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A few days ago, I stumbled upon the blog of a virtuously vigilant mother who had the bravery to speak out about an outrageous injustice perpetrated against her family. Here is her story. (http://www.acceptingabundance.com/2011/08/cant-even-go-to-park.html)

This heroic whistleblower lives in a small, upper-class suburb in Massachusetts. Right off, you must be envisioning something akin to a shanty town in Bangladesh, right? You imagine her children picking through garbage for food scraps and wandering the streets without shoes, don’t you? Is she issuing a proclamation about her family's recent homelessness after a tragic house fire, or exposing the abuse she is enduring at the hands of her vicious husband? No.

Okay, is she screaming to the sky in desperation because she lost her job and cannot feed her children? No, not that either.

Oh wait! Her youngest child has been diagnosed with a terminal disease and cannot get proper healthcare! Nope.

This woman is talking about her personal freedom, folks! See, she feels oppressed and “can’t even go to the park” - because of homosexual people! Here is an excerpt from her noble manifesto against two men rubbing elbows in public.

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The same people who say I shouldn't impose my morality on them, are imposing immorality on me and my children to the point that I literally have a hard time even leaving my home anymore to do something as simple as visit the park. And this is freedom?

I am a Catholic stay-at-home mother of seven, and I live in the state of Massachusetts where "gay marriage" has been legal for seven years and it's just one aspect of the larger secular agenda. Because we have so many little children, it takes a phenomenal effort to go anywhere. We have only filled our truck with gasoline twice this entire summer vacation. We go to Mass and we go two miles up the road to a small outdoor swimming pool. That's pretty much it.

At the pool this summer there were homosexual couples with children and, while I was polite as my own young daughters doted on the baby with two "mommies", I also held my breath in anticipation of awkward questions - questions I'm not ready to answer. My young daughters are all under the age of eight and they are not old enough to understand why a baby would have two women calling themselves "mommies".

When there were two men relaxing at the side of the pool unnaturally close to each other, effeminately rubbing elbows and exchanging doe-eyes, I was again anxiously watching my children hoping they wouldn't ask questions. They don't see Daddy do that with anyone but Mommy. We haven't been back to the pool for a couple of weeks, except once but it rained. The truth is, now I don't really want to go back.

So what am I harping about?

Today we decided to go to the park. We live near a nice park that is safe, clean and quiet. Two of my daughters were in the sandbox, one on the slide, the other on the swings, and as I lifted the baby out of his stroller I looked up to see four women laughing at a baby boy as he was swinging in one of those bucket baby swings. That seems harmless enough, but I'm so sensitized to the strangeness in my community that I've developed this ever-present jumpiness whenever I'm in public.

Sure enough, two of the women, so happy to see a baby boy laughing, embraced and remained standing there rubbing each other's back in a way that was clearly not just friendly affection.

This is my community. I find myself unable to even leave the house anymore without worrying about what in tarnation we are going to encounter. We are responsible citizens. We live by the rules, we pay our taxes, we take care of our things. I'm supposed to be able to influence what goes on in my community, and as a voter I do exercise that right. But I'm outnumbered. I can't even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate immorality.

We all know what would happen if I asked two men or two women to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they live in sodomy...

She ends her courageous declaration against smut with, “Seriously, is this freedom?”

More power to ya, sister! I hear your pain! I admire your valiant resolve to speak out against the evil gay people at your public pool! I totally get it, too. How dare they have the audacity to hold hands and show a loving human bond around you and your perfect, perfect family! It makes me sick.

I feel just like you. I have problems, too! My freedom is being trampled on every day. For example…the battery on my laptop is dying, but my charger is all the way upstairs on the third floor, there was no soy milk left for me to make my latte this morning. and I was so busy responding to birthday greetings on my Facebook page that I forgot to have a party.

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ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

Yup. Seven kids, how the hell do they remember all the names let alone watch them and teach them anything.

And no, I am not being sarcastic. Seven kids on this planet in 2011 ? Ridiculous. Seven kids were for the days when you needed farmhands - cheap.

T^T

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ORIGINAL: Kaliko

FR ~

On the other hand, I wonder what it must be like to have what you so strongly believe in be turned into something bad (i.e. homophobic) during your lifetime, right in front of your eyes, and not be able to do anything about it. I mean, while I certainly disagree that homosexuality is anything that needs to be hidden from the rest of society, if we look at it from her point of view, she has some very strong reasons for believing what she believes and she can't do a damn thing about stopping it from happening all around her. Homosexuality has become so much more accepted than even when she was growing up (whenever that may have been) that she's probably having real difficulty processing it. She likely grew up in a household much like she is running now, and she keeps her family somewhat sheltered. Right or wrong, the woman must be fucking livid inside that all this "sinning" is going on around her and the moral society she thought she was raised in is going to hell in a hand basket.

I have a couple of beliefs (that have nothing to do with sexuality) that are not mainstream...not widely accepted...even ridiculed. I firmly believe that I am right and feel just in following my moral compass. I can find almost no one who agrees with me. But, I grew up like that. It's not new, nothing I need to deal with changing my attitude about. I can kind of feel for her, not in a "Oh, poor thing, she's right, ya' know" way, but in a "Yep, it really sucks to realize that it's you against the world, ain't it?" way.

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ORIGINAL: siamsa24

Not to derail this thread, but as the oldest of six children, none of whom were used as "farmhands", I have to say that we were not raised to be overly religious (just the normal dose of religion on the holidays and the occasional random Sunday) or judgmental.  We were raised to be very patriotic, which gets some frowns now, but was perfectly acceptable then, but nothing more extreme then that.
Please don't judge all large families on the actions and/or your perceptions of a few.

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ORIGINAL: Aylee

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ORIGINAL: siamsa24

Not to derail this thread, but as the oldest of six children, none of whom were used as "farmhands", I have to say that we were not raised to be overly religious (just the normal dose of religion on the holidays and the occasional random Sunday) or judgmental.  We were raised to be very patriotic, which gets some frowns now, but was perfectly acceptable then, but nothing more extreme then that.
Please don't judge all large families on the actions and/or your perceptions of a few.

I agree. I was rather uncomfortable with the hate directed toward large families.