. Let me go out on a limb and say that California will be the first state to have their DOMA or Constitutional change challenged and reversed as unconstitutional for the simple fact that when truly honest judges are faced with deciphering when laws are being used to oppress the rights that every person deserves equally, lady liberty will balance her scales for justice.

People like President George W Bush and Mr. Perkins who want to criticize Judges for setting politics and sometimes even their own personal feelings aside to analyze the legalization of prohibitive laws such as DOMA Bills and “One Man, One Woman” Constitutional Amendments. I have faith in our Judicial System that most Judges truly want to do what is right, not what is politically prudent to grant those favors or positions down the road. While I don’t like the ultra conservatism that has a strangle hold on our United States Supreme Court, I have more faith in the individual Judges who will allow justice to prevail.

Everybody, Gay and Straight needs to see this for exactly what it is and speak out against the injustice perpetuated in the great name of religion. This is not about our beliefs in religion or the Bible, it is simply about how we want to treat other people who deserve to be respected and receive the same rights and privileges as everyone else in this country. Think about how you would feel if someone was preventing you from sharing the love in your heart with the person you can’t live without? Would it be fair for anyone to tell you how that love is wrong and can never be recognized, much less accepted or respected?

Lift your voice letting it be heard against the injustice and in support of California as it tells all of its citizens that they matter once again truly be free from oppression.

Your humble servant – Todd M. Dobson

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The Pain of Loss or the Anguish of Family? Saturday, May 17 2008

12^th May 2008

Is it the pain of a loss or the anguish of family?

Everybody grieves differently and the impact of loss is felt by some deeply, while others internalize it and yet some may let it expunge from their system with the tears spilling out from their eyes. None of these methods of grieving are wrong and is as personalized as the person enduring the loss.

I’ve written of the closeness I shared with my Grandmother and yet I have yet to understand why the relationship with my immediate family so diametrically apposes the wonderful experience between Grandma and me. I feared that I would not be told by the very souls that should be the closest to me as to her passing. I was immensely appreciative when I woke early Thursday morning to find two phone calls from my younger sister and older sister accompanying a message explaining the death of Grandma. My first thoughts were of the graciousness that it took from both siblings to inform me and then I thanked my guides and God for the inner tranquility she must have felt as she passed in her sleep; peacefully devoid of pain.

With the absence of communications with my family; it made the arrangements of getting to Walla Walla difficult and costly, but there was never a question of where I needed to be. I didn’t slow down long enough to think about anything other than how to manage the journey and making the necessary steps to be there for my mother and the remainder of the people who loved grandma so dearly. I never once stopped or slowed long enough to think about the latest acts ostracizing me by my family or the impact as I moved towards Washington.

I made flight plans, rental car and hotel accommodations, packing and moving at such a feverish pace that I never thought about what I needed or how I would feel being in the middle of a family who loathes and hates me based on what I do. I understand why my actions exasperates the family members so profusely, but I have yet to figure out why if my writing is so loathed by them, why do they tune in to every blog. A prime example of my egregious behavior is what I’m doing right now…pouring my heart and feelings into a blog for the world to read.

The family does not care that without any meaningful expulsion of our true feelings that the subjects remain bottled up only to eventually explode or implode causing far more damage to all who truly matter. I found that by blogging I am able to release the harmful feelings and by doing so via a positive conduit that serves humanity extremely well. I have been able to traverse such personal ground enabling the subjugation of such negative thoughts and problems exchanging them for positive ones. In releasing the bad feelings that have been stored deep within my persona, forging a way of transiting these harmful memories creates a void that I have been able to fill with peace and solace. I have a better outlook on life and with each of my family members for which I have longed to find a way to be at peace with each person.

However, it doesn’t matter that my writing has everything to do with me and nothing to do with them. It has never occurred to anyone in my family that my path this past seven years has been a spiritual awakening of my soul and yes I write about my past because I desperately hopes that someone out there in our vast world might actually get some help or find tranquility in their own lives by knowing that they are not alone. I discuss the experiences that have defined me as a person for far too long and in my writing I am taking control once and for all over the ghost haunting me from my past.

No one else in my family had to suffer with the loneliness of coming to terms with being gay, so they don’t know the pain of feeling like you are the only one like yourself. They’ve never had to question the very breath they take trying to balance the taunts and treats of society who tells anyone daring to be anything but heterosexuals that they are wrong. Not one person in my family can understand the spreading of fear by most religious groups and their message of hate burn in hell while it sears into the mind for of all reasons that they never had the ability to choose. Why should anyone at such a young age have to try to challenge these notions when it is hard for them to even verbalize their own thoughts to themselves much less anyone else? Not one person in my family cares to understand the implications of starting their lives with so much weight bestowing them only sorrow nor can they summon the courage it would take to argue those points with the very family who should love their sibling unconditionally. Because they don’t know the isolationism and because most heterosexual people cannot comprehend the arduous journey that each homosexual must endure and how being isolated from the ones you love the most harms a person to their soul. My family is unable to recognize that my writing is a beacon to all others in this vast world of ours that might find themselves in similar situations in hopes of illuminating the fact that they are not alone in their quest for acceptance and unconditional love. Because the effects of being in a crowded room does not necessitate a warm or loving sense amongst the other cohabitants. Yet being so coldly treated might as well be isolating me to Siberia, but I never once thought about these consequences as I considered where to be at the loss of my Grandmother.

So I find myself writing as I am in a hotel room wishing I had brought my winter coat, because the chill is constant and it has very little to do with the passing of such a loving woman. The odd thing is that I don’t believe I need to be here to speak with Grandma and to tell her how happy I am that she is finally at peace and in a loving place. I can and have been saying my goodbyes to her and did not need to be here in order to be at peace with her crossing. So, in Siberia I sit pondering why I remain and for whom?

The question first annoyed me because I never asked before leaving if I should really be in Washington or would it garner more peace for all others that I remain in Georgia. I just dutifully took the steps I knew where necessary to support my mother and family. However, it behooves the question as I contemplate leaving. When do I start taking care of me and if the family doesn’t want me present, why do I keep placing myself in such situations remaining within their scrutiny, judgments and their loath for my life. I desperately need to extricate myself from these situations by saying farewell until such time that they decide they want and need me present unconditionally.

I was struck by the bluntness and acute assessment of my situation. I flew in to Seattle changing all of the plans once I got to my aunts. I finally received the real plans from my mother and it I had to change my flight back to Georgia, hotel and rental car. I could have saved several hundred dollars had I received the proper information initially, but all of the vendors I used for services worked with me under the circumstances to accommodate my needs. I recognized a familiar pattern that has evolved in this family with every crisis that has occurred previously. No one of importance has ever called me directly respecting me enough to give the news and plans, much less ask my thoughts.

In every family emergency I must hear the news through others secondhand and only when they either remember to tell me or realize that I have not been included in the events. In this set of events, everyone knew that I would be the only other family member daring to make the trip. As with all past scenarios, I am always left for someone else to reach because I am of no importances. My older sister’s birth of my niece, my mother’s accident that almost took her life, my younger sister pregnancy and later birth, all of the surgeries and major ailments of the family and the important aspects that you would think to be communicated to immediate family first and then outbound; however, I have always remained among the last to find them out. The initial announcement of grandma’s passing followed up with the distribution of the proper details necessary for making plans was not told to me as there are so many other people and tasks that are of greater importance rather than me. Even knowing that I would be the only one to attend; but as usual, the black sheep of the Dobson family was always the last to know. Here is where Grandma would say actions speak louder than words, so show me you love me! So am I to garner that my family loves me? Well, I need to start listening to the actions of a family that repeatedly tells me through their actions how I am not wanted.

So out of the four children it was known that I would be the only sibling making this trip. Yet as with all previous urgent family business, I was the last to know any details. As I laid in a bed in Seattle with that recognition falling upon me like a blanket filled with bricks, I wept because old patterns never change when the reflections of the family past is incapable of change. The dynamics of my family will never elevate me to a status greater than bad seed, annoyance and that of shameful black sheep.

I let myself get caught in the midst of this sentimental review when my Aunt, with whom I was staying in Seattle, begins to fuss about my blogs and the harm they do to the cohesion of this family. I know she’s just being the mouth piece for my mother, but she angers me since she has not read any of my blogs and the family only reads the sections they find themselves a party too. They never read the duality that I pride myself in trying to place both sides of a story or a structured reason of such atrocious actions. I don’t try to excuse any of us for our injustices, but rather I try to explain what it is that makes us the people we are…and I attempt this through love, understanding and objectivity. I have always tried to end each blog with how I or we must Love, Honor and Respect everyone, especially those who might harm us while calling it love. In their eyes I am exploiting them for my own gain and it is amplified with the words of my mother, “I am sure you gain lots of sympathy by telling everyone how horrible your life is, but they don’t know what you write is fiction”. My Aunt was relentless with her denouncing my writing without ever reading the words and yet I asked if anyone in the family has told her how many blogs were about my family and how many were on topics of politics, life, love and homosexuality. She stammered as I opened my blog and showed out of the last twelve posts, not one had anything to do with my family. She faltered slightly at this fact because as with most stories in my family, they stretch like a rubber band and evade the actual truth as it is always bent to allow that specific family member to acknowledge themselves superior to all others. My aunt revisited the subject two days later telling me that if I wouldn’t use their names how they would not think so ill of me and while I promised to only refer to my family by titles from this point forward, I explained that it would have little to no positive affects in the families loathing for my writing. They will always complain as long as I use my life as fodder and example.

My five hour drive from Seattle to Pendleton was one where every mile closer to my destination became another pin prick reminding me of the discomfort closing in around me. My mother wanted me to stay with her while she was staying with a friend and I very graciously denied. She then explained that she was staying at the hotel with her sister and I needed to stay with her enabling her to afford the room by splitting the cost. This only made me feel that much more uncomfortable because my last encounter with this aunt left with my first overt explanation by a fundamental Christian how being gay was a choice (and it is not) and how her Christian beliefs said that I would burn in hell. No matter what I said to argue her points she would not relent and while I can respect her feelings, I don’t have to subject myself to continued ridicule and abuse.

The reunion with my aunt was cold and harsh based on my unwilling ability to open myself up to ridicule again even with the attempts by my aunt to the contrary. I will gladly say that the next morning my Aunt acknowledged and apologized for hurting me those many years previously and tried all week to open lines of communication. I want to lift my armor, but I’ve done so too many times with this family only to be stripped of it and delivered to the rack where pain and suffering for all past, present and future accords will be garnered. It occurred to me while on the treadmill this morning; why was I here and for whom did I make this trip? If I answer as I did in my head at that moment, I feel my absence might grant more peace than could be ushered in with my presence. The little support I was able to lend my mother might be better felt if I was not present.

It was so much easier to be at peace with the isolation from the family when I was not faced with so many additional members. I don’t know what I am doing here excepting or causing more hurt for those grieving the loss in their lives and that should not be. I don’t know how to be my normal funny and happy person when some have been told how my siblings and mother feels about me and others do not. I hate the negativity that seeps out of me when I am asked simplistic questions about the family. Something as simple as “how is my older sister, younger sister, nieces or mother” when the answer is I don’t know because they have excommunicated me. I do know that moments like this should be good so that as my aunt did, you can open a doorway to forgiveness in those situations where it might help. I am sorry to those family members who wanted their cousin present and I purposely stayed away from them because I didn’t want to be close with my mother or harm an already tense situation. As for my family; I can respect their opinions about my blogs. They don’t like that I write with their lives between these pages, but as I’ve always said, there are two sides to every story and everyone is entitled to be judged by the truth and not speculation. My aunt in Seattle wants me to stop blogging all together and I won’t do that and am publishing a book this year, so my writing is not just a frivolous past time, it is something that will support me soon enough. It won’t be going away; it will only be increasing as I sharpen my talents and experience more of life.

In closing I will also send a strong message to my older sister and her daughter. I’ve known for some time that my niece is getting married this year. But my mother solidified that knowledge to the others gathered here. My mother did nothing wrong as the proud grandmother she is all too happy to speak positively of her grand daughters impending nuptials. I also know that my sister and her daughter have argued over inviting me to the wedding (no this information did not come from mom). My sister feels I must be invited out of obligation and my niece hates me and doesn’t want me present. Let me say how this day is for my niece and obligations should have no impact in the celebration of love; so don’t waste an invitation on me when it is not warranted. If I received one knowing how my niece feels, I would do the honorable thing and not show up. This should be a day to celebrate the love between two people and if either of those two people does not want a specific person present, they should never be forced to endure that hardship. It would only over shadow the love and joy the day needs to bestow.

With that being said, I have rattled the thoughts out of head and should shower after my run making myself presentable if only for myself. Do remember that the people in your life should be the ones you love. Learn from my mistakes and if you find yourself in the middle of any family situation that is too tense to bear, remove yourself for the peace in your heart as well as the harmony in the hearts of all others. It doesn’t matter why or for what reasons, learn that Love, Honor & Respect must be granted to yourself before you can truly give it to anyone else. We must also learn to forgive ourselves even when you don’t feel you did anything wrong, so that you can heal. Life is too short to spend it feeling pain and anguish over people and things you cannot or should not control. Stay tuned and I will let you know if I remained or if I leave before the ceremonies ever begin in an effort to maintain he