The Strange and Queer Story of David and Cat Kaufman

And I am not going to let a leftist media convince me of it either

I am not going to let poor misguided souls like David and Cat Kaufman who are palpably deaf to nature's music and nature's beauty, and whose hearts and view of reality is warped--in particularly as it relates to sexual identity, sexual inclination, and sexual activity--suggest to me that what they are doing, which is nothing but "vice the cruel city breeds," is beautiful, healthy, and good.

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - "The poet Williams Wordsworth wrote a poem, a "tale in verse," entitled "Peter Bell."  I thought of the poem when I read the recent article about David and Cat Kaufman.

First the bizarre story promoting this strange tale.  David and Cat Kaufman were married for 20 years (after David had two prior failed marriages).  "Best friends," they were, "who got along really well"; "a love story with a normal beginning," the article states. 

But apparently David was and is confused.  After 20 years of marriage he thought he was "gay," but then realized that he was a "she" who like hes, and not a he who liked hes, and so he decided to become Dani (short for Danielle) Kaufman.

In this queer two-decade marriage, apparently David's wife Cat had a "secret" of her own.  She had recently come to the realization that she was a lesbian.  She was a she who liked shes, but I guess real shes, and not hes who thinks their shes.

They both decided to "come out" together, and the "marriage was over," as I suppose it would be if there ever was one.  I really do not know what to think about their two decades of life together.

David's (Dani's) former wife, Cat, says of her former husband, "Inside she's [sic] the same person that I married, and just the outside has changed."

We might call David and Cat Kaufman Peter and Patricia Bell because they are like Wordsworth's character Peter Bell.

Wordsworth poem is not well-known, but it is about a man named Peter Bell.  Peter was a sort of traveling salesman, a "Potter" who hawked his wares throughout England, and so had ample opportunity to see the English countryside and admire the beauty of Nature. 

He two and thirty years or more
Had been a wild and woodland rover;
Had heard the Atlantic surges roar
On farthest Cornwall's rocky shore,
And trod the cliffs of Dover.

He had all the opportunity to admire nature, but he didn't.  Peter the Potter was dense.  In all his travels, he had never grown wiser nor had he learned to love.

He traveled here, he traveled there,--
But not the value of a hair
Was heart or head the better.

The reason why he never grew wiser and never learned to love is that he never let the beauty, the truth of nature reach him.  He was oblivious to the moral code in the natural beauty that surrounded him.

He roved among the vales and streams,
In the green wood and hollow dell;
They were his dwellings night and day,--
But nature ne'er could find the way
Into the heart of Peter Bell.

He was untouched even by the beauty of flowers.  As Wordsworth says in one of his more famous lines:

In vain, through every changeful year,
Did Nature lead him as before;
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.

He was untouched by the marvelous expanse of English sky:

The soft blue shy did never melt
Into his heart; he never felt
The witchery of the soft blue sky!

Peter Bell was a barbarian. 

. . .  Nature could not touch his heart
By lovely forms, and silent weather,
And tender sounds, . . . .

No, even worse.  Peter Bell's insensitivity to the message of nature hardened him, to the point that he had acquired a criminal heart.

Within the breast of Peter Bell
These silent raptures found no place;
He was a Carl as wild and rude
As ever hue-and-cry pursued,
As ever ran a felon's race.

He was unable to love, unable to be faithful, unable to keep promises.  He had gone through a dozen wives without loving a one. 

Of all that lead a lawless life,
Of all that love their lawless lives,
In city or in village small,
He was the wildest far of all;--
He had a dozen wedded wives.  

He lived for himself alone.  And, deadened to the beauty and message of nature and as a result also to authentic human love, he fell prey to all the vices found in the artificial life of the city.

To all the unshaped half-human thoughts
Which solitary Nature feeds
'Mid summer storms or winter's ice,
Had Peter joined whatever vice
The cruel city breeds.    

In one of his travels through Swaledale, Peter decides to take a short cut.  But he gets lost and begins to fear he may not find his way back to the main road.  He happens upon a donkey, but the donkey will not budge and let him ride him.  Unmercifully, he beats the poor beast. 

Ultimately, Peter discovers that the donkey's master has died, and the donkey is faithful to his master.  When the donkey realizes the master is dead, he relents and lets Peter ride him to town.

As he approaches town, he hears dead man's young son crying for his father in the distance, and becomes aware of the tragedy of the man's death.

Perhaps for the first time in his life, Peter has some pangs of conscience. 

His heart is opening more and more;
A holy sense pervades his mind;
He feels what he for human kind
Had never felt before.

This is all rather fortuitously timed, as he happens to be by a Methodist revival meeting, and he hears coming from the tent the words:

"Repent! repent!" he cries aloud,
While yet ye may find mercy;--strive
To love the Lord with all your might;
Turn to him, seek him day and night,
And save your souls alive!

"Repent! repent! though ye have gone,
Through paths of wickedness and woe,
After the Babylonian harlot;
And, though your sins be red as scarlet,
They shall be white as snow!"

The softening of his conscience, the message of the Gospel, his repentance of his past sins, and his faith that they would be forgiven by the Lord brought Peter to his senses.  His repentance, his faith, also allowed him to see the beauty in Nature:

And now is Peter taught to feel
That man's heart is a holy thing;
And Nature, through a world of death,
Breathes into him a second breath,
More searching than the breath of spring.

And Peter Bell, who, till that night,
Had been the wildest of his clan,
Forsook his crimes, renounced his folly,
And, after ten months' melancholy,
Became a good and honest man.

So why is this bizarre, confused couple like Peter Bell?  Because they are apparently deaf to the beauty and message of Nature. 

They don't appreciate the beauty and the meaning of their natural bodies which make them male and female.  They don't appreciate the beauty and the meaning of the natural distinction of the sexes, and their natural complementarity.  They don't appreciate the natural beauty of the conjugal act and its natural end.  They don't appreciate the permanency of their vows, a natural reality of both marriage and promises.  They don't appreciate their natural obligations to their children.  They are deaf to the good.  For twenty years they were married and were deaf to all of it.

No.  Apparently, "nature ne'er could find the way" into the hearts of David and Cat Kaufman.

Whether David and Cat Kaufman's consciences will ever be softened, like Peter's was, and whether that softening will occur when grace beckons them to the beauty of Nature and Nature's God, I don't know.  God knows, and with that we'll let it be.

But I do know this.  I am not going to let poor misguided souls like David and Cat Kaufman who are palpably deaf to nature's music and nature's beauty, and whose hearts and view of reality is warped--in particularly as it relates to sexual identity, sexual inclination, and sexual activity--suggest to me that what they are doing, which is nothing but "vice the cruel city breeds," is beautiful, healthy, and good.

And I am not going to let a leftist media convince me of it either.

Never ever.

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Andrew M. Greenwell is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas, practicing in Corpus Christi, Texas.  He is married with three children.  He maintains a blog entirely devoted to the natural law called Lex Christianorum.  You can contact Andrew at agreenwell@harris-greenwell.com.

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