The Southern Kept Man

While on a recent shopping trip to Wal-Mart, I found myself behind a woman who appeared to be in her late 50’s or early 60’s. When the cashier presented the shopper with her total, it became apparent that she had mistakenly left her wallet in her car and would need to retrieve it before finalizing the purchase. In a welcome spirit of accommodation, the cashier suspended her transaction and offered to ring me up in the interim. The walletless shopper reappeared just as I was being given my total and I noticed that she seemed to be staring at me with what appeared to be disbelief.

I pretended not to notice her unusual fascination and handed the cashier my coupons. This was apparently too much for the woman to bear and she said, “Excuse me, but are you grocery shopping for your wife?” I replied that I planned to eat some of the food as well but that I was indeed completing our household grocery trip. This admission was so unexpected she nearly dropped her recently reacquired wallet:

“You are kidding me! Is this just a one-time thing?”

“No, in fact I am usually the one that goes to the grocery.”

“That is something else. You know that I have been married for over thirty years and my husband hasn’t so much as picked up a loaf of bread on the way home for work! In fact, I fill up his truck with gas every single week. I doubt he even knows which side gas thing is on!”

Ill-equipped to respond to such an admission, I think I mumbled something like “good for him” and swiped my card as she continued to wrestle with her domestic epiphany. It was as if her entire world had been shattered with the discovery that it was possible for a married man to interact with a fuel pump. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my very presence that day had set into a motion a chain of events that could lead to the dissolution of a thirty-year marriage. I had a vision of this woman going home and confronting her recliner-bound spouse about all the other aspects of domestic life that she had been lied to about.

I shared this story with my father, who responded that the “southern kept man” was not as rare a creature as I had assumed. He recounted tales of an acquaintance who, upon walking into a buffet, would immediately be seated as his wife scurried off to prepare a plate and beverage for him. She would then present this culinary offering and upon indication of his approval, she was released to prepare a plate for herself. This behavior was so engrained in their relationship that the entire process was expected, assumed, and unspoken.

This was simply the tip of the iceberg. Further research revealed that my community was inundated by men unable to make their own telephone calls, retrieve their own prescriptions, or place their own refuse in a garbage can. I focus-grouped this reverse domestic chivalry with some married female friends to see how it would play it out in their lives and out of a sense decency I will refrain from reprinting their responses here. Let’s just say that they indicated strong disagreement with my Wal-Mart friend.

I realize that everyone’s idea of matrimonial tranquility is different and perhaps these women are perfectly content with this arrangement. Maybe their husbands cook and scrub the toilets in exchange for these services, but if you are too lazy to select your own entrée at a buffet it is unlikely that you can find the motivation to turn on a stove.

Furthermore, if these men are that helpless at full capacity what happens when they fall ill? A simple cold is likely to require sponge baths and a bedpan. I have always heard that older couples that had been together for a long time often die within a year of one another. I used to believe this was attributable to the profound emotional bond they shared between them but now I am starting to suspect that the wife simply goes first and the husband dies of starvation because the truck is out of gas and he cannot remember anyone’s number because he hasn’t dialed a phone since Nixon was in office.   

Fort Hood & Terrorism

On November 5^th 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly perpetrated the worst mass shooting to occur on a United States military base when thirteen people succumbed to their bullet wounds in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood. At the time of the attack, Hasan had been in the Army over twenty years and served as a psychiatrist. He is currently awaiting trial for the murders.

In the aftermath, several of those involved have joined a class action lawsuit against the Army seeking $70 Million in compensations for the government’s failure to prevent the tragedy citing “willful negligence prompted by political correctness.” One of the most powerful grievances is that the Department of Defense has refused to classify the incident as a “terrorist attack,” instead choosing to classify it as an act of “workplace violence.”

This distinction is important since this would allow victims and their families to receive combat benefits in addition to the routine medical benefits available to all service members. The argument is a convincing one: Hasan was a practicing Muslim who reportedly shouted “Allah Akbar!”  before commencing the attack. Furthermore Anwar al-Aulaqi, who recruited for Al Qaeda and was later killed in a targeted drone strike, praised the attack and cited e-mail communications between himself and Hasan as proof of their collaboration. The DOD and the FBI insist that Hasan acted alone without external direction of any kind.

This is a complex situation due in no small part to how one defines a terrorist attack. If the parameters we set forth must include indiscriminate mass American casualties perpetrated by someone with a religious motive, then a very convincing case could be made that this was indeed a terrorist act. However, these very same parameters would exclude incidents like the Oklahoma City bombing where the perpetrators had only political motivations. Simply including political motivations is just as rudderless since a political view being nefarious or heroic tends to evolve with time and perspective. (We revere George Washington now, but the Americans on the other side of the Whiskey Rebellion saw themselves as rescuing the country from a tyrannical president overstepping his constitutional powers.)

Since most reasonable people could agree that the simultaneous murder of 168 US citizens should easily qualify as terrorism, we are then forced to drop the “religious” or “political” prerequisite leaving us with only the “indiscriminate mass American casualties” aspect. Of course, we must immediately exclude any loss of life that occurred during a war or ongoing US military operation since that has its own designation and we are left with only the infinitely murky realm of personal motivation to define a terrorist.

It is this very ambiguity that lends The Patriot Act its immense power and allows government agencies to circumvent the due process of an American citizen simply by designating them a “terrorism suspect” in an ongoing investigation. If we cannot agree on what constitutes a terrorist, then why should we allow that classification to weaken a person’s protection under the Fourth Amendment? Depending on who you ask, a terrorist could be anyone from Charles Manson to a low-level pot dealer.

More to the point, a 1950 Supreme Court ruling gives the military immunity from lawsuits seeking compensation for “injuries incurred in the armed services.” The same ruling was most recently invoked by the justice department to dismiss Cioca v. Rumsfeld, a class action suit representing 28 plaintiffs who were sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers while on active duty. The judge ruled that even rape is covered as a hazard of American military service.

Legal precedent aside, each and every victim should be given the utmost support and care by the country they defend. Should that care go above and beyond what a soldier injured on the battlefield qualifies for simply because it was perpetrated inside a domestic military installation by a fellow solider? That is the real question.

I would agree that there were warning signs as to Hasan’s mental instability as we have several reports of colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center reporting he suffered from “paranoia” and other schizophrenic tendencies, but leaving them unaddressed as a result of “political correctness” is tougher to prove. This is especially true since Hasan didn’t even bother to identify himself as Muslim on Army paperwork and we have over 3,000 service members who do openly identify themselves as Muslims serving honorably.

It is abhorrent that any soldier should have to fear for his or her own safety while on a US military installation, and I am not sure that the 60-year old statute doesn’t need some updating. That being said, if this lawsuit meets the same fate as Cioca v. Rumsfeld perhaps we can take some solace in the fact that our legal system is adept at fairly applying an unfair doctrine.

A Baby Story Part 8

We have now arrived in that reproductive purgatory known as month nine. Feet are swelling, moods are swinging, and our child has launched an all-out assault on my wife’s internal organs. Nesting has also reached a crescendo as I found my wife in the garage re-arranging my shop vac and crescent wrenches. Apparently our infant son will be spending large amounts of time there.

It appears that this nesting come bundled with extreme attention deficit disorder. This means that my wife is only interested in completing irrelevant tasks with unnecessary urgency. She will begin the task of laundry only to find herself with a label maker in one hand and a stack of alphabetized cookbooks in the other. On the plus side, if this trend continues all of our board games will be stacked in ascending order by original copyright date.

One of the biggest issues is getting my wife comfortable for bed. At the time of this writing, the accessories required for this task include: six regular pillows, two brands of lip balm, a Seinfeld DVD, a cup of ice water, a heating pad, an iPod touch, a white noise machine, and a body pillow the size of a miniature pony all placed in a very specific configuration depending on which side she wishes to face. Even this amount of pageantry offers only a brief respite until her tiny bladder necessitates that she extricates herself and begin the entire process from scratch.

These restless evenings are punctuated by weekly checkups whereby the doctor inspects for cervix dilation. For those that don’t know, this is a rather unpleasant process whereby a physician is in very real danger of losing their wristwatch. At some point during the visit a nurse will utter the phrase, “your urine looks good today” and you will be issued a baby formula swag bag.

Perhaps the most devastating aspect from a husband’s standpoint is the hormone-induced insecurities. These tend to escalate until you find yourself reassuring your mate that despite how they feel no one has mistaken them for a penguin shoplifting a country-ham. Such conversations become tricky because an ill-prepared spouse can quickly find themselves staring down the statement from which there is no return: “You are just saying that.”

Responding to such a declaration must be avoided at all costs because each and every logical response has an equally illogical retort that only moves you closer to pleading with her through a recently- slammed bathroom door. Let me lay out some common responses and how they are typically received by a pregnant woman’s ears:

What You Say (Option 1): “No I’m not just saying that! I really mean it!”

What She Thinks: “That Is exactly what someone who is lying would say!”

What You Say (Option 2): “I am not sure what you want me to say here. It seems as though nothing I can say would convince you of my sincerity.”

What She Thinks: “I cannot believe he is too slow-witted to lie without buying himself some time.”

What You Say (Option 3): “Honey, look in my eyes and know that you are the most beautiful woman in the world to me and pregnancy has bestowed a breathtaking ethereal glow upon you that leaves me cherishing the very day God brought you into my life.”

What She Thinks: “That is the most touching lie I have ever heard!”

My wife is gorgeous and pregnancy has done nothing to diminish that, but in order to avoid the aforementioned conversational mine-field, I have chosen to simply state my case here:

Honey, you are beautiful inside and out, and I am forever grateful that you allowed me to impregnate you despite your familiarity with my shortcomings. I cannot wait to begin the journey of raising our inevitably near-sighted offspring together in our moderately-sized home. You will be an amazing mother and I consider it a privilege to spend the better part of an hour tucking you into bed every night.

Scouting For Sponsors

Recently the Boy Scouts of America made headlines by indicating their willingness to drop a restriction against openly gay scout leaders and members. The move comes amid the recent withdrawal of financial support from UPS, Intel, and Merck after the three corporations cut all ties with the organization over the issue. Hundreds of Eagle Scouts have returned their badges over the B.S.A’s 2011 decision to reaffirm the ban on homosexual membership. Although local chapters would still be able to determine their own requirements, the decision has highlighted strong opinions on both sides.

The Southern Baptist Convention has stated that allowing openly gay membership in the organization would be a “catastrophe” since the Scouts define moral character as “sexually pure and being a heterosexual.” They concede that although being gay doesn’t make one a pedophile, it does mean they are attracted to the gender they would be in authority over and parallels this with putting heterosexual men in charge of Girl Scouts. Pat Robertson took it a step farther and prophesied that lifting the ban would result in “predators as Boy Scouts” and “pedophiles as Scoutmasters.”    

Despite the backlash, both state and federal courts have upheld the group’s selective membership requirements (most recently in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale) and legally the group is under no obligation to amend its policy. Even today, those who claim to be atheist or agnostic are prevented from obtaining membership under the “Duty to God” clause which is also protected under the same statute.

As a highly decorated Cub Scout (I left shortly after earning my Arrow of Light) I am truly outraged at this turn of events. You mean to tell me that all those Saturdays I spent trying to sell overpriced Trail’s End popcorn to complete strangers; the Scouting brass was getting checks from Merck? Here I felt like the financial solvency of the entire operation resting on my tiny little shoulders and the entire time we have profit sharing rights on Fosamax. At least the Girl Scouts had a proprietary product that couldn’t be purchased cheaper inside the very store that they were soliciting in front of. You need a dealer to get a box of Samoas or Thin Mints, but is there anything more ubiquitous than microwave popcorn? I am having difficulty thinking of a retailer that doesn’t carry it.

I suppose the SBC has a point about having male Girl Scout leaders, but the Cub Scouts do allow females to have authority over boys in the form of Den Mothers. Sadly, in today’s society it is probably dangerous to leave your child alone with any adult other than yourself. As far as Pat Robertson’s claim goes, there doesn’t appear to be any reliable evidence to suggest that men who identify themselves as homosexual are statistically more likely to molest children that men who identify themselves as heterosexual. After all, how many Catholic priests convicted of molestation would have checked the “gay” box on their application form? Simply put, sexual attraction to children is mutually exclusive from a person’s orientation.

How do they screen for dangerous applicants currently? If some smarmy guy with a dirty stache and no kids shows up at the BSA office and says, “I would really like to find myself in a tent with prepubescent boys.” - is there a protocol for that? Personally, whether or not he claims to find women attractive would make little difference to me as a parent. I still wouldn’t want him pinning merit badges on my kid.

Essentially, the Boy Scouts of America has been operating under a “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy for a long time and they have the right to continue to do so with legal impunity. However, business sponsors also have the right to withdraw their support from a private organization that they no longer feel aligns with their corporate ethos. The fact is that membership in the Scouts has fallen 22% since 1999 and some of the most vocal supporters of the ban on gay membership are the least supportive of the group financially or logistically (for instance, Baptists have less BSA charters than Mormons, Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, or Lutherans). It appears they will either need to locate new sponsors who share their views or reverse their stance in order to keep the ones they have.  

Personally, I enjoyed my tenure in the Scouts and appreciate all those who volunteered their time to make my experience beneficial and worthwhile. The sad reality is that parents should be wary of anyone they entrust with their child, regardless of what gender they are attracted to. Perhaps one day my son will want to stand in front of a Kroger and convince total strangers that it is reasonable to pay $15 for a bag of microwavable popcorn, but at the rate the BSA is alienating benefactors his uniform may sport corporate logos instead of merit badges.