The number one comment this week has been a rebuke of sorts. It seems I still hold onto my faith in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary. Oddly enough it seems in these moments when people are the least kind that is when faith is the strongest and most necessary.

The conundrum comes when it is those people of faith that are the most cruel. I harken back to a religious counseling class I took when I was getting my masters degree. The whole idea of the course was to be able to speak a common language no matter who your client was and what religious background they came from. A large part of talking through issues like abortion is speaking a common language.

I’ve heard a number of defenses of the pro-choice point of view and one main defense of the pro-birth position. Until you can interpret and mimic that language it will be next to impossible to convince anyone of a position. Even then you are fighting an uphill battle. It is much like the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelites. There is only one that can control their holy land and it is both of their holy lands.

In order for a moral law to exist, it has to exist universally. The preservation of life is a moral law and yet is not universally followed in all circumstances. Freedom of choice is a universal law in the social structure of our society. Yet it is not followed in all circumstances. Here you get the ultimate collision of moral laws. Which one wins out in the end?

Is life universal when someone goes to bed without a warm meal? Is life universal when they have to lay their head down on the cold concrete of the street? Is life universal when they have committed the most egregious acts our mind can imagine? Is life universal when cancer ravages their body and they have no insurance? Whatever the source of our morality, that morality demands some consistency.

Similarly, is choice universal when someone makes a choice we disapprove of? Is choice universal when one or more of those choices could become dangerous to those around us? Can the pursuit of one’s happiness infringe on the rights of someone else? In the spaces between our intellect, our most animal urges, and conscience, we find the logical limitations of life and choice. It is in these places where our collective cultural language and traditions seemingly take over. It is in these places where agreement and understanding are the most necessary. It is in these places where our sacred honor has left us.

As you know, it was been disproven that The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), has diddle squat to do with either electric or reliability. Winter before last, most of Texas suffered below freezing temperatures for 3 to 5 days without electricity.

I know you yankee people are snorting and giggling, but Honey I don’t even own a heavy coat. I have a sweatshirt and a couple of sweaters.  That’s it.

You know how many coats you own? That’s how much air conditioning I own.  At least for now.  Scorch is coming to Texas.

That’s a little toasty for mid May.

So EPCOT is so busy butt covering that their friction alone is raising the temperature 3 degrees.

ERCOT said in a statement Tuesday evening they will “deploy all the tools available to us to manage the grid reliably.”

ERCOT said they are coordinating with the Public Utility Commission, generation resource owners and transmission utilities to ensure they are prepared for the extreme heat.

Yep, that’s exactly what they said before the freeze.

Greg Abbott knows that even 5 hours without electricity during a heat wave will cost him the election, so I suspect he’s bought a bunch of new hamsters to turn the wheel.

The Jesus we learn about in the bible and on Sundays fought for the little guy. He healed the sick. He made it so that the blind could see and the deaf could hear. He hung out with the dregs of human society and invested his efforts in helping them.

Then, we get to abortion. That’s where we have a bit of a separation. The church preaches that life is sacred whether it is at the beginning or the bitter end. It preaches that all life should be valued whether they be saint or sinner. Obviously, ending a pregnancy doesn’t fall into that paradigm.

Yet, there has always been a tension between the faith teachings of any church and the way a secular society has to be run. It has always been a challenge to keep God in our lives and yet not to intrude on the beliefs of others. A moral law cannot be based on religion alone. It must be backed by common sense, basic human decency, and a universal agreement of its existence.

This is a serious moment in our nation’s history. It demands seriousness on all sides. The Declaration of Independence said we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are God-given rights it said. We were endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. Life is the first and the most basic human right.

However, to call oneself pro-life implies that those that are opposed to a specific viewpoint are anti-life. The reality is that we are talking about one narrow definition of life and one point in the life continuum. The truth is that there are any number of issues and times in our lives when the question of life is paramount. What does it truly mean to be alive? Are there basic human necessities everyone is entitled to? If so, what are they?

If we are entitled to life then it is absolute at every juncture. It is absolute when I commit a crime. It is absolute when we have wars of choice. It is also absolute when I lack the basic necessities of life. It is absolute when I am hungry. It is absolute when I don’t have a roof over my head. It is absolute when I need health care and don’t have insurance. Any conversation about life has to include a discussion about the quality of life. We must agree on a minimal quality of life if we are to call ourselves pro-life.

When one calls for the birth of a child and then offers nothing in support of that child once it is born then they cease to be pro-life. They are pro-birth. There is nothing inherently wrong with that as a viewpoint. You just don’t get to claim a higher moral ground or have sole appeal to a higher moral authority.

If we are to be strict constructionists then we would have to strike down the equal protections clause in the 14th amendment except for those groups specifically named in the constitution. That would include mixed race couples, LGTBQ+ individuals, in addition to those rights of privacy not explicitly stated in the constitution.

As appetizing as that may sound to some, it puts a qualifier on life. Your life is only fully actualized if it fits into this tiny box we defined in 1789 and after the civil war and reconstruction. Otherwise, you are invisible and you do not get to love who you want or be who you want to be.

Most people are well-meaning folks. They really don’t want to hurt anyone and think making such limitations helps those folks. I’m just trying to imagine Jesus of Nazareth saying the same things. I really can’t. In order to keep the faith I do have I refuse to.

I have a conspiracy theory.

I think Ginni Thomas was the leak. Nobody in all of America would be more thrilled about denying abortions to women than Ginni Thomas, a woman who has never given birth.

I think she probably had someone else do the actual leaking bragging. And I think she picked Politico to make it look like normal people did it.

Ginni Thomas wasn’t “leaking.” She was bragging. She eventually wants to take credit for getting her life’s mission done.

Write this down somewhere.  They are coming after birth control next.  By my count six of the nine justices are Catholics, and the only progressive justice among them is Sonia Sotomayor.

We have to start with the basic facts. Most of the major news sources are reporting that the Supreme Court has secretly voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Obviously, the way case law works is a little complicated. You can’t just wave a magic wand and erase fifty years of precedent. You have to have a case that allows you to render such a decision. The court has done it before. Brown vs. Board of Education reversed Plessy vs. Ferguson.

If we take enough steps back we can even look on with interest. It should be noted that reversing Roe v. Wade doesn’t make abortion illegal necessarily. Essentially it kicks the matter back to the states. Each individual state can choose for itself whether a woman has a right to choose. I imagine the blue states will continue to allow abortions as they have while the red states will immediately put the kibosh on that.

Public opinion is a fickle thing and I’m not sure that the constitution should be interpreted with public opinion in mind. However, it should be noted that more people are in favor of the pro choice view point than those that are pro life. Right around the time of the 2008 election the two positions were nearly even. Since then the tide has slowly turned towards pro choice with 59 percent currently believing that abortion should be legal in most if not all cases.

Without getting into the religious ramifications of any decision, I find the decision itself to be a fascinating microcosm of what is currently going on in the country. We are seeing a growing gap in the numbers of people that support progressive ideas and progressive causes while seeing an increase in conservative ideas and conservative causes. For the life of me I’ve never figured out exactly what to call this gap, but it is significant and it is growing.

Part of the problem is that some Americans have failed to put A and B together. If you want A and A does not happen then it pays to be able to identify who is keeping A from happening. Instead, a large enough percentage get angry at election time and vote for the very people that are stopping progress because the party working for progress hasn’t delivered.

The other part of the problem is that the opposition is good at silencing the will of the people through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and filibustering bills to death. Combine those two elements and you get what we currently got. Meanwhile we brace for the rights of women to roll back five decades as if we were in some sort of perverse DeLorean.

For those that don’t know, this is teacher appreciation week. Don’t worry. I’m not fishing for compliments or gifts or anything like that. I simply bring this up to point out an obvious point that our beloved governor seems to have missed. He set up a task force.

It seems he doesn’t understand why there is a teacher shortage. We’ve talked in these spaces before about how the task force was set up at first. The first iteration had only two teachers with one housed at their district’s administrative office. Talk about missing the pulse of the people. You don’t have to be an educator or an expert in education to see the problem there.

The other problem is manifest in the week they chose to make teacher appreciation week. They’ve done this before and it never donned on anyone to somehow switch this up. In addition to being teacher appreciation week, it is also the week where we give the Biology, Algebra, and U.S. History state exams. It’s also the same week where most of the AP exams are given.

We appreciate you so much. Why don’t you wear jeans this week. We’ll have some nice breakfast burritos for you in the faculty lounge. Oh, also remember that if you do something wrong while proctoring the STAAR test we will be sure to pull your teacher’s license. Don’t forget your parting gift on the right.

Do we really need to ask why people are leaving the profession or refusing to enter it in the first place? I know some of you can’t get past the paywall but the headline here says it all. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, it says that a federal audit revealed that HISD under spent by 300 million dollars over a five year period.

Some guestimates conclude that HISD could raise their teacher salaries $10,000 a year across the board without batting an eye. These things usually filter their way down to neighboring school districts. No one wants to be left in the dust when the district next door suddenly boosts pay. However, it would be a big mistake if the task force concludes that we just need more money. Make no mistake, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the idea of this particular week being teacher appreciation week is kind of a clue.

I had a lull in the middle of my career where I could have gone in other directions. Some here know that well. Ultimately, teaching was my first and best destiny. It just took awhile to find a place where I was comfortable and belonged. We often drop young teachers in the toughest places to teach with the most difficult situations to overcome. We offer very little support and then wonder why so many leave. It shouldn’t take blue ribbon committees and millions of dollars to figure this out. Just about any teacher can tell you this if you stop long enough to listen.