Here we are, days after the 2004 election and I hear the words “Moral Values” as being a big part of President Bush’s agenda.  Many of the polls show that people who voted on Tuesday consider “Moral Values” to be a priority item on their reasons for voting, if not the most important one.

I actually never met a single person who is not hoping for a more honest election if not a more honest government.  I decided to head around my acquaintances and discover exactly what “moral values” means to them.

Remembering back during the last years of the Clinton Administration many Conservative pundits were telling all of us that our moral values were sliding into the gutter.  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Paul Wehrich all were screaming that America was going to hell because of our morals.  I had to think about this because my morals took no dip into sin and the people around me were living the same lives raising their kids and working their jobs as they always had done.  Clinton was bopping an intern in the Oval Office but nobody I knew was involved in anything like that. Why would I care?

Since that time I have noticed that television and movies are raunchy and not to my liking but does this have much more than a trivial effect on people?  I believe it can affect children but that is up to the parents to solve this problem.  Coming from California I have lived with and by gay couples for most of my life.  I never saw a moral problem with this…..Is this what the people meant by “Moral Values?”   I have worked for many actors who have been married many times….is that it? 

Okay, I have seen young teens, boys and girls, acting very promiscuously right under the noses of their parents.  What I’m getting at is what do the voters want any elected official to do about it?  Why would the majority of voters stopped at the exit polls mention “moral values” as being the top most reason for voting for President Bush? 

I did a check of my own moral values and came up with a short list of what I expect of my friends, kids and myself.  I believe “truth” is the top of the list.  If anyone in my life ever asked me a direct question, I told them the truth and that included my own children. 

Taking something that does not belong to me or I have not earned must be Number 2. 

Treating all people with dignity whether as one of my patients or salesperson or out in public at any time.  I’m a trained Hospice worker and dignity is a very important word in our training.   Why would any of these values be of interest to anyone else on this earth?

Wait a minute, could it be that the voters wanted Moral Values to be a part of the Presidency?  That’s just plain silly…Sure the President has lied, justified his mistakes and refused to confront many of the questions asked by his constituents, which just happens to be the entire population of America.  But, could it not be he has been misdirected by his own Cabinet members?  Is he simply guilty of not checking the facts behind his decisions?   Has he used dirty tricks on his opponents such as Senator John McCain and then Senator John Kerry to get elected?  He had to or he would not have gotten all his votes.  In the last 4 Presidential elections we have seen dirty tricks used by both parties trying to discredit the opposition and damaging the actual registrations forms and ballots.  But is this not simply the result of coming up with candidates who can’t win unless they break all the rules? 

Again, why look to President Bush for Moral Values?  The people I have spoken to want legislation to be issued from the Federal Government to prohibit a long list of what they can’t seem to handle in their own homes.  Many of their kids are those kids who indulge in adult sex even from the age of 9.  In my home I issued that prohibition and didn’t need it from the White House.  The voters may want drugs prohibited.  Ahem…..are they not already illegal?  Abortion numbers are decreasing but the American voters don’t realize this so on the list it goes.  I seem to remember a time when abortions were prohibited and yet millions of the procedures were performed on American women in Europe and Mexico and in dirty motel rooms all over the country.

Here’s one that amazes me.  Stem Cell Research took the top of the list in my meeting this morning.  The people don’t want it and want it stopped.   This comes straight from the churches and I asked them if any were Jehovah’s Witnesses.  That sect of Christians refuses to allow blood transfusions but I never recall them going to the ballot box to have this added to the laws of the land.  I told my friends to add a sentence to their medical records to have no cure given to them if stem cell research was used in that cure; that’s what the J.W.’s do.

Oh, yes a prohibition of gay marriages is on the list.  I remember reading that the government refused to allow a man and woman of different colors to marry.  That of course is no longer the case and even if President Bush does force an Amendment to the Constitution it will be repealed very soon.  Why waste time and money on this issue and simply turn it back to the states?  We are at war, remember?

If someone reading this can up with a definition of “Moral Values” please email me as I am having a terrible time trying to figure out what this term has to do with the President of the United States .