Nebraska's Camel

This morning, I was reading news and blog postings on the ongoing situation in Nebraska and it got me thinking...

First of all: I'm not going to defend the law. It's a mess, there is no doubt. I have any number of friends from NE who may well respond to this and I encourage them to do so. I would love to hear from you.

On the whole, I think it's important to acknowledge that this legislation came from a good place and is the result of Nebraska lawmakers being progressive in the only way that the state as a whole generally allows.

But it's nevertheless a camel: A horse built by a committee.

Nebraska's history in the realm of child welfare is one spot where they can be justifiably proud of their record. Boystown and Girlstown are institutions of great merit, or so I believe. In some ways, I see this as an extension of that history, and an attempt to pave a highway with good intentions... but we all know where such roads inevitably lead.

I lived in Omaha for a time and found the experience not at all as appalling as my blue-state cohorts would assume. But the winters very nearly defy description. I'm not sure I can adequately describe to those who have not experienced it the full brunt of a Nebraska winter what it is like. Maybe the number of people posting here who live in Ohio makes that unnecessary, but it's true. I have been caught in blizzards high atop Rocky Mountain passes, weathered nights in a tent at temperatures well into the negatives and even lived in Milwaukee... and nothing compares to the full brunt of Nebraska's winds howling in off the great plains, coating the world in a rime of ice. It is beautiful if viewed from a cozy redoubt, assuming you don't want to go anywhere until it passes.

And I remember all too well stories of babies found abandoned and blue in the fierce winters of that corner of the world. Anything done to save a child from such a fate is worth the effort, even when the results are so tragic as these have been.

Of course, the larger and most devastating part of this is the lives of the children so abandoned, their families shattered. Older children brought in from out of state by parents pushed beyond their limits. Using statistics I found in one blog, 33 of them since the law's inception. (I'll attempt to verify those numbers later, they're only peripherally germane to this commentary.)

I don't know any of those families, I don't share their situations, and I won't pretend to understand what drove them to act in extremis in the manner which has garnered so much national press coverage.

Parenting in this country is a quiet and growing tragedy and this is simply the exposed wound that has been hidden, quietly progressing into gangrenous rot. Not entirely unlike the manner in which the aftermath of Katrina/Rita forced us to realize the depths of racial division still extant in our country and the tragic poverty that still grips far too many. So too with the rearing of children, and now that the bandage is off, and the exodus of parents with children they cannot afford or cannot handle turns toward the Sand Hills... I ask: now what?

The problem lies in the attempt to find solutions to the symptoms without addressing the disease. This attempt to legislate away the point of the lance, fails to take into account the shaft of the weapon or the momentum of the rider and horse. Ignoring my personal outrage as someone who would give anything to be a parent that any children are 'unwanted', there are deeper issues here than this or any law can adequately address. The problem lies deeper than the disposition of unwanted children, the problem lies in the societal forces creating children who will one day fall into this category.

Our national discourse on sex and procreation is a travesty. Our culture wars are operating on a layer too thin, a veneer over the real issues. As we argue about the sanctity of life and marriage we forget the rest of the lives we are so cavalierly ignoring in favor of these two universal points.

What greater good are we serving by saving a fetus only to abandon the child?

What greater good are we serving by telling Barry he cannot marry David if we're telling young Louise that the MUST marry Jimmy?

What greater good are we serving by refusing to discuss the results of a child's actions when those actions might result in more children?

Even the best intended legislation cannot solve any of these issues by addressing the results but not the causes. This cultural war will never reach an armistice at the ballot box. Just as the Gordian Knot could only be untied by Alexander's sword, a more direct and comprehensive solution is called for...

Unfortunately, I don't know where to find Alexander's sword anymore than Nebraska's lawmakers do. Or California's. Or the ones in Washington DC for that matter. I do know that the greater good can only be served by opening up the floor for a more reasoned debate and taking one more step back from these issues to better see the full scope of the decisions that are so quickly desolved into soundbytes for the next election cycle.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Godspeed, everyone.