Family values

“Thank you President Trump for bringing GOD back to the White House after 8 years of Obama banning Christmas and prayer!!!!” – Trump supporter Comfortably Smug tweet 2-19-18

Family values – values held to be traditionally learned or reinforced within a family, such as those of high moral standards and discipline.

Maybe I am just not rolling with times. Maybe the Values of family values have changed and I just missed it. When I consider the definition above I think about what most would consider to be the typical American family, two parents, male and female, and two kids. Now certainly I am “liberal” enough to accept that there is no longer a typical cast of characters in the term “typical American family” but even if the characters and the roles have changed in my mind what hasn’t changed over the years are the values of high moral standards and discipline.

I know single-parent families, same-sex parenting families and grandparent families that all fill the role of the typical American family and uphold the definition of family values. I accept these and many other combinations of what the moral and righteous minority would view as non-traditional families because not of who they are, or what they believe but because they fill their homes with love and for me that is all that really matters.

When I look at Barack and Michelle Obama I think of a typical and traditional American family. While in the White House, and even today, you don’t hear about affairs with Playboy bunnies, or payoffs to Porn Stars. The Obama kids are bright and well-behaved and they even had Michelle’s mother living with them for all eight years of the Presidential term helping them instill the values all kids need to grow into responsible adults. Honestly, I can’t imagine my mother in-law living with me for eight years, that in my mind is not only traditional, but a real sacrifice.

So look at what we have now, a man married three times, with children by three different mothers. Countless lawsuits for sexual abuse and inappropriate behavior with women, many 20 and 30 years younger than he is. Two, that we know of, payoffs to women he had tryst with while married to the First Lady. A man who has famously been quoted as saying; “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [they] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”, “You have to treat ’em like shit.”, “I have days where, if I come home — and I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist but when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.”, “They said, ‘How are you going to change the pageant?’ I said ‘I’m going to get the bathing suits to be smaller and the heels to be higher’.”, “All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”, and “I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and f— her. She was married. And I moved on her very heavily… I moved on her like a b—-, but I couldn’t get there.”

Yup, “Thank you President Trump for bringing GOD back to the White House after 8 years of Obama banning Christmas and prayer!!!!” Like me, I am sure most of you don’t remember suspending Christmas or praying for the eight years Obama was President and I am pretty sure God didn’t leave the White House, if anything, based on the compassion, empathy and love the Obama’s have shown each other and the nation, God was alive and well in the White House for all eight of those years.

Today, the White House is filled with pagan Gods of greed, gluttony, ego and selfish pride. I guess I missed Franklin Graham’s memo about what the Evangelicals believe are the new family values for this country. Trump certainly doesn’t represent nor does he speak for the type of values my family works to uphold and live by. How about yours?