Reply #24: Hmmm. If I may throw Thomas Jefferson in between you and your husband? :)

[Land Shark]

THomas Jefferson: "In matters of style, swim with the currents. In matters of principle, stand like a rock."

As long as I'm potentially interfering in your marriage, may as well put the architect of the revolution Thomas Paine in for good measure, as a guide on where to "stand firm":

"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."

Downthread, I try to make clear that violations of ideals are not "compromises" of them, unless the ideal (or law, or principle) is REWRITTEN in one's mind or on the law books. Like Thomas Paine says, when that happens it's being "mentally unfaithful to one's self."

We MUST follow our highest purposes as we, in the exercise of our freedom, find them to be. This is true simply because the alternatives are either forms of slavery, (broadly speaking, which is exactly how the Founders defined slavery, as being subject to the will of another, not just southern "ownership" slavery) or being a parrot, a puppet, a vacuous idiot, etc.. ALl of these evils occur when we have no independent mind/soul of our own that we are being mentally faithful to, to the best of our independent abilities.