Defense of Children, Revised

   

          Written law, the basis of republican governance, is flawed, and for justice a civic people requires their representatives to amend the law when they discover injustice. In that sentence, “a civic people” refers to inhabitants who use the preamble to the constitution for the USA. "The people" refers to the governed, which can be everyone, but individuals can distinguish themselves by unjust behavior and thereby risk subjugation to the law. The people of the USA have shown by both the war for independence and the war against slavery that, borrowing Abraham Lincoln’s words: There is no “better or equal hope in the world” than “the ultimate justice of the people,” yet justice is far from settled. For example, the quest for objective justice sustained the people both 1) when their colonizing nation, Great Britain, tried to tax them for Parliament’s benefits and 2) when, after independence, factional interests within the new nation attempted to sustain in succession slavery and then racial discrimination. Yet the people have never acknowledged the sovereignty of Amerindians the people invaded, and racial discrimination yet rages. Both taxation without representation and racial discrimination are objectively wrong and cannot be defended with subjectivity. Yet the ultimate justice of the people has not been realized. In these examples, the justice of the people did not represent the people, because in the first case some citizens were loyalists and in the second some citizens supported slavery and/or oppression of Amerindians. Defense of children is another object of justice of the people, and child issues cannot be settled on opinion: the objective truth must prevail. A civic people face a conundrum regarding children: it must encourage procreation while assuring that children are born into a safe environment that also offers them well-being.

A characteristic of the judiciary branch in US governance is maintenance of court opinion, which can drift away from reality. An example is the Dred Scott decision of 1857, summarized as "neither [Scott] nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship." In general, for governance of, by, and for a civic people, persons must direct the US Supreme court to focus on the objective truth, not subjective “truths”--neither the court’s opinion, nor religious opinion, nor the will of the people, which often differs from the ultimate justice of the people, as it remains regarding Amerindians and other minorities such as non-theists. (The most assiduously oppressed minority in America is the collective non-theists.) You might say the court, in deciding issues, must look for brick walls, not pies in the sky.           In the same-sex agenda, which is misrepresented as "marriage equality," the core issue is defense of children. Defense of children is at the core because state management of marriage incorporates both privileges and obligations. One obligation is responsibility for pregnancies that might occur. But same-sex bonding cannot cause pregnancy, and therefore, granting marriage licenses to same-sex partners involves an extension to child obligations that cannot be met by the partners, except through genetic surrogacy, which negates monogamy. Monogamy may not be important to partners, but it is critical to children, grandchildren, and beyond.  The same-sex agenda argues that marriage is not about procreation but is about the surrogacy industry. That's blatant doublespeak or lying. Humankind has no idea what good or bad will come of long term employment of the surrogacy industry. However, a civic people needs informed, psychologically balanced children. The people must balance need for children versus risk of child misdirection, neglect, abuse, subjugation, and murder.

            In the union of a person with another person, each person is of equal standing before the law. If two persons decide they want monogamy for life, certifying that union for the sake of mutual responsibilities and civic recognition is important to both the persons and the state, and therefore should be codified by a civil license. If they want to join together yet still conduct intimacies outside the bond, the welfare of any progeny is jeopardized. Currently, divorce rates in the US run about 53 % of marriages. Perhaps "marriage" does not carry the commitment to avoid intimacy outside the union that "monogamy" would. Civil monogamy licensing would offer the additional benefit of protecting religions' interests in unions of persons. Perhaps with civic attention on monogamy, divorce rates would decrease to the benefit of everyone, especially any children involved. Heterosexual couples may procreate, and the civil monogamy license would enhance the understanding gained from traditional matrimony, whether in civic or religious setting. However, some couples never procreate, either intentionally or otherwise. Civic support of children through couples is diluted by tax advantage to childless unions. 
           Same-sex monogamy is honorable, so a same-sex civil monogamy license should be provided. However, same sex partners cannot procreate independently: they must contract for surrogacy, either directly or through the surrogacy industry. Surrogacy introduces extra biological and psychological risks to children. Also, same-sex partners cannot provide children integral heterosexual role models and providers. One or two men must learn how to dress a girl in diverse circumstances, whereas a mother would already know. One or two women must teach a boy how to catch a grounder. Moreover, children of a gay couple cannot provide the psychological input that is available through an integral, heterosexual couple. Two women have to teach manhood by exhortation, not example. For civic reasons, a same-sex partnership is not equal to an heterosexual couple.
          Since some heterosexual couples may procreate before maturity for parenting, and since same-sex partners cannot procreate without the risks attendant with surrogacy, support of children would be enhanced by procreation licensing. For example, only couples with civic monogamy license of some duration, say three years, could apply for a procreation license. Only women older than 23 and men older than 25, when their respective bodies have completed their respective brains, could obtain a procreation license.

            Beside “justice of the people,” the key to the validity of Lincoln’s statement quoted above is the word “ultimate.” History shows that the will of the people can be erroneously influenced by temporal forces and public opinion. The ancient Greeks held that slavery was a necessary part of governance and the most noble love was with a young boy since women were of a lower intellectual class. When error creeps in, as it inevitably does, the justice of the people can be held at bay for decades, centuries, even millennia. But injustice can be defeated, as demonstrated by the near extinction of ceremonial human sacrifice, a god-influenced practice. In the past, avoiding the mistakes evident in history has not been easy, because the dissemination of information was slow—it was difficult for cultures to share opinion to help discover the objective truth. To check the validity of a statement, the student needed 1) library research, 2) discernment of error, and 3) wise pursuits. Those noble tasks have not left us, but the Internet has brought such speed and knowledge that physical reference books are almost unnecessary when key words are accurate. For example, if a reader wants to find the source of the Lincoln quote above, the entry “ultimate justice of the people” yields Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. Likewise, "Greek love of small boy," yields Plato's Symposium. Thus, all a modern writer needs to do is make certain to employ verifiable expressions. In fact, readers often find more satisfying confirmation through their own search.

          Using the lower case "god," which may be read with an interrogative voice, this writer avoids pretense to know what, if anything, controls the progress of what-is. In other words, to use capital "G" could represent that the writer claims to represent whatever may control reality. The assertion that a god encouraged slavery (an error which the justice of the people is still trying to overcome), is confirmed by the declaration of secession: “Public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.” The reader may evaluate the information and its background, if he/she chooses to do so. The incentive to master the information is to understand the objective truth and use it to personal benefit. Unfortunately, many people just want to “live” without enjoying the work to understand. The product of this indolence is gradual loss of freedom.

          As the universe progresses, each new person encounters an ever increasing uncertainty, partly because of increasing awareness of long-running developments and unexpected consequences. Humankind has limited understanding: Is there extraterrestrial life? Or, more urgently, What's causing global warming? Is it just a routine cosmic cycle we are only now able to observe? However, some previous questions have been answered. The Sun does not rise and set: the Earth rotates on its axis toward its East, uncovering the Sun each day then hiding it each night. Human understanding is recorded in exponentially expanding literature, which includes even more misunderstanding, due to fiction and art.           Each newborn person arrives totally dependent and uninformed and with the task of getting informed enough to pursue self-discovery. In self-discovery, the person is either free or pursuing freedom, as she/he seeks to discern the objective truth and use it to personal advantage as the decades march by. Preferences start simple and become complex: blue the favorite color; French vanilla ice-cream; playing tennis but watching baseball; dark chocolate with almonds; avocations; sex preference; personal religion/not; relinquishing some autonomy; vocational path; higher-educational path; partner; family; fiction/non-fiction; vacations; contributions; and retirement plans. H. A. Overstreet made us aware that psychological maturity should keep pace with chronological progress, and Orlando Patterson said psychological maturity is freedom from all internal and external constraints to self-discovery. Psychological maturity is a rewarding, lifetime pursuit, which, so far, society has not promoted. Currently, society suffers the "sexual revolution" that developed following the 1949 Kinsey report, coming the same year as Overstreet's The Mature Mind. Because chronology marches regardless of psychological growth, many people's early practices invite personal ruin, even death. One of society's roles is to encourage life success for every person.

            A people loses its way when, through indolence or other privation, it relaxes its objective principles. For example, it is ruinous to encourage racial discrimination for any reason; after all, we now understand, through mtDNA, that we descended from one of the women who lived some two-hundred thousand years ago. Unfortunately, political, commercial, religious, and factional cultures have distracted the people’s attention from objective justice to majority, entertainments, greed, speculative hopes, and personal discrimination rather than social choice. The Supreme Court has played a negative role, wandering from domestic justice to "popular equality," and it has happened because courts pay too much attention to opinion, primarily past court renderings often referred to as “decision,” neglecting reality. Some court mistakes have been astounding, but no more deplorable than their current diversions from the objective truth. The objective truth is that every person is born with equal opportunity, but their fate depends on parental guidance, community influence, and personal intentions to overcome all obstacles against understanding. Often, the objective truth is not known, and the only recourse is to admit to self, "I do not know," and wait for discovery. Thus, a person's future is in their hands subject to fate. Government cannot guarantee equal outcomes.

Attempting to influence the Supreme Court would be like a canoe attempting to steer an aircraft carrier. A misdirected person, however, can be encouraged to basic principles by clear expression of the objective truth. Distraction comes when people argue opinion, but clarity comes with focus on physics--those natural forces that humans must understand and use to personal advantage; those brick walls which both reason and faith can only discover and respect. One of those brick walls is governance under personal god which obviously does not work, because the god is different according to each person. Even two persons who attend the same church in the same sect have their own god. Therefore, no god can serve as mediator. However, personal negotiation to find compromise for living is possible through the gift of the nine goals in the preamble to the constitution for the USA. The will of the people has never perceived the justice that is available through voluntary mediation to fulfill the preamble. It is not a legal question: It is a question of desire for the peace that would avail each person the opportunity to pursue freedom as they perceive it, not according to the dictates of "conscience," a term that saddles thought with conformity, especially conformity to the Bible. The preamble offers the nation a mediator for civic compromise. However, like sociopaths, the same-sex supporters would destroy the preamble, the basic tenet of this people.

          On the Diane Rehm show, June 24, 2014, http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio-player?nid=19478, at about 42 min., citizen John stated, “I love the buzz words that fly around here. We've got diversity, equality and Constitution. But it has nothing that's any resemblance in reality.” Same-sex lawyer David Boies responded, “When the Constitution says, ‘We, the people of the United States,’ it really means, we, white male property owners. And every time we've tried to expand the "we," from the original limited set, it's upset people. It's upset people when we expanded it racially.” Bois lied, choosing the word “means” instead of “meant” and even that is a lie. The 1787 signers intended representative republican governance by the people. The 1788 delegates to nine ratifying states’ conventions—the ratifiers--intended the people to govern, unjust as life was at the time. In 1790, six percent of the population could vote: today one hundred percent of non-criminals may vote in fifty states and six territories. Citizen John’s statement that the same-sex agenda opposes reality will rise to the court, which so far is distracted by emotional opinion.

            In the Dred Scott “decision” (1857), African Americans could not be citizens, a dreadful opinion indeed. But no worse than subjective contortions the Supreme Court majority reached in negating Congress’ Defense of Marriage Act. Don’t get me wrong: The Congress was dreadfully in error to justify heterosexual marriage on the basis of Judeo-Christian “moral” tradition, instead of biological and psychological issues, but the court exacerbated the problem by not citing the religious opinions as the sole reason to send it back to Congress. Judeo-Christian tradition erroneously holds that sex is not for bonding--only for procreation, creating psychological harm to all members of society: women subjugated to men, psychologically constructed guilt, confusion, and anxiety passed from generation to generation. Bonding between spouses should come before procreation and is essential to couples who do not intend to procreate. It is up to the churches to correct their subjective doctrines, but correcting religious error is not a sound basis for civic governance. Religions correct their dogma at a snails pace, like 20 generations to admit Galileo’s brilliance, whereas civic governance must fulfill the living people. The Congress shows no awareness of their dire need to respond with new legislation, perhaps titled "Defense of Children." Both Congress and the Supreme Court are too steeped in governance under ceremonial god to focus on the objective truth, the power that guides the justice of the people. In both of the domestic wars I mentioned above, the objective truth empowered success: first, England subjugating colonial people and second domestic factions keeping black Americans in bondage motivated the people to fight for justice. Injustices to Amerindians has not been resolved. Against the same-sex agenda, influence toward a people with integral families--families with two identifiable blood lines of monogamies--and both male parent and female parent is essential. Moreover, increasing rather than reducing support of children is essential for the future.

            The objective truth will prevail in the civic same-sex bond debate, but not until the people’s attention shifts from sentiment, personal opinion, and governance under a god, to the objective facts respecting three civic interests: equality based on each single person, monogamy, and children.

Among social contracts, there is no higher commitment than monogamy: a couple's mutual commitment that excludes intimacy with other people for life. Monogamy is worthy of honor, because it sets the example upon which society may be inspired and may retain hope when failure approaches, whether personal failure or family failure; heterosexual monogamy is genealogically efficient and safe, with only two blood lines required. With heterosexual parents, the father, a man, and the mother, a woman, any progeny have the same-gender role model within the family, perhaps into perpetuity--generation to generation. A girl in the family has a woman who knows how to dress her perfectly and does not have to learn this innate art, and a boy has a man who knows how to teach manhood. There is no controversy regarding biological origins: progeny are the products of binary sharing that makes them unique yet consistent with both the genes and the memes they are born into with ancestral monogamies. These factors are important to two evolutions: culture which can happen in decades, as well as human biology, over hundreds of thousands of years. Through natural selection, qualities such as virtue and fidelity have advanced humankind. Through monogamy, spouses maintain fidelity in psychological troubles just as certainly as in physical troubles such as cancer. Heterosexual monogamy is then, the most efficient choice for any single person, and may be regarded as the first choice for all concerned: the spouse, the children and posterity, and society/government. Yet, same-sex partners who find themselves committed to each other for life should be celebrated for their union, regardless of how it came about. For both couples and partners, a civic people does not encourage promiscuity, yet privacy is personal rather than civic.

            A person is that unique entity that is supported by its mind and body. Each person is born with equal importance to humankind but not equal abilities, which depend on genes, the statistics of gestation, memes, and fate. In human relations, independence is inferior to cooperative autonomy, because civics functions best with collaboration by each person so that each one may pursue no-harm freedom as they perceive it and as fate allows. The person born with lesser abilities in any respect has higher challenge in achieving her/his purpose for contributing. Perhaps the purpose of being is achievement of his/her highest possible psychological maturity. In other words, their personal high-level achievements within collaborative autonomy. People with exceptional abilities are often unable to cope with the inefficiencies around them and for other reasons have trouble reaching psychological maturity, unless they are well coached to grow maturity during each decade of their life. The details of this statement and examples in society and history are evident, and I do not want to list unfortunate personal fates, so I will address the average person.

          The average child, upon birth, is initially dependent on her/his caregivers, normally parents, who are at their particular stage of psychological development, which is a function of understanding more than chronology. Regardless of the reasons, some parents understand the objective truth earlier in the stages of their life. Unfortunately, some people become parents, even grandparents, before they surpass adolescence. Fortunate is the child who is born to parents with elevated understanding. Yet, the child must learn from both the parents and the community at a pace that will equip her/him for cooperative autonomy at the earliest possible life-stage. Misunderstandings come from two sources: either bad memes coming from parents and/or the community (or the child’s misinterpretations of the memes) or negative personal experiences by the child. However, what enhances the child’s life is understanding, on which she/he may discern facts, imaginations, and realities. Comprehension is each person’s responsibility, because regardless of the source, no one but the child can fulfill his/her own understanding. Even the best parents cannot transfer or coerce understanding. Thus, the fact that each new-born person is of equal importance does not mean that each life will be equal. The consequences of being born--the inevitable attainment of age regardless of progress toward psychological maturity--sets the pace/challenge on both the child’s environment and the child’s noble efforts to understand the objective truth such that psychological growth continues throughout life. It is a matter of self-governance, not civic governance, even civic governance within the family unit, much less state or federal governance. A thirst for understanding is essential, and there are strong influences in a life that can interrupt or terminate progress, including uninformed response to sex-drive.

            “Sex education” is a false premise, and educators should replace it with two topics: human social interactions and human reproduction. The later subject is a field of biology, and it is important for understanding procreation. The mother is both the source and protector of ova, and the man is the protector of the woman: reproduction is not a matter of sexual gratification. Human reproduction is a subset of 65 million years of placental-mammalian evolution, with natural sexual stimulation and statistical variations in gratification: opposite sex, same sex, inter-species, masturbation, "sex" with a tree or other object, and more. The statistics for same-sex gratification is about 4 % in casual practice; I do not know the statistics for commitment to same-sex or choice of a same-sex partner among the species.

 The former topic, human social interactions, involves cooperative autonomy. Each person has the will to engage another party or not. On chance encounter, strangers can make eye contact or not, speak or not, shake hands or not. The movies and TV-shows, encouraging appetites, emphasize that strangers, on first encounter, can have sexual intercourse. Formation of a relationship must be mutual. If attraction is not shared, familiarity is unlikely. Being “in love” requires mutual appreciation and understanding. Psychological intimacy requires mutual interest and commitment. Sexual intimacy requires relinquishing some personal autonomy. Not only is there biological risk, such as intimacy-transmitted disease, the other party learns the extent of the partner’s intimacy practices and could speak about it any time. Continued relaxation of autonomy can develop into divergent practices that extinguish autonomy altogether, much like losing personal identity to sexual appetite.
          Being the most aware species, humans can agree on intimacy for reasons the couple or partnership decides. It can be purely for sexual gratification, whether mutual or not, or it can be for bonding. Group bonding--fidelity--beyond group sex seems farfetched, but human imagination constructs unlimited variations. However, the noblest requisite for intimacy is mutual commitment to monogamy. If the purpose is monogamy and there is potential for pregnancy, care must be taken: either there must be provisions to prevent pregnancy or the couple must be committed to sharing their love and mutual commitment with any offspring. If the couple agrees to extend their relationship to offspring, the resulting family is integral: has shared blood lines that extend the genealogical continuities of two family lines and the millions of years of evolutionary developments represented by them. Any children who benefit from this monogamy have the potential to extend those blood lines along a new branch, and the resulting, basic unit continues a civic and genetic heritage. If there are elements within that heritage known to be bad, the memes can be terminated with awareness, disclosure, and alternative commitments. For example, awareness of a grandfather's bad temper can be the focus of training not to mimic the behavior. These last few considerations are true for heterosexual monogamy only, since shared blood lines are terminated by same-sex monogamy. In fact, with surrogacy, the parent has no way of anticipating the genealogical issues the child received. Because heterosexual sex can cause pregnancy, perhaps leading to a newborn, and because neglected newborns, children, and adults become wards of the state, heterosexual sex is a civic issue and therefore a subject of government. Also, because procreation is necessary to maintain a people, heterosexual sex is a government interest, which this nation financially supports. Same-sex practices should not dilute the financial support for children, and any future tax savings regarding this issue, for example, ending the marriage benefit for childless couples, should be dedicated to child support services.

 State and federal statutes have been created to foster procreation and assure best child-care. This issue is separate from contractual obligations when two people decide to partner for any reason—be it financial, companionship, sexual satisfaction, eternal care, and other reasons—those are personal needs that are either private or can be recorded for civic recognition. However, the defense of children part of this issue can be illustrated by a hypothetical schedule of income-tax advantages to be decided starting with single citizens having neither tax benefit nor penalty for his/her declared status. Regarding the challenge of encouraging procreation without increasing risks for the children, my daughter and I developed this schedule to illustrate our concerns regarding equitable tax considerations, which we suggest for consideration:

• Heterosexual monogamists with adopted children (highest tax favor)
• Heterosexual monogamists with natural children
• Single people, monogamists & couples without children (Null: neither tax favor nor penalty)
• Heterosexual couples with adopted children (smallest tax penalty)
• Heterosexual couples with natural children
• Same-sex monogamists with adopted children
• Single people with natural children
• Promiscuous same-sex partners with adopted children
• Promiscuous same-sex partners with children from surrogacy
• Common-law couples and others.

If the above table was accepted, it would create some tax revenues by keeping heterosexual monogamists and couples without children in the singles bracket, and those savings could be spent on programs that defend children. I know many people in mid-life who remain single because they have not met a person they feel like sharing life with. Most of them seem well adjusted and reliable. Regardless, I do not feel that singles, over 50% of the adult population, deserve civic injustice respecting taxes.

            Same-sex monogamy differs in that the intimacy shared by the partners cannot be directly extended through children; shared blood lines are terminated, even though unshared-blood lines may be started. The same-sex partnership must obtain help in order to procreate, either direct help from a surrogate or from the surrogacy industry. The third-party contract introduces additional risks to the resulting child, both biologically and psychologically, and little if anything is known about the long term impacts on humankind. The same-sex aspirants state there are no risks, but this kind of data requires evolutionary-range duration, not cultural-range time spans. Alternately, the same-sex partners may build a family through adoption. Same-sex partners may provide otherwise excellent care for children, but cannot provide gender models for both male and female offspring—can only address the issues and provide third-party help. The third party inevitably controls the memes to the child. The same-sex partners may attempt to provide the role examples in their same-sex pairing, but that limits the experience of their family by excluding the heterosexual role-modeling. Perhaps it is better to hire a role-model.  Thus, in both procreation and gender-role modeling, the same-sex couple is disadvantaged. Moreover, the children suffer extra memes and risks as noted above. It is a challenge to the same sex partners most humans would not choose, and it seems to be a secondary approach to procreation to benefit a people.

            Heterosexual monogamy is not always a matter of choice. Humans have only one life to live, and when fate brings a couple to the conviction that they want to share life, their mutual commitment should be celebrated and appreciated by society on its own merit. But what of procreation? Because of both direct surrogacy and technological surrogacy, it would seem that a society could survive with only same-sex monogamy. However, what-is often spoils what-seems, and humankind does not have evidence that the results would be favorable. If we had the data, we might be able to show that, unexpectedly, same-sex monogamy is preferred. Considering the added risks of surrogacy, heterosexual monogamy seems preferred--in efficiency, genealogical continuity, meme management, and safety for children. Any privileges to same-sex partners come at the expense of single people and heterosexual couples, who supply the tax advantages and surrogacy roles.

          The same-sex debate seems over-emphasized, relative to its merit. It seems to have falsely employed the methods of African-American claims to civic equality, even favor: same-sex is not a racial issue. Also, it has falsely attacked religious opinion, which slowly reforms toward justice of the people yet retains its doctrinal principles: many modern believers regard "abomination" as an ancient term for "diminished opportunity," but neither scripture nor doctrine has been so revised. Some men's choice of same-sex monogamy over heterosexual monogamy is at least 2500 years old, as recorded in Plato's Symposium, so that opinion is nothing new. (Incidentally, two aspects of the Greek idea are that it's not the body that is attractive: the male intellect is superior to the female intellect. Second, a man's commitment to the boy he subjugates must be true--monogamous--for civic reasons.) It seems the US same-sex community is on par with all placental mammals, about 4 % of the population, a rather small minority compared to each the non-theist portion--perhaps 25 % and the racial distributions; Latin-Hispanic 17 %, African American 13%, and Asian 5 %. Among the 4 % same-sex couples, monogamists might be a small fraction. It seems that most same-sex monogamists are substantially responsible for their lives, some even happy with civil unions. And the proportion of same-sex couples who want the responsibility for and are capable of child-rearing is not known, but must be small. The favor the federal administration has imposed for same-sex marriage seems inordinate in comparison with the minorities listed above and moreover, relative to the 75 % majority who are theists and want churches to manage the doctrine of marriage. Also, the administration’s influence on the US Supreme Court to consider a case, Windsor v US (www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_6j37.pdf ), wherein there were no legal adversaries, seems un-American if not un-Constitutional. The Congress should re-instate DOMA based on the considerations, I have raised, above, according to me the objective truth. But no person can count on Congress.

          However, Louisiana can position itself as a national leader by recognizing the nobility of monogamy, both for same-sex couples and for heterosexual couples: end civil marriage-licensing in Louisiana by legislating replacement with two civil monogamy licenses, one for same-sex partners, with no responsibility for procreation, and the other for heterosexual couples with responsibility for any pregnancies that may result, leaving marriage licensing/certification to the churches and the majority that wants traditional guidance. The secondary impact of such legislation is that it would facilitate both future legislation in the defense of children and the statistics needed to measure the social and political impacts of monogamy licensing for both classes, to guide future governance. A primary benefit would be that civil monogamy-licensing clarifies in state law the encouragement of exclusive intimacy between couples: both spouses make a public statement that they reject promiscuity. Defense of children would be strengthened.

          I think States that defend heterosexual monogamy and the resulting progeny and honor same-sex monogamy, keeping surrogacy against public policy, represent the objective truth to the United States Congress and the Supreme Court and have the opportunity to lead a people.

Copyright©2014 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included. Revised November 6, 2015