I work with three juvenile boys, ages 16 to 18. All three of them have been badly abused by the people who were supposed to be responsible for them. Since being taken away from their parents by the state, they have been shuffled from facility to facility, with little regard for what is in their best interest.

This makes me angry.

When opponents of gay-marriage declare that nothing more sinister faces the United States, I wonder what exactly it is that they’re seeing. Do they honestly believe that there are no more pressing social issues in this country than letting two guys get married? Do they honestly believe that the consenting decision of two rational male or female adults is somehow more important than the safety of this nation’s children? They must. If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t be spouting ridiculousness about the horrors of gay marriage.

This makes me angry.

Not surprisingly, I feel the same way about pro-lifers, who seem to genuinely believe that the importance of life ends at birth. It’s why, when they’re out there talking about the “Holocaust” of abortion, they aren’t similarly advocating for a better social system for abused children. Nor are they advocating for anything other than an end to Roe vs. Wade. If that court decision was overturned, all of these activists so allegedly concerned with the safety and well-being of the unborn would disappear back into the ether, their jobs allegedly done.

This makes me angry.

The Catholic Church has made regular habit of taking out full-page ads suggesting that support for John Kerry is somehow anti-Catholic, as if pulling the lever on Nov. 2 not only places a vote, but also slaps the Pope himself across the face. These people, too, seem to believe that life ends at birth. If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t have allowed for the shameful abuse of thousands of innocent children nationwide. How, I wonder, is it even possible for a church to be so viciously pro-life and yet, at birth, be so viciously pro-life?

This makes me angry.

Stem-cell research? Are you kidding me? There are kids being badly abused by the people who are supposed to be responsible for them, and you’re talking to me about the work of scientists in labs? It tells a lot about a person when they care more passionately about cells in a Petri dish than they do about kids in a home.

This makes me angry.

Politicians everywhere declare war on pornography in the media, and yet shy away from tackling the larger social issues that plague our society. Here’s Joe Lieberman declaring that Hollywood’s bankrupting America yet totally avoiding any legislative moves to actually protect children from physical harm. The government might not have enough time to deal with the epidemic of abuse in this country, but we’ve got more than enough time for Janet Jackson’s breast.

This makes me angry.

We have laws against drugs. We have laws against speeding. We have laws against littering. We also have laws against child abuse, but with the exception of sexual predators, few of the people who hurt children end up not facing any punishment. Of course, their kids are taken away from them, which some view as punishment, instead of seeing it as salvation for the endangered child.

This makes me angry.

But this is what makes me angriest: all of these people, from the gay marriage opponents to the pro-lifers, from the Catholic Church to the stem-cell activists, from the politicians to laws themselves, everybody involved is taking the easy way out. The activists pick the issues that are easily solved by a Constitutional amendment or a squashed court decision. The Church (and to be fair, it extends beyond the Catholic Church) and stem cell activists choose to be more concerned with cells than actual people. The politicians and the laws they write avoid tackling the tough issues because the easier ones are, well, easier.

The activists and the politicians – who will, at any time, remind anybody who is willing to listen just how much they care about “the children” – don’t at all. It is a shameful display of hypocrisy and idiocy. Unfortunately, they get away with it, because ours is a culture that has totally given up on the disgusting reality of abused children, as if to say because theirs isn’t an easy solution, we won’t even begin to address the problem.

It is this that makes me angriest.

Sam Wilkinson is a UMass graduate and former Collegian staff member.