My intention was a simple one.

I was on my way home from the orientation about this season’s exhibit at the museum at which I am  a volunteer docent, and as I would be driving past it, I decided t stop in at a particular bar and have a drink and, perhaps, some conversation with the bartender whom I consider a friend.

To this end, I entered the bar with my Mini-Ipad and sat a bar stool away from the other customers to allow me the peace to sit quietly, but not so far away as to be considered aloof, and check the posts on Facebook that were placed during the time it took to drive to and from the museum, and the length of the orientation and the little get together with the other docents after. While doing this I could make the occasional remark to the bartender and have what little conversation would be possible as he worked.

Things were going as planned until a person entered and took the empty seat between me and the closest patron to me.

From what I have observed in the past, he is a local guy whom everyone knows, and can be very acceptably friendly and social, provided politics is not the topic.

He, like the rest of us at the bar, is a Gay man, but he is one who is a strong supporter of Donald Trump and is clearly taken in by alternative facts. During the campaign, he would speak often about Trump as the best fiend to the GLBT Community, being unable to cite any proof to back up the claim, while at the same time condemning “Crooked Hillary” by simply repeating what Donald Trump claimed.

He obviously did not research to verify the anti-Hillary claims, but, instead, accepted them because they were voiced by Trump.

I had lost any respect for him, although any true respect had not yet been earned, when one night he was explaining to some young Gay men how good Trump would be for them and how bad Hillary would be without any data to verify this beyond a series of Trump quotes.

He was, for all intents and purposes, convincing them to vote against their own best interests.

Totally glossing over reality as to when the GLBT Community got many of its rights, some before these young people were born and many while they were too young to have known there was a time when they could be the objects of discrimination, could be bullied in school without protection or recourse, could have contracted and died of AIDS with no help from the government as it was God’s punishment for their being Gay, but could not marry the person they loved, this man spoke as if the rights had always been there, and that Donald Trump would make sure they would always have them. He omitted to explain that these rights had been obtained not through the largess of the government, but by the hard work of the older Gay generations, many of whom suffered in the battle, and that if the Community did not stay vigilant, those who resented the gaining of rights would do what they could to remove them.

Because they knew him and he went to and could name all the Bars in nearby Providence that they also frequented, they saw no reason to question his words.

In light of the removal of GLBT people from the 2020 census, something that could affect the proposing of and application of laws that impact the GLBT Community, the proposal to cut almost a half billion dollars from AIDS research, prevention, education, and treatment from the next budget, the Executive order removing employment protection from discrimination by federal contractors, keeping the Supreme Court seat empty until Trump could get an anti-Gay justice on the bench, and appointing a virulently anti-Gay person to head the Health and Human Service office of Civil Rights, a man who has written that Transgender people have no right to healthcare, it just bothers me when this man enters the bar greeting everyone he basically helped to betray, especially the young Gay men whose futures he may very well have gotten them to vote away.

His having come into the bar the day after the election to a room full of people who were not very happy and gloating that it was a great day for America, didn’t help my assessment of him.

So to have him end up sitting next to me had all the potential of ruining my night if he began talking about politics.

Which he did.

By an odd coincidence, but understandable by the nature of the city’s population, it became clear that he and the other patrons were Catholic as they spoke about the upcoming Easter masses and Holy Week service schedule, various churches, and priests they all knew and remembered.

No problem here as it was just a group of local people talking about local things.

And then, out of nowhere, he proclaimed that Sanctuary Cities should be condemned, and then rattled off all the misinformation one gets constantly from conservative outlets about the increase in crime rates where there are undocumented people, as opposed the actual studies that have shown the opposite.

When I asked for the sources of many of his pronouncements he explained that he reads what is the conservative newspaper in Boston and watches Fox News.

Typical of those who choose to limit their intake of current events to these two sources, rather than answer a question, he would reflexively change the topic, or answer it by not answering it.

After his prattling on about the falsehoods, I insisted, so that we were on the same page, he tell me how he defined Sanctuary Cities. If we had the same definition then we could approach from a common starting point, but if his definition were incorrect, then he would have to be straightened out, or we would be arguing apples and imaginary apples. I wanted to know his concept of Sanctuary Cities.

The tadalafil sample relation of this problem is with every 4 in 10 men you meet. Soffer’s expertise with bioidentical hormones tends to make him an invaluable asset here at AgeMD and reaffirms our commitment to performing with the best of its results. super levitra a very essential component in it which is Sildenafil citrate. The next step would be to disconnect the sildenafil discount fan. Breathing exercises are also known as mood swinger and keeps you alert in all the day. cialis professional australia However, instead of defining the term, he immediately began to bring up Mayor DeBlasio of New York City, and I had to interrupt and remind him that I had specifically asked him to define the term, but he was, instead, attempting to tell me about someone or perhaps someone else’s definition. I asked a second time for a definition, and he began to bring up Hillary Clinton.

Finally, ignoring my insistence on a definition, not a story, he decided to make his point of the evils of Sanctuary Cities by doing what his news sources do, take an irrelevant story, tell it like it is relevant, and ignore any flaws in the story or its application to the moment.

When I explained that Sanctuary Cities do not confer immunity on undocumented people and if they are arrested for committing a crime , they are prosecuted for it and receive the appropriate sentence which could mean deportation, he beamed as he thought I had given him the opening he wanted, and asked me then, how, if Sanctuary Cities do not let the undocumented get away with crime, I would explain the case of an undocumented person who had already committed a crime in this county and then sneaked back over the border and killed someone.

He would not accept, after telling his story, that in order to sneak back over the border, the man would have had to have been on the other side of it in order to come back over it. Obviously he had been arrested and deported, so his example was hardly an illustration that people can commit crimes without facing deportation. Ignoring that this situation is irrelevant to a Sanctuary City, he gave another similar one where a man had come across the border seven times and each time he had come back after he had been sent back.

By his refusal to accept there is a difference between Sanctuary Cities and border patrol problems, he was happy that I had been check mated by his cleverness.

For those as confused as he is let me explain that the local police have enough to do protecting and serving their communities. If in the normal course of dealing with a crime they come across someone who is here illegally, they will follow the established procedure. But what the local police in a Sanctuary City do not want to do, nor should be required to do, is become junior ICE Officers who, besides keeping their neighbors safe, have to take on the added duties of ICE officers.

They are not going to round people up, or raid establishments to hopefully find an “Illegal” in the crowd. This Gay man had never been in a raid “back in the day” when police would enter a Gay bar, line the patrons up against the wall, and demand to see IDs just to find the person without one so they could close the place down, or find the one underage kid so everyone in the bar would be arrested and charged as a pedophile with their names and addresses printed in the next day’s newspaper.

He would not accept that chiefs of police have explained that they do not want the people in their communities to be afraid to report crime, or report what they had seen so as to help solve one. He also refused to accept the statistics that there are actually fewer crimes in Sanctuary Cities because committing crimes would bring the undocumented into the spotlight to face deportation. And he absolutely would not accept the fact that Newton Massachusetts, a Sanctuary City, has been voted the Safest City in America.

Fox News and his newspaper of choice say that undocumented people come here to commit crime and take American jobs while enjoying the benefits of Welfare, food stamps, and Obamacare, and no real statistics can convince him he is accepting false information as truth.

So as this is the Easter season, and as he, obviously from his first conversation about Easter Week, believes in his religion and Jesus, let me offer this to him and those like him:

The basic story is that Joseph was woken by an angel in the middle of the night and told to get out of town. The Holy Family’s running off to Egypt was not a planned vacation or relocation, it was, in fact, not planned at all. It was an emergency and immediate action because Herod had commanded that every male child up to the age of two was to be killed to increase the odds that he would get the kid he was after.

And so the family fled to save the life of the child, one of the family members.

Much like what is done by refugees in war torn countries today.

But this child had an advantage.

His actual father was God, an omnipotent being, the creator of all things. However, in spite of the fact that He had the power to safeguard His own son if the family had stayed in their own country, He chose to have them flee.

Believers claim that His ways are not ours, his wonders to behold, and it is up to us to figure His thinking and actions out. So why have His kid’s family flee across the border to a safer country from which they could have been sent back and handed over to the authorities who were commanded to kill all those male children in the kingdom that bordered Egypt?

He gave an example of a refugee family, something He had within His power to make unnecessary, because He wanted us to know of the existence of refugees and why they flee, and, since they stayed so long in Egypt, also an example of the right way to act toward refugees- acceptance.

Otherwise, it could be that we are being distracted from the possibility that Joseph, being a carpenter in a land devoid of trees, had had to resort to a life of crime to support his family and was either on the run from the law, or was going where his crimes would produce better results.

Or, perhaps, he heard that Egypt had good jobs for treeless carpenters and went to take a job from some Egyptian.

Or maybe, just maybe he took his family out of harm’s way taking his chances that he and his family would make it there and be accepted in a new place.

So while this man was talking mass, churches, priests, the glories of the Easter season, and then claiming all refugees are criminals who want American jobs and the benefits of immunity when committing crimes in a Sanctuary City, he was unconsciously letting those in ear shot know that if it had been up to him, things would not have gone well for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!!