Rediscover the joy of in-person community.

Photo credit; Braxton Apana

We human beings are social creatures. We are designed to live in community. This is not just an occasional activity. It is who we are, the way we are born. It is our immutable, unchangeable nature. Put a man in solitary confinement and he will go mad. It runs against his nature and contradicts his identity.

Human beings are not only social creatures. We have other commonly shared and unchangeable traits as well. Health and sanity require that we live in such a way that all of these aspects of our nature be respected. Just as surely as we need air and water, human thriving also requires a well-ordered community. That’s where governments fit.

Good governance understands human nature and legislates in harmony with it. Bad governments don’t. Bad governments tell lies about human nature and create human misery. The roots of all societal evils are lies about human nature.

We can use the terms good and bad because they have objective content. These are not merely value judgments. Human nature is what it is. To have a nature means that some things are natural and others, not. Some things are in keeping with the way we were born, and their opposites are unnatural. 

Just as external governments are either good or bad depending on their accounting for human nature, so also self-government—personal choices—are either good or bad depending on whether they contribute to your health and welfare, or not.

Both governments and individuals must give an accounting to realities outside of themselves that cannot be denied, changed, or wished away. It is a lie to say that we can be anything that we want. A zebra cannot change its stripes. Nor can a man become something other than what he is. The One who made both man and zebra must be acknowledged and obeyed.

The punishment for disobedience does not usually involve thunderbolts from heaven. More often, it comes in the form of sickness, sadness, broken relationships and run-down neighborhoods. Rebellion against our nature as social creatures is the direct cause of broken societies.

Sociality and community have to do with gatherings of people. When people gather in person, communities arise. They arise organically. They arise out of love and affection, friendship and marriage. When these communities break down, the cure is to return to their roots. That means in-person gatherings.

For the past three decades, we have increasingly experimented with ways of doing community that do not require bodies. By connecting minds, interests, and ideologies through electro-magnetic waves, we have not succeeded in improving communities. We see degeneration, instead.

On a personal level, we have all experienced the empty dissatisfaction of virtual business meetings, virtual school, and even virtual church. That hollow feeling in your soul is not something that is wrong with you. It is your perfectly natural human nature crying for recognition and respect. It is the hunger for community that remains after you have tried to satisfy it with imaginary food.

Every attempt to replace bodily gatherings with technology fails. And it fails for two reasons. One reason is that the warmth, body language, facial expressions and human touch that bodies make possible are cut off and denied.

The second reason is more sinister. Technological “gatherings” destroy community because they ignore the bodies of your real neighbors while devoting time and energy to those who do not share your space, but only your ideology. Real neighbors keep us sane because they keep us grounded. The real needs of real neighbors keep us human by keeping us accountable to human nature. 

Any community that does not take into account every single person within its boundaries, is a community off the rails. So-called “global communities” consist only of ideologues who have no accountability to real human beings or any actual geographical community. Such anti-communities are responsible for untold human misery.

The good news is that you already have the cure. Since every community was built by people who gathered together, any community can be rebuilt by people who gather together. Turn off your computer. Pocket your phone and lace up your shoes. Walk across the street and introduce yourself. Invite your neighbor to a cook-out. Call a community get-together.

In a time of crisis, these are the people who will come to your aid. After Armageddon, it won’t be pundits and politicians who show up at your door. It will be you and your next-door neighbor who will either live or die together. So, it’s not too soon to start talking now. 

As you talk and build side by side, you will be pleasantly surprised to discover an incredibly deep satisfaction. That’s the feeling social creatures have when they rediscover the joy of human community.

Dear Rebecca...

Rebecca Kiessling, human being

On the Ides of March, Governor Mark Gordon signed into law HB 92 Abortion prohibition-supreme court decision. This was one of the most important pieces of legislation to be passed in years. Its importance lay in the fact that 45 of 60 representatives, 24 of 30 senators, and the sitting governor of Wyoming all acknowledged that Wyoming law should, by right, protect all human life from conception to natural death.

HB 92 recognizes unborn children as proper subjects of the law’s protection. In so doing, it also recognizes that current Wyoming abortion law has been hijacked by the Supreme Court. In 1973 seven men in black robes propounded a novel doctrine based on an arbitrary division of gestation into three trimesters. 

With this non-scientific and morally arbitrary doctrine, the Warren Court stripped protections from the youngest and the weakest—based precisely on their age and size. Up to that point, Wyoming had protected all members of the human race equally, while allowing for tragic circumstances when the life of the mother was threatened by pregnancy complications. 

Photo by Lennart Nilsson

Not only was Roe v. Wade bad law and bad medicine, it also violated the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by denying states the right to protect their own citizens through sound legislation. In Wyoming, Roe also violated our State Constitution. Wyoming’s entire governance is constituted upon the truth that “In their inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all members of the human race are equal” (Art. 1, Sec. 2). 

By these deliberately chosen words, the framers of Wyoming’s Constitution chose not to discriminate against any member of the human race—whether because of race, sex, religion, age, or any other accident of birth. So, when the Supreme Court mandated that Wyoming give less protection to some members of the human race, and more protection to others, this was in violation of our most basic value. 

Every legislator who voted to enact HB 92, the governor who signed it, and the countless Wyoming citizens who supported its passage with emails, phone calls, and personal visits, should all be commended. The passage of HB 92 truly exemplifies a constitutional republic at its best.

Around midnight after the signing, one email sounded a somber note: “It’s sad for my people group because of the targeted, lethal discrimination expressly contained within it.” The author was Rebecca Kiessling, President of “Save the 1.” 

According to its website, “Save The 1’s mission is to educate everyone on why all pre-born children should be protected by law and accepted by society, without exception and without compromise.” They fight what is commonly known as the “rape and incest exception.”

Rebecca and her birth mother, Joann

One week before Governor Gordon signed HB 92, senators Case (R-Lander) and Rothfuss (D-Laramie) jointly sponsored an amendment that denied protection to the unborn if “the pregnancy is the result of incest …or sexual assault.” The amendment squeaked through on a 15-14 vote.

Rebecca Kiessling was conceived during a violent assault by a serial rapist. Her mother was the sort of innocent victim that this amendment was intended to protect. But years later, after Rebecca came to know her birth mother, she became truly grateful that Michigan law had prevented her from aborting Rebecca.

Now, Rebecca is a mother of five, a successful attorney, and an internationally known speaker on human rights. She has a tendency to take it personally when people say she should be dead.

Her email haunted me. I could not push it out of my mind. While I woke up with a full day’s work ahead of me. I could not focus on any of it. I had to give her an answer.

So, I set aside my work and wrote: “Dear Rebecca, I can only imagine the sadness and injustice that you feel in your heart when you see fellow human beings devalue your life so callously. I can also imagine that the rage against injustice is not only felt towards those who worked to exempt you from law, but also against your friends and allies that did not fight hard enough to protect you.”

“I cannot blame you. I am certainly culpable for not doing enough on my part. Considering how many minds and hearts were changed by your brief appearance in the Capitol, imagine what we could have done if we had talked about this more openly for a period of months, not days. I am sorry. Please forgive me. And please don’t give up on us.”

Wyoming should be profoundly grateful for the accomplishment that is HB 92. It will make a difference for generations to come. But we should also recognize the legitimate needs of people like Rebecca, and never stop until every member of the human race is equally protected by Wyoming law.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, March 18, 2022.

Real women who conceived in sexual assault should be heard

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash.com

House Bill 92 “Abortion prohibition-supreme court decision” earned the unanimous approval of the Senate Labor committee last Monday. Before that, it cleared the House by a 43-16 margin. There, opponents of the bill raised the emotional issue of rape conception.

Representative Provenza (D-Laramie) shared her own story of sexual assault and wondered, “what would happen if I was pregnant?” It’s a fair question. Even well-meaning people who speculate about the needs and feelings of such women, are only guessing. So, I sought out two women to give them voice. 

Meet Kristi Kollar. This native of Afton, Wyoming, had just earned acceptance into the American Musical and Dramatic Academy—a world-renowned acting school in New York. Then her life changed. A classmate driving her home from school assaulted her in his car and she became pregnant. 

“When I found out I was pregnant,” she said, “I remember just, immediately, knowing that I had a life.” This motivated her to learn the facts and write about them. “I felt her [my baby] like, kicking and moving, and she had hiccups while I was writing this essay.” This was her 20th week, “And I remember thinking, I don’t know how anyone can feel this and still go through it [abortion].”

Kristi and Addy Kollar

At that point in our conversation, her three-year-old daughter wandered into the room. Kristi apologized for the interruption, but it was no interruption, at all. This child was the reason for our conversation. We were speaking, not about abortion, but about a person. Still, with the child in the room, the question I planned to ask caught in my throat.

When she left and was no longer within earshot, I swallowed hard and asked: “Was there ever an impulse where you just feel like this baby growing in me is a daily reminder of what happened to me?” Kristi’s reply was immediate: “No.” There were a thousand challenges that the pregnancy brought on, not the least of which was the prospect of losing her dream education. But, “it was never, like, because it was ‘a reminder.’” 

“When I look at Addy, and when I looked at her the day she was born, and every day that I look at her, I don’t see ‘a reminder.’ I see the person who got me through all that… I don’t know how I would have recovered from my assault if it had not been for Adeline. I think that would have been an even deeper wound than it already is.”

Ashley Sigrest agrees. She doesn’t just think it; she knows it. Ashley was drugged and raped in the spring of 1998. When she learned that she was pregnant, she didn’t want an abortion. She wanted an escape. But she believed those who promised her that abortion would give her escape.

Choiceless, she remembers “thinking, every day, that I HAD to go to the abortion clinic.” Still, she secretly mused, “If someone was out there screaming at me, maybe I’ll be too scared to go through with it… or [maybe] someone would intervene on my behalf.”

Ashley Sigrest

Once at the clinic, she told the receptionist that she had been raped, and said, “I don’t want to do this.” “No one cared that I had been raped. No one cared that I was not sure [about the abortion].” Instead, she laments, “they tell you THE BIG LIE, that you can just have the abortion and go on with your life as if nothing had happened.”

Too late, Ashley learned the truth. “My abortion did not help my rape… I ended up getting diagnosed with PTSD because of the abortion.” The escape she sought only took her son, Joshua Schuyler, and gave her another injury, deeper than the first. “Abortion is not the answer for a rape victim.” Rather, “It just really prolonged my healing from my assault.”

Representative Lebeau (D-Ethete) claimed otherwise in debate on the House floor. She supposed that this bill would “allow the pregnant victim to be reminded every living moment of the very intimate horrifying crime done to them.” I asked Ashley and Kristi if that is true.

“Regardless, the rape victim is going to think about the attack, always,” Ashley replied. “But if you add abortion on top of that, then you’re adding a whole new layer of trauma and victimization.” Kristi answered, “People who think that way aren’t bad people. They just don’t understand. And they have been lied to by a system that knows how to lie very well.”

Kristi didn’t miss her dream education, either. Last spring, she became the first mother, ever, to graduate from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. “The narrative is that you can’t continue life afterward. But I felt so empowered that I could do both. That I was capable of going to school and still having Addy—that I was capable of healing and being a good mom despite what had happened.”

Ashley, also, has healed from both the assault and the abortion. Now she advocates for women like herself: “Women deserve better than abortion. Rape victims deserve better than abortion.”

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, March 11, 2022; and in the Cowboy State Daily, March 9, 2022.