Rep. Howard Urged to Sponsor "Texas Friendship Day"

As a constituent of State Rep. Donna Howard, I am very hopeful that that very influential state law-maker from the Austin area will ask the Texas Legislature in January 2009 to designate one cited day of each year as "Texas Friendship Day" throughout our entire state.

I have also shared my views on this subject with Texas Governor Rick Perry, who recently responded to an Open Records request of mine by sharing with me all of the correspondence I had sent to himself about the urgent need for an officially designated annual "Texas Friendship Day."

A "Texas Friendship Day" is fitting for our state, for many reasons:

(1) The very name of our State, "Texas," derives from the Caddo Indian word for friendship;

(2) Texans traditionally pride themselves on being friendlier and more sociable and extroverted than the residents of any other U.S. state;

(3) Platonic personal relationships --- relationships during one's leisuretime that don't involve any sexual physical contact or sexual penetration or sexual proposition per se --- account for 99 percent to 100 percent of all personal relationships in life, such relationships often including mutual-consent friendships and strictly-mutual-consent friendly acquaintanceships with friendly neighbors or friendly current or former roommates or housemates, for instance, and the many personal relationships with one's relatives other than one's mutual-consent spouse, for instance, or the mutual-consent friendships that might develop with fellow members of a religious congregation or religious organization or civic group in which one is an official member;

(4) An annual Texas Friendship Day, in which each Texan might be encouraged to mail a greeting card to a friend or give a present to a friend or treat a strictly-platonic friend to a meal or to tea and conversation, will boost the economy of Texas during a period in which our national economy been in a slump;

(5) Strictly-mutual-consent platonic personal relationships are good for the emotional and medical health of human beings;

(6) Strictly-mutual-consent platonic personal relationships, or friendships, can help to deter crime, since individuals who feel emotionally fulfilled through thought-provoking conversations with a strictly-mutual-consent friend are less likely to be crime-prone;

(7) Strictly-mutual-consent platonic personal relationships are all too often ignored and neglected by the mass media, such as in Hollywood movie productions that convey the implicit message to everyone that "romantic relationships are the only relationships in life that count";

(8) Strictly-mutual-consent platonic personal relationships serve as a healthy antidote to the excessive sexualization of American society, reflected in the alarmingly high rate of promiscuity and accompanying spread of diseases and unwanted pregnancy, and the accompanying high rate of sexual addiction or sexaholism involving frequent and indiscriminate sexual involvements by human beings;

(9) The proposed annual "Texas Friendship Day" emphasizing strictly-mutual-consent and healthful personal platonic relationships, many of them inter-generational strictly-platonic personal relationships, would serve as a very fine and salutary antidote to the widespread societal malaise in our state that is sometimes referred to as "Sugar Daddy Syndrome."

That hideously injurious form of intergenerational exploitation occurring in Texas today is the societal malaise in Texas in which affluent older male persons and affluent older female persons, many of them citedly "gay" or citedly "bisexual" or citedly "members of the clergy," all too often prey upon the financial and emotional vulnerability of young persons, including adult young persons as well as under-age youths, by subjecting those younger persons to illicit drugs or alcohol or tobacco products, or to illegal or unethical or injurious forms of bribery, extortionism, a quid pro quo of any type involving an expectation of "something in return" from that young person, hostage-taking, kidnapping, stalking, brainwashing, rape, sexual slavery, involvement in sexual prostitution, torture and other sadomasochistic practices, or other forms of censorious or repressive or dictatorial conduct, that sadistically and injuriously exploit those young persons. In the process, the sadistically exploitative "Sugar Daddy" older persons express contempt for the Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Association, and Freedom of Assembly legal and human rights of younger persons. The infamous "Sugar Daddies" also all too often subject those younger persons to a sexual relationship not wanted by the young person, which is very harmful to the emotional and medical health and moral health, and to the confidence level and self-identity of that younger person.

(10) Promotion of strictly-platonic personal relationships through an official "Texas Friendship Day" would remind all Texans that they can live their life as they wish, and that it is a poverty of the imagination on the part of all too many Texans when they automatically exclude members of the opposite sex from platonic personal relationships, it being the case that in the 1950s and early 1960s, for instance, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois in enjoyed a longtime strictly-platonic relationship between the two of those very fine individuals, and very inspirational platonic relationships of that type are tragically overlooked by all too many Americans of today;

(11) An annual "Texas Friendship Day" would help to reward the many very fine and benevolent Texans who, while they may have no romantic relationship or sexual relationship per se of any type in their own life, definitely exhibit a very high level of platonic affection and platonic appreciation and platonic generosity toward others;

(12) An annual "Texas Friendship Day" would be especially fitting in an era when millions of Texans either have herpes or have AIDS or are HIV-positive, which means by definition that those same Texans should each in all good conscience practice completely celibate lifestyles on a year-round basis that are centered on strictly-platonic appreciation of strictly-mutual-consent friends;

(13) An annual "Texas Friendship Day" and resulting emphasis on mutual-consent platonic personal relationships, would be wonderfully inclusive toward the children and other youths who are not legal-status adults, many such youths being urged by their own religious congregations and clergymen and parents to lead completely celibate lives until they themselves reach legal-status adulthood or get married;

(14) A "Texas Friendship Day" would be brilliantly complementary to Valentine's Day, the latter of which celebrates ardent romantic love, it being a certainty that mutual-consent platonic love and mutual-consent platonic affection between mutual-consent friends are also very worthy of celebration;

(15) Platonic personal relationships are good for the intellectual and moral development of human beings, since the in-person dialogues and letter-writing dialogues that they foster is good for each partner in those relationships in that way;

(16) Platonic personal relationships foster empathy in human beings, since they become more aware through those relationships of the needs and values and outlooks of other human beings.