GIVE IT UP, CHRISTIANS: THE ISSUE OF SCHOOL PRAYER

Alright, so I'm not much for religiosity. And if you know me, you know I don't mind telling people that. I don't mind talking about it. I don't mind engaging people who are curious about it or who want to "get me saved" because of it. The conversations often don't last long when they discover that, almost universally, I know more about the history and mechanisms of their chosen religions than they do. It's a gift.

And yet people still attempt to sway me. The attempt at the sway usually isn't so much centered around converting me to one particular religion, though when that happens it's always Evangelical Christianity. Evangelical Christians seem the world over to be the only people who - like a bad infomercial - won't be content until everyone is herded into buying their system. More, though, it comes in the form of trying to convince me that they're in some kind of misunderstood, persecuted, maligned little group that just wants to be left alone to do their own thing. Of course, if that were the case, I wouldn't be bothered to write what you're (hopefully) about to read.

A Christian friend with whom I've had an ongoing debate over the years just recently forwarded a version of the below essay to me. I did a little research on what I was sent and found that it had been a little bit edited and attributed to the wrong author, someone named Paul Harvey. I don't have a clue who Paul Harvey is, but the following was written by a sporstwriter for a Teas newspaper named Nick Gholson and is intended to be a defense for prayer in schools:

"Some people, it seems, get offended way too easily. I mean, isn't that what all this prayer hullabaloo is all about - people getting offended? At least that's what I hear the courts and the ACLU telling us. If you read Sound Off, you know I am not easily offended. Outside of getting run off the road by a Mack truck, nothing much offends me. Daddy and Mama gave little Nicky a sense of humor.

Some people, however, either weren't born with a sense of humor or they lost it in a crap game. These people are still in the minority, but those of us in the majority are always tippy-toeing around, trying to make sure we don't step on the toes or hurt the feelings of the sense of humorless. And you can bet there's a lawyer standing on every corner making sure we don't.

Take this prayer deal. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Some atheist goes to a high school football game, hears a kid say a short prayer before the game and gets offended. So he hires a lawyer and goes to court and asks somebody to pay him a whole bunch of money for all the damage done to him. You would have thought the kid kicked him in the crotch. Damaged for life by a 30-second prayer? Am I missing something here? I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December. I don't agree with Darwin, but I didn't go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his theory of evolution. Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a 30-second prayer before a football game.

So what's the big deal?

It's not like somebody is up there reading the entire book of Acts. They're just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game. ‘But it's a Christian prayer,’ some will argue. Yes, and this is the United States of America, a country founded on Christian principles. And we are in the Bible Belt. According to our very own phone book, Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1. So what would you expect - somebody chanting Hare Krishna? If I went to a football game in Jerusalem, I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer. If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad, I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer. If I went to a ping-pong match in China, I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha. And I wouldn't be offended. It wouldn't bother me one bit. When in Rome . . .

‘But what about the atheists?’ is another argument. What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We're not going to pass the collection plate. Just humor us for 30 seconds. If that's asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of earplugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer. Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do.

I don't think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world's foundations. Nor do I believe that not praying will result in more serious injuries on the field or more fatal car crashes after the game. In fact, I'm not so sure God would even be at all these games if he didn't have to be. That's just one of the down sides of omnipresence. Do you think God Almighty himself would have watched Spearman beat Panhandle 50-0 Friday night if he didn't have to? If God really liked sports, the Russians would never have won a single gold medal, New York would never play in a World Series and Deion's toe would be healed by now.

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying. God, help us.

And if that last sentence offends you - well, just sue me."

Now I'm not going to comment very much on the specifics of Nick's article. I wasn't around for the 1999 football game Nick was talking about, and taking on most of his patently absurd points would be like trying to teach string theory to a retarded kid. To Nick, I'll only say this: thanks for sharing your opinion. Now stick to sports, because you're a daft fucking idiot when it comes to this issue.

Rather, I'd like to tackle the overall sentiment in the piece, especially since I got a laugh when my friend presented this to me in sort of a "Oh YEAH - take that, sucker!" type of moment, as if this statement nicely presented Christian opinion on the matter of prayer in school. If that's the case...you Christians up in arms over the matter are even less intelligent and aware than I've been giving you credit for. And I really haven't been giving you much credit at all.

OK, I'm going to say something, Christians, and this is going to come as a SEVERE shock to your delicate little systems, so please brace yourselves: no one wants to take away your right to pray. No one. Not the believers of other religions, not the agnostics like yours truly, not the atheists. No one. I can think of very few things I'd like to do less than take away your right to pray. Part of the reason for that is because I don’t give a big blue fuck what you do in your personal life. Another is because there is no way for any of us to do that. Are you surprised? Confused? Let me explain.

You have the ablity to pray anywhere and anytime you want to. Before school. After school. During school. At home. At work. In the car. At the movies. Before fucking. After fucking. During fucking. At sporting events. In libraries. In butcher shops. On top of a mountain. Literally anywhere and anytime you can think of, you should be able to pray. And you know what? You can. Are you reading this in school? Pray real quick. Seriously, do it. I'll wait.

(. . .)

Did you do it? Wow, congrats! No one came to tell you to stop? Do you feel like you did something bad, though? It's OK, because you know what? You didn't. Isn't that amazing? How do I know you didn't do something wrong? What? You think it's illegal to pray in school? Well that's positively silly. It is not now nor has it ever been illegal for you to pray in school. Seriously. No, I'm NOT joking with you.

I find it absolutely fucking hilarious when incompetent braindeads like Nick Gholson try to tell me that "courts strip (Christians) of all our rights". Do they really, Nick? Can you or anyone else please show me where law was passed that prohibits anyone of praying to any god they want to pray to at any time in a public school? Show me where that's happened. Anywhere. I would wait here for all of you, but then I'd be waiting for the rest of my life. Because that's never fucking happened.

You know what HAS happened? Because our government has set up the public school system to protect our children from promotion of ANY AND ALL religions - not just Christianity - the law states that a public school may not sponsor or conduct prayer. That's it. That's all it says. It does not prohibit a public school student from praying anytime or anywhere. During a math test, during lunch, during a football game. Any student. Literally anytime during school. So please, someone explain to me how, as a Christian, your rights are being stripped away by the government merely preventing schools from having to advocate one religion over other beliefs. I am DYING to hear this argument.

And yet you still bellow and caw because you “can't” pray in school. Since we've already established that such a belief is utter bullshit, let's ask a question: as a Christian or a Christian parent, would it sit well with you if your child went to school and, over the intercom or by a teacher, was engaged in Muslim prayer time? Or Jewish prayer time? Or Buddhist prayer time? No? Well then why should children of secular or non-Christian beliefs be engaged in Christian prayer?

Oh, right. You're going back to those two age-old tenets you love so much: that a) Christians make up a majority of the spiritual believers in this country and b) because the United States was founded on Christian principles. Right, I forgot about that. Only one problem there: these two heavily-armed points are worth exactly fuck-all. Are you surprised? Confused? Let me explain.

I can’t argue with you that Christians make up the religious majority of this country. I can’t argue that with you because it’s a fact. However, that being a fact has very little bearing in the scope of this issue. Why? Because the rules and laws governing this country simply don’t equate majority and right under the law. There’s really no simpler way of saying that. Sorry to bust your bubble. With that squashed, let’s tackle your other conceit: that this country was founded on Christian principles. This is only true in the most academic sense, and I would challenge anyone to pick up a copy of the Constitution and show me a facet of it that was designed specifically around Christianity. I would wait for you to do this again, but…well, you know the drill there.

In fact, what you’ll find, if you look closely enough, is that there is actually a specific section that deals with the separation of church and state, a concept that disassociates government from promoting one religion over another (broken record, I know, but you're really not getting it needs to be repeated at every opportunity). Now, call me crazy, but it sounds like that section firmly entrenches us in a base that’s NON-Christian by default. Oh, but right – the no killing, no stealing, etc, etc. Yeah yeah, got that. OK, so here’s this: not killing, not stealing, not infringing on the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness…those have kind of been basic tenets of every sustainable culture since the beginning of time. Half of the "Commandments" that make up the morality of Christianity are based on common sense. The other half aren't in the Constitution. So really, if our Constitution is based on Christian principles, it’s also based on Jewish principles, Muslim principles, Buddhist principles…I mean, you get the idea.

Oh fuck, right, I forgot – “one nation under God”. Well, as we’ve discussed before, Dwight Eisenhower added the “under God” part to the Pledge of Allegiance during his term as President in the 50s, so…there’s that. But yes, it does mention God several times in the Constitution. More often than that, it mentions a “Creator”. So you’ve got that. Although…and look, I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but…it’s not really specific, is it? “Creator”? That could be, you know, a lot of things. And I’m just spitballing here, but the central figure in Christianity is Christ, right? So if the Constitution is based on the principles of Christianity…shouldn’t Jesus get some love in it somewhere? Be mentioned at some point? Because he kind of…you know, isn’t. Anywhere. At all. Is that just a big oversight? It seems like that would be akin to writing an article about the vaunted history of Microsoft and neglecting to mention Bill Gates.

Oh, I know the reason they didn’t mention Jesus in the Constitution – because it’s not fucking based on Christianity. In fact, many of the Founding Fathers who wrote it, developed it and put it together were in fact reformed Christians, more Deists than anything else, who were so turned off by the heavy-handed role of Christianity in England’s government that they excommunicated it from their lives altogether. And then they sought to make sure the exact same thing didn’t happen again in America. So they wrote our laws to ensure it wouldn’t, and this is the basis of what you find so fascist and inconvenient today: that the government doesn’t see Christianity as more special than any other religion. I mean, that’s what we’re really talking about here, right? You’re pissed because you're just just not getting a theological handjob from the folks in Washington DC.

And with that in mind, I guess I’d just have to ask…is your personal faith – or your religion itself – so weak that a simple declaration of governmental non-endorsement can set you off in such a panic? Because that’s what it looks like to me. You act as if the government has attempted to prevent you from practicing your religion, when in fact it’s done nothing of the sort. It’s merely stated that it and its employees and representatives cannot support or promote one religion over another. It says nothing of what you can do in your own head and heart. And actually – and maybe you just glossed over this part – it specifically guarantees you the right to practice your religion anywhere you want, anytime you want. It’s called Freedom of Religion. Still a little difficult to grasp? Maybe take a nap, relax yourself, and then dive back into it. I know the notion is a daunting one.

My advice to all you Christians who don’t understand our laws and how they work: take a course in civics and get a fucking life. You and I both know that this isn’t about rights or liberty or the Constitution: it’s about another chance for you to whore for attention. Fess up to that. How spineless are you if you think the government can take away your right to pray? It’s almost too stupid to even conceive of, and the Christian arrogance that people are out to get them – a lawyer on every corner to prevent them from praying – isn’t just a paranoid myth, it’s a belief that makes you look like lunatics. If you can’t conceive of the difference between someone not wanting you to pray and someone not wanting your faith imposed upon them, you’ve got a host of problems that I’m sure you’re not even aware of.

If Nick Gholson’s opinion is really the rallying cry for offended Christians, I hope I become the Pied Fucking Piper of people who shake their heads at such idiocy. And by all means, Evangelicals, keep judging us secularites and bawling that you're being taken to the cleaners by a government and a nation of people that are out to get you. I'll be right here to explain to you how the world actually works.

THE TOP TEN MOVIES OF 2008

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Just for fun, here's what I think are the best movies of the year. Discuss. Dissect. Hurl insults in my general direction. Bottom line: I'm right, you're wrong. Why? Because fuck you, that's why.

THE TOP TEN MOVIES OF 2008

HONORABLE MENTION: CLOVERFIELD, DEFINITELY MAYBE, THE BANK JOB, SNOW ANGELS, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, TROPIC THUNDER, ROCK N ROLLA

10. (tie) THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON/THE DARK KNIGHT
9. FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL
8. RELIGULOUS
7. DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON FROM HIS FATHER
6. FROST/NIXON
5. WALL-E
4. ROLE MODELS
3. IRON MAN
2. THE WRESTLER
1. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

OF MOVING ON AND HAVING BEEN

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There's this funny little routine you have to go through just to get in the room. They make you put on this hypoallergenic gown that feels roughly like fiberglass and latex gloves that seem snug enough to have been made for children only (which is saying a lot, something you know if you've ever seen my small freak-hands). If you leave the room, you have to trash them. When you come back, you have to go through the process all over again. I'm told it's to stop the spread of various viruses and bacteria that can easily be transmitted from patient to patient. Though for some reason, they don't make you tie the gown. I'm bothered by this, as it seems purpose-defeating.

But them's the rules at the rehab center that has become my grandfather's Last Big Stop. Well, they call it a "rehab center", though taking a look around…egh. Let's just say that most of the people here – strangely referred to as "patients", all in various stages of near-death – don't seem to be rehabbing so much as practicing to be corpses. This is less a "rehab center" and more of a "morgue pre-party".

I wasn't here last time. What my grandfather doesn't know is that this is the same exact rehab center where my grandmother died twelve years ago. He doesn't know because he didn't visit her there. We didn't know she'd be gone so quickly. No one's telling him, either. And that's a blessing – it would only make this worse.

Worse than this would be…pretty bad. I find my grandfather hunched over in his wheelchair, hands folded in his lap, staring at the ground. I can't decide if this is more or less heartbreaking than when I saw him two days prior, laying immobile in his bed. I decide on "more heartbreaking" and fight the first of the many urges I have to cry that afternoon. It's a struggle. He's breathing hard, even with the oxygen tank he's become a Siamese twin to ratcheted up to 11 (please go ahead and laugh at that small joke – if he'd ever seen the movie, he'd have appreciated it). His nose is running. His old-person tracksuit is coated with a smattering of goldfish cracker crumbs. Sadly, this is a good sign – it means he's eaten today. In the cache of euphemisms that have become the Mailey family's manifesto over the past few weeks, this could aptly be categorized as just above A Piece of Encouraging News and just below The Best We Can Hope for At This Point.

It's not until I sit down on the bed and touch his hand that he knows I'm there. I decide to blame this on his hearing (or lack thereof) rather than to congratulate myself on my ninja-like approach. He does his best to smile, and even though that's a failing proposition these days, I know he's glad to see me. I've brought him some Lotto scratch-off cards. Every day, wasting down to nothing faster and faster, he's still scratching off these goddamned Lotto cards. "Wouldn't it be something," he says dryly, "if I were to hit the big one at this point? That would be a laugh." Today it doesn't sound that funny.

He gets winded scratching off the first card and asks me for my help finishing it off. I do; it's not a winner. Best we go on to the second one, he says, and so I scratch that one too. This one produces a veritable treasure chest: $20. Look Pa, you're a winner!" He smiles again, then tells me to keep it. I make some joke about him using it to tip the nurses, and he mumbles something to the effect of their heads being designated for assignment in their asses. "Keep it. Buy yourself a drink in the airport this evening. What the hell am I going to do with it in here?" The last sentence is said without a hint of humor, and immediately following it, his gaze goes back to the faux marbled tile. It's clear there's not going to be a lot of conversation here today. So I hold his hand.

A minute or two later, I remember something I had forgotten to ask him about during my previous visit: "Hey Pa? I heard that (my cousin) Shawn came up to visit you the other day. Did you have a nice visit?"

He raises his head, "Yes, it was very nice. It was good to see him."

"I bet."

A few seconds pass, and before he puts his head down again: "Yeah, Shawn came to visit, your uncles are in here everyday, you came from California.…you'd think I was dying or somethin'." This time it's definitely intended to be a joke. I laugh, wonder how he even has the strength to bother, and fight the urge to cry once again.

**********

There are countless things I'd love to tell you about my grandfather, but most of them are personal stories that merely define him in my eyes and wouldn't necessarily in yours. But if there's one seminal item, one character-cementing thing that my grandfather did that would measure him up against anyone, it's this: he built his own house.

To me, that is…that is something. This man was not an architect. He had exactly zero training as a builder – of ANYTHING, much less houses. He was in the Navy. He studied business. He worked on the railroad. And then one day, he wanted a house for that he and his love, my Granny, could raise a family in. So he went out, read a few books, bought enough lumber to deforest a good chunk of Central Pennsylvania, and he fucking built that house.

Seriously. He had some help pouring the foundation and had friends in the trade help him with the plumbing and electric wiring. Beyond that, he built his house with his own two hands. Just him. My grandfather. Pa. Now, really...how many of you know anyone who's done that? How many of you know a man who wanted a house, read a book about building houses, built the house, and then proceeded to lord over the Great American Family within it for fifty years?

I know one.

My grandfather did what a man does – a fact that did not, I can tell you, go unnoticed by my grandmother. Granny once told a story: "You know, the day your grandfather got home from the War, I was waxing the floor in the kitchen. He opened the door, and I saw him standing there and nearly fainted. We didn't even move for a couple of minutes. We just stared at each other. And he looked so sexy in his uniform…" And just like that, she trailed off like an old woman does when she remembers fondly. I was younger at the time this tale was told, and curious, I asked what happened. Granny composed herself and said only, "Well, let's just say I had to wax the floor again."

Oddly enough, Pa's favorite thing to do in his house was contaminate it. For decades the man smoked 8 – EIGHT! – cigars per day. He remained adamant that it was not a bad habit because, much like even our finest Presidents, he "didn't inhale". Perhaps it wasn't on his mind, but the rest of us who had the privilege of staying there for any amount of time existed in an atmosphere that could only be described as brownish. The air in and around my grandparents' house was acrid, hefty and pervasive, coating everything from clothes to food to, perhaps, even a few souls. My grandfather's solution to this problem? He bought a ten-inch high air purifier and set it on his chairside table. As you might guess, that functioned about as well as a band-aid on the Titanic. Pa puffed away contently, undeterred, until one day, at a doctor's appointment, he was told that his smoking habit might be contributing to his heart disease.

Pa quit smoking that day and never had another pull off a cigar in his life. This left Pa with a dearth of ways to torture his beloved family. And that's about when he decided that if he couldn't ruin our lungs, he would ruin our vision.

One day, I walked into my grandparents' house to find that Pa had gone quite out of his head and had electric-blue carpet installed in his family room. And when I say "electric-blue", I want to be frank about just how electric it was: I became the only middle-schooler in a fifty-mile radius to have acid flashbacks. It was like sitting on top of an azure sun. Just being around it made your body temperature spike by ten degrees. It was garish. It was uncalled for. It was retina-searing. And my grandfather LOVED it. It was his favorite color. No one else understood. Chalk it up in the barrel full of things that Pa did that we didn't understand. Another of note, just for posterity: the man watched upwards of 10 hours of television per day, yet never sprung for cable or even a TV that had a working antenna. He traveled back and forth across his blue carpet dozens of times every day, manually changing the channel and then complaining when the reception sucked. All of this in an effort to watch an episode of M*A*S*H* that he'd only seen sixty times before.

There are enough stories like this to fill books. Maybe it would be a book you'd read, and maybe not. Just in case you're here for the condensed version, I'll leave you with this:

When my grandmother died, my grandfather sold that house. His house. The one that he built, by himself, for her. That house was iconic in my mind, a place of countless happy pastimes and life experiences. I was flabbergasted that he could part with it. Some of the family was outright angry. But to Pa, his house was no longer a home. Not without Granny. Now, it was just a structure fixed in place over everything he'd lost. Before he'd even moved out, it was a memory. The reason he got down on his hands and knees and created it from nothing was gone, and as far as he was concerned, the house had served its purpose. It was now obsolete, so he left it.

Like I said, my grandfather did what a man does.

**********

I sat with Pa that day, the last day I would ever see him, for a good forty-five minutes. Conversation, spotty and infrequent, took up a grand total of about thirty seconds of that visit. He mostly bowed his head and looked down, squeezing my fingers tightly in his, and God, I wished that I could do anything to make this stop for him. How is it that just at the point when the sum of your life's actions should be called upon to build your dignity to its highest level…it can be so unceremoniously and callously drained from you? Frail, diapered, runny-nosed, struggling. Miserable. Watching it is pure and unadulterated agony. I can't even imagine feeling it.

It was time to go. It was time to go, and I felt like I'd offered him little. I'd worried about this earlier, that there was nothing I could really do for him. My mother told me that just having me there would be a tremendous lift for him. He didn't look lifted. He looked just like he looked when I came in: broken. There was nothing I could fix. But knowing that and accepting that are two wholly different animals.

I stood up, kissed him on the head, hugged him, and said goodbye. Our last goodbye. I told myself how lucky I was to have this moment, that most people don't ever get to say goodbye for real. I didn't feel lucky. He hugged back as best he could, told me to be good. I walked to the trashcan, started to disavow myself of the gloves and gown. "This is it," my frustrated, scared brain screamed at me. "This is it! Don't you realize that? Tell him how much he means to you! Say something! Say something, you idiot!"

I turned and looked at him. "I'll be back at the end of August," I barely creaked. "It's my ten-year high school reunion. Can you believe it's been ten years?"

"Isn't that somethin'," he replied, trying to look up.

"So you hang on until, then, OK?"

"OK Geoffrey," he lied.

"I'll see you then," I lied right back. And I turned and walked for the door. I almost made it out.

"Geoffrey?"

I know I must have turned around instantly, but standing there, I felt like it took me half a minute to rotate.

"Yeah?"

He offered a sickly wave…and yet made it seem as though it was the grandest of gestures. "Thanks for coming all this way," he said. "To say goodbye to your old Pa."

The words hit like a wave. A Gibraltar-sized rock formed in my throat where my Adam's apple used to be and my knees all but buckled and gave out from under me. Somehow, for the last time that day, I successfully fought the tears back. It had nothing to do with projecting stoicism or feeling foolish or being a man. My grandfather had only four days left on this planet at that moment, and I sure as hell wasn't going to let his last memory of me be one with wet eyes. So I smiled.

"You got it."

I'm 28 years old; it was the first time in my life that I've ever felt like an adult. All I did was fly home, and that's the kind of man my grandfather was: when I could give him nothing, he turned it into everything. The old bastard.

A prophet much wiser than I once theorized that a man stumbles around most of his life confused and in various stages of inebriation, his vision clouded to one degree or another, except on two occasions: when he finds himself, and when he faces death. I've often thought that one can consider himself truly lucky if those events don't happen at the same time.

If someone had walked into that room with us at that point, they wouldn't have known that something was off, something was discordant. They would have just seen two men – one old, one young, one a grandfather, one a grandson – about to part one final time. They would have gone about their day and never questioned the fact that they were both wearing glasses. It shouldn't have seemed funny, shouldn't have seemed unnecessary, but it was.

Because…what did we need glasses for? At that moment, we were just a couple of lucky fellas with 20/20 vision.

I will miss you, old man. I will miss you.

THINKING IS DEAD; ABORTION AS AN EXAMPLE

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Well…I haven't written anything in a while that would make someone hate me. It's been too long. So I'm going to kill that streak. Incidentally, are any of you aware how nice it is to have real opinions – things you actually believe and hold in your core to be steadfastly correct – that actually upset people to the point where they don't want to engage you in conversation? Let me tell you something: it's fantastic to be genuinely controversial and to know that you're not so simply to prod people into being reactionary. Whether you're liked or not, there's a fat piece of ego wedged in simply NOT being a talking head. I'll go so far as to say that I take pride in speaking openly about topics most people avoid and both refusing to bow to those who would rather not rock the boat and also accept any static I get in return. It's all part of the territory, but I'm downtrodden to find that it's territory traipsed by relatively few.

You should all remember a skit from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in 1975 that involved Chevy Chase, playing an HR rep, giving Richard Pryor a word association test during an employment interview. It starts off simple, with meaningless words being spit back and forth, until Chase decides to up the ante:

CHASE: White.
PRYOR: Black.
C: Bean.
P: Pod.
C: Negro.
(beat)
P: Whitey
C: Tarbaby.
(several beats)
P: What'd you say?
C: Tarbaby.

From this point on, the "test" devolves into a screaming match; soon, the two are openly bellowing their answers inches from each other's face:

CHASE: SPEARCHUCKER!
PRYOR: WHITE TRASH!
C: JUNGLE BUNNY!
P: HONKY!
C: SPADE!
P: HONKY HONKY!
C: NIGGER!
P: DEAD HONKY!

It wasn't just one of the funniest moments ever on TV, it was one of, if not THE, most politically incorrect moments ever on TV. It's a skit that no one would dare touch in this day and age, despite the fact that it was clearly mocking not only racism but white authority, employment discrimination and a slew of other social issues. The sad f*cking fact is that it's just not OK anymore to make certain kinds of statements – on TV, in a letter to the editor, in person – even if they're shrouded, for one reason or another, in a subversive or satirical context. It amazes me to this day that people still decry that skit as racist or mean or improper. Hearing someone say anything akin to the previous immediately tells me that A) they don't have a sense of humor, B) they don't/didn't understand a single thing about comedy's role in the Civil Rights Movement and C) they know absolutely nothing about what Richard Pryor – even a coked-out, paranoid, depressed and often delusional Richard Pryor – was all about. If you're a sentient being you have to realize that free speech is in danger not just because people are so afraid of offending someone else...but because the population at large is so much more ignorant than anyone (except myself, apparently) is willing to give them credit for.

So it blew my mind this afternoon when I read a letter that was published in the November 2007 issue of PLAYBOY that spoke out about the controversy and PC-ness that blatantly cloaks the abortion issue right now in this country. Not only am I amazed that someone had the balls to say it out loud – they're sure as HELL going to take some undue flak for their statements – but I'm more than a little disappointed that I didn't realize and state it somewhere MYSELF years go. I'm more than happy to admit that Brett McGinnis of West Chester, PA is not only my new hero, but that I'm resolutely envious of him right now:

"In the August READER RESPONSE Tim Johnson writes about the atrocity that has taken place with the Supreme Court's ruling on late-term abortion. I am so tired of this debate. First, both Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers are guilty of playing people. The issue is not 'choice' or 'life' – who would be anti-choice or anti-life? The issue at hand is abortion, specifically whether a fetus should be given the rights of an infant. It has nothing to do with women's rights. If we decided, through either a metaphysical argument or scientific evidence, that a fetus possessed the rights accorded a newborn, then abortion would be illegal regardless of the fact that a fetus occupies a woman's uterus. On the other hand, if we decided a fetus is nothing more than a cluster of cells, then by all means go ahead and remove it as you would a cancerous tumor. I cannot believe the debate has been allowed to go on this long with such shameful, slick rhetoric."

If you hear a rumbling, it can only be the collective sycophantic mewling of billions (or, in the case of my blog, tens) of self-important liberals/feminists who can't get past the sentence that reads, "It has nothing to do with women's rights." That rumbling is such a glorious noise because, if I'm on the mark in my reasoning for posting this entry, someone will go off the rails blasting Mr. McGinnis's opinion as a personal affront to the entirety of equality amongst men and women. If there's a God, some or all of those responses will be kind enough to label the fellow or – fingers crossed - myself a "sexist pig". Perhaps those with a clichéd vocabulary will go so far as to label one of us a "misogynist". When that happens, I'm going to laugh all the way to a back alley in Tijuana. Because their rancor will have distracted them from the very, very, very basic point of the argument.

Notice that McGinnis didn't bother to expose his opinion on the abortion issue. I won't either. There's a time and place for that, but it's not now and not in this argument. What he IS doing is pointing out that the REAL core of this debate is being ignored in favor of special interest groups who want to drag the all of us in one direction or another. It's feminism vs. religion, "progression" vs. "tradition", and most uniquely disgusting, Democrat vs. Republican. It's a bunch of people spitting in the face of the people across the aisle, blustering and shaking fists and feeling full of righteous vigor. They're like Chevy and Richard battling it out from across the desk except, unlike Chevy and Richard, they don't have a true meaning at either of their centers. All the bellyaching is now more about political clout and perceived respect and narcissism rather than anything that resembles truth. It's more about protracting the conflict than whether or not there are lives to be saved.

McGinnis's letter reminded me of an argument I made once in a high school paper that my female teacher ripped me a new assh*le for; it was, quite honestly, one of the last times I can remember where I got less than an A on a written assignment. Having seen what my own father went through in his divorce – being systematically ignored and rubber-stamped at every turn by a legal system that attempts to save time in determining custody and alimony by chronically siding with the mother rather than the most competent of the two parents on a case-by-case basis – I posited merely that there should be a DISCUSSION about the father having some rights in the event that the mother decides to terminate a pregnancy. Ceremoniously ignoring the point I was trying to make, the Teaching C*nt Who Shall Remain Nameless sketched on my paper:

"C – You do realize that women actually carry the babies, right?"

Thinking back to the burning, confrontational feeling that remark left me with, I shuddered as I began to wonder how many really stupid smart people must be walking around out there. And then I began to wonder what other issues – really important issues that are important for so many different reasons, both great and small – have been truly hijacked by causeheads and movements that are, at their darkest, just as corrupt and dangerous as any corporation or government installation. And then I really started to quake in my boots as I realized that my "teacher's" bastardized view of the world didn't have a lasting impact on me. It did nothing to change the way I thought about my platforms, why we fight for the things we fight for or how we go about fighting for them.

So at the end of the day the point to this stream of conscious isn't about racism or abortion or free speech – it's that I'm worried to the tits that the ability to think has been blown out the back of humanity's collective brain. At least on the grandest scale. Thankfully, I'm left with a sense of peace (and a small bruise from all the back-patting) that I'm not swallowed up enough in my own limited worldview to believe that I've got everything figured out.

All the same, to paraphrase and disjoint Oscar Wilde...I live in terror of not being politically incorrect.

FOR MY PIGMAN

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Someone had tried to name him "Buckshot".

Actually, that's a lie – someone HAD NAMED him Buckshot. Of course, that's not really a surprise. This was in a part of Virginia called the Blue Ridge, a rural area where one could find the highest (read: lowest) order of the redneck/mountain hick hybrid. People with more teeth than brain cells – thanks, generations of inbreeding! And at the short end of that inbred mindset was a fat little black and white dog; when I came upon him, he was in a 5x3 cage with an index card taped to the corner.

"Buckshot".

He was, as the classic denomination goes, a mutt. A something. A tweener. He had spots like a Dalmatian, a body like a sausage and a head…well, like something that didn't belong in either of those two categories. As soon as I approached the cage, he came right up to me, bounding and wagging his tail. Please, though, don't think this is going to be one of those "But the dog picked me!" kind of stories. That would be a lie. The truth is that this dog couldn't have cared less who approached him. He could just get worked up about anything. Squirrels. Cotton. Air. Any excuse to pretend like there was something to get excited about, he would take it.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Back to that part about not knowing what kind of dog he was for a second. I remember specifically asking the lady at the SPCA what she thought he might have been. "He's a Jack Russell and something, probably," she chirped happily. When I tried to dig for more, she got just a little bit too serious for the moment, leaned in, and said, "Best not ask questions, lest you upset the lady-friend you got with ya." I'm not going to try to tell you that I have ever known what that meant, but thinking about it still nearly causes a bowel release out of pure fear. Remember: mountain redneck people. They're officially 1.5 times more dangerous than your ordinary white trash and infinitely more frightening. Sorry, carry on.)

Upon getting him back to my apartment, he had already started to grow on me. Cute little fella, that of the accidentally adorable breed. And squeaky. I didn't know it at the time, but he would never really bark that much. When he got jazzed about something – usually someone moving more than an inch or the fact that he'd just found his tail again – he'd just grunt and squeal a lot. Sounded more like a pig than a dog. My then-girlfriend Jenna and I decided that "Buckshot" wasn't going to f*cking cut it. And though my hyperadolescent mind could only conjure up the most unoriginal and pop-cultury name imaginable – I called him Jameson, after my favorite brand of whiskey – the name I'd utter most frequently more fit the bill: Pigman.

My Pigman. The two of us were a pretty good team. After Jenna and I parted ways we'd pick up chicks together (I have to believe that some or all of the one times I'd get laid in the period when we were on our own were mostly or directly due to his ability to positively smolder the human female's heart), watch movies together, roll around on the carpet together, sometimes vomit together after I tied on a few too many (his bile was sympathy bile). During a summer where I stayed in Harrisonburg, everyone else I knew was back at home. The area surrounding James Madison University was a ghost town.

The Pigman was all I had. It was that balmy triad of months when we really bonded the most. It was that time where my dog became my companion. If you're one of those people who thinks that you can't truly come to love an animal, to befriend a lesser mammal, to need a little stubby-legged ball of fur more than you need water and oxygen…well, maybe you can't. But I did. It no longer annoyed me that he dug into my crotch everyday at 7AM to be taken out, or that he somehow positioned his 20-inch body on the bed in such a way that he seemed to take over every square inch of mattress. I considered it – and still consider it – and honor to be at his service. How else could I have felt? When I was down, he'd instinctively jump onto my lap and lay his head on my chest. When I needed a laugh, he'd run headlong into the screen door. When I was sick, he wouldn't move an inch from my side.

How do you repay something that gives itself totally to you and asks nothing in return but your love and attention? That's simple: you never stop loving it, never stop attending.

The day that I had to give him away still was and will likely be, for a very long time, the worst day of my life. I was in transition. I didn't know where my next home would be. I didn't know what my next job would be. My life had become a scattershot of impracticality and improbability. But Jenna didn't have that problem. She was about to move to a new place. She knew where her adult life was starting, knew where she was laying down a foundation, and knew that it was going to be horrifying. But in this place she knew no one. Since Jameson loved her and since she loved him, it made perfect sense: he should hop a train (er, well, the backseat of Jenna's car) to Connecticut. It was time to let him go. Someone else needed a Summer Buddy.

Two years later, just about the time I was feeling less than devastated about the way things worked out, Jenna had moved back to Harrisburg, PA - our hometown - and brought Jameson with her. Now a bona-fide LA boy, I was back for a brief vacation and decided to pop in for a visit. I was hoping that he'd recognize me and react in his usual way: sprint fifteen times from the front of the apartment to the back, grunt in his piggly way, jump into my chest, knock me down, lick me too hard for far too long, then walk in a circle three times and nearly pass out on the floor, tuckered out from all the wildly unecessary excitement. But this reunion of sorts featured a melancholy ending to our story. He didn't recognize me, didn't squeal, didn't sprint, didn't remember. He whined when I tried to pick him up. I was unfamiliar. I had gone from companion to manhandler. Seeing him after that would have just been too hard. I remember him peeking out the window as a left, but it was more of a cautious observation than a longing send-off.

It was then that I was taught a rough lesson in human-pet relations: when you let a pet go – willingly or unwillingly – you never really let it go. Not if you have any kind of heart beating in your chest. But they let go of you.

Jameson, my Pigman, was put to sleep this Sunday afternoon. He fought a long, hard battle with a litany of illnesses and maladies, one of which was just too much for the little guy to handle. He was brave throughout, I'm told, trudging through countless medications, procedures, examinations and surgeries. He was never without a comforting presence. Jenna, redefining what it means to "have a pet", spent thousands of dollars over the last several years piggybacking him up one medical mountain and down the next, thousands of hours giving him the only thing he really needed: unconditional, unwavering love. His body may have failed him, but his keepers most certainly did not.

For a long time, I felt guilty – I felt as though I'd either forgotten or discounted one-half of that simple equation: never stop loving, never stop attending. I've always been bad with math, but never in my calculus class had botching a proof cost me the affection of a small dog that was the most important thing in the world to me. Only recently have I considered that, though I may have sputtered in my calculations, I arrived at the correct solution despite my best efforts to muck it up. By giving Jameson away, he got the best of everything – better than I could ever have given him. Jenna was his best-case scenario. I was a glorified kennel. My only hope now is that he's in a place where he remembers me not as a grabby stranger but as an again-familiar, unending source of happiness that was reluctant to let him go. Because of one thing, there is no question: I never stopped loving him.

Life sometimes works in mysterious ways, they say, but sometimes it's just good to know that life works.

Goodbye, friend. You had the head of a bat, the brain of an infant, the spirit of a pig and the heart of a lion. I fear that what I gave you amounted to so little, but I smile when I think of your eminent glee every time I came home, woke up, walked to the porch, rolled over, coughed, breathed or performed the lowest brain function possible. I will think of you every time I successfully stretch out in my bed. Being comfortable won't be so comfortable ever again. I guess that's my funny way of saying…I will miss you.

If there are squirrels in Heaven, don't let them rattle your cage.

GO F*CK YOURSELVES, PETA C*NTS! (VOL. 72)

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Oh, PETA. Poor misguided, mismanaged, disillusioned PETA. Like the scourge that is the Herpes, you just seem to irritate, go dormant, irritate, go dormant again…but never really go away.

According to PETA's own statistics, there are over 40,000 people in this country involved in the underground dogfighting industry. Forty thousand! How can the human brain even calculate such a sum? With that in mind, can I point out something that should be obvious to everyone who isn't retarded? I was never a math whiz, but with over 300,000,000 people in this country…that leaves, by my count, well over 299,960,000 people who aren't involved in the underground dogfighting industry.

But let's step out of our heads, give you a ton of credit – way more than you troglodytes should ever deserve for anything – and guesstimate that there might be 960,000 additional dogfighting supporters in this country, if not active participants. That would make, even with all of my flattering inflation, less than 1/300^th of this country dogfighting supporters. Of course, as with any sentient being, I can draw a conclusion from this: even at its worst case scenario generation, America doesn't support dogfighting.

It's a point that needs to be made, because PETA acts as if the general public is madly in love with watching dogs kill each other in a humid basement. Do you really need me to assert that dogfighting is barbaric? That it's unconscionable? That it's one of the lowest levels of mammalian degradation? That anyone guilty of practicing it should be thrown in a dark, violent prison? Does all that even need to be proffered in rational discourse?

Why then, PETA, are you trying to derail the Constitutionally-granted due process of an innocent man?

Make no mistake about it, you can't paint it any other way – Michael Vick, as of this very moment (and until the gavel comes down for the final time in his trial this November), is an innocent man as defined by the law. There's nothing else to be said about it. Of course Dan Shannon, who, as PETA's Assistant Director of Campaigns, is perhaps one of the biggest degenerates in the world, doesn't worry about things like the Bill of Rights or the judicial system.

On ESPNEWS today, Big Danny was asked the following…

ESPNEWS ANCHOR: "Dan, how do you balance a scheduled series of protests against the argument that Michael Vick hasn't been found guilty of any criminal charge?"

BIG DANNY SHANNON: "Uh, well, again, whatever happens in the court of law won't change the fact that these dogs were found on his property, they did have injuries consistent with dogfighting, and that there was all this illegal equipment. Uh, those facts aren't gonna change, and we feel that those facts speak for themselves. It's up to the courts to decide that he's guilty or innocent of a crime, but uh…everybody knows that somethin' wrong was goin' on at Michael Vick's property."

(EDITOR'S NOTE: That's an exact quote that I obtained with a tenuous level of patience and the help of my DVR. In other words, you're welcome.)

Now keep in mind PETA's MO over the past few weeks: though Michael Vick is an innocent man, they've petitioned/protested the NFL multiple times attempting to get Michael Vick banned from the NFL. They've done the same at the Nike HQ and will continue to do so in the coming weeks until Nike discontinues sales of all Michael Vick-related apparel and merchandise.

This tells me two really interesting things about PETA:

1. They are dropping an awful lot of money trying to destroy the life of someone who, until today, hadn't even seen the inside of a courthouse on the charges they're ramped up about. They're committing serious resources based on a presumption of guilt based on evidence that no one has seen.

2. They see themselves as above the law.

Whenever there's a rape accusation made in this country – especially if it's made against a noteworthy person or collection of persons – a similar rush to illegitimate irrationality occurs. The man is always convicted in the court of public opinion before he's even given the opportunity to sniff a jury of his peers. He's lambasted with hatred and vitriol by the entirety of the media and labeled by any citizen with a cursory knowledge of the situation as a monster. After all, rape is a terrible crime, is it not?

But that's not really the point, is it kids? The point is that, while rape may be of the most abhorrent acts in existence…no one is guilty of such a crime, legally, until they're convicted in court. Am I beating a dead horse here? Well, maybe PETA has an Equine Corpse Sensitivity Division. They're just going to have to come after me, because I think I'm the only one that gets this.

So what if an ACCUSED rapist, someone who hasn't been brought to trial, finds themselves convicted in the court of public opinion? What if they find themselves verbally and physically attacked on their way about their daily lives? What if they find people protesting them with signs everywhere they go, lies being spewed about the "facts" of their case so that an alleged-rape-victim-sympathetic public turns against them? What if they then find these same people are trying to cut off the means of their livelihood?

Weird. Because that happened. Last year. To almost (if not) every one of the Accused in the Duke Lacrosse Rape Scandal. What's funny about that – what's hilarious, really – is that the case against them was such a sham that the DA got fired for his negligence and later admitted that there wasn't nearly enough evidence to even charge them in the first place. He just knew the public would want blood after hearing the drugged-out stripper's story.

Funny how PETA is doing exactly the same thing to a man who, say "Thank You" again to the Constitution, is innocent of the charges brought against him. Except he's not even accused of raping anyone. He's accused of promoting dogfighting, a charge he steadfastly denies. That's neither here nor there to PETA. To them, it's clear that SOMETHING happened at Michael Vick's house. The facts of what that "Something" is, however, is really of laughable inconsequence to them. They've got a scapegoat, they've got a platform, and now they're going to try to ruin someone's life before he's even had the chance to defend it. In a world that's becoming increasingly Elementary School in the way terrorist organizations deal with perceived opposition – and trust me, they are nothing less than a terrorist organization – PETA is bringing an assault rifle to the rumored fistfight under the playground's old oak tree.

And like a Summer's Eve factory, PETA continues to churn out d*uchebags, like Big Danny Shannon, to sell their tainted product. In their America, the appearance of dogfighting is grounds enough to deny someone their liberty. In their America, protests happen and lives get ruined before lawful responsibility is determined. Because it would be impossible to just speak out against dogfighting in general, riding on the publicity of the case itself rather than laying the blame on the most famous person, and wait for the trial to be over to decry or excuse the man based on the evidence. And it would be wrong to le the public decide for themselves the "truth" after reviewing the evidence. Dogs are dead, that's the highest tragedy that could ever be, and some poor b*stard – really, any poor b*stard, but hopefully a high-profile b*stard with a ton of money – is going to pay.

Personally, I think most people involved in PETA just want to protect animals. They're either too stupid or too high to do some research and find out that the executive infrastructure of the cult is staffed by nutcases and social deviants. If you want to protect animals, do what I do: become an ASPCA Guardian. Here's a link to the donation site; put your f*cking money where your mouth is. If you'd rather spend all your time and means trying to sabotage football players who may or may not have done anything wrong, then you're just a f*cking joke. All I can do is pray to God that something furry kills you one day. Hopefully one day soon so this planet can get a little less deranged.

FOLLOW UP TO JERRY FALWELL BLOG; I'M AMAZING

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First of all, if you haven't yet read my brutally honest piece on Jerry Falwell's death, please do so. It can only be good for you to think and, well...basically, we both know you need to think more.

When you've done that, read my good buddy Josh's blog here. What you'll find is an incredibly insightful, thoughtful and personal response to my blog - some of it in agreement, some of it contrary - from someone whom I have a lot of respect for.

Either way, can you bother yourself for a minute or two to join the f*cking debate, please? It's pretty friggin' important, perhaps even moreso than ultra-important things like boobs and Sour Patch Kids.

BY TALKING ABOUT JERRY, I'M REFUSING TO TALK ABOUT JERRY

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Yeesh.

You know, after all these years of hating Jerry Falwell – hating him, literally filled with hate and not afraid to say it, as he was someone who so dearly deserved every bit of negative energy that could have thrown in his smug, sweating face – I was hoping this would feel different. I expected a little more jubilation on my part, as though some kind of mythical beast had been slain and a great battle had been won. Alas, I'm instead feeling something more akin to a major anticlimactic event. The knight who thrust sword into the terrifying dragon has come back to report that it was definitely imposing…but it was made merely of Paper Mache, popsicle sticks and Elmer's Glue-All.

Mostly, I feel as though I've wasted my time. I feel as though my anger and fervor has been directed, all the while, at a mirage. A scarecrow. That's not to say that Jerry Falwell wasn't a bad fellow – he was the worst of fellows. He was a greedy, ignorant, racist, sexist, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-logical thought and anti-American bag of wind. He was – by the most specific, poignant and accurate meaning of the term – a motherfucking asshole.

But what of it? Now that he's gone, isn't another more racist, more ignorant, bigger motherfucking asshole going to take his place? Probably. Take your pick. Pat Robertson? You're a fucking lunatic – come on down!

And it was that realization this week that hit me so firmly and so quickly that I've been thinking about it ever since. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard…these guys are dicks. They're veritable monsters, but in an ideological sense, they are (were), by themselves, just one person. They're not to blame for the scourging of liberty in this country. They're just the messengers. The auctioneers.

So I didn't spend this week being glad that Jerry Falwell keeled over. I spent this week being pissed off that so many mindless fools paid him credence for so long. That so many non-thinkers congregated and gave him power. And that, given the chance, they'll just up and do it again with someone else.

Jerry Falwell isn't to blame. You jackasses that supported – and, much worse, acted out his wishes – are. Yep, I'm looking dead at you, Evangelicals.

One of my good friends – an Evangelical himself, but one who, as far as I'm concerned, is in the minority as far as the application of the group's beliefs go – told me this week that I was predictable. That he knew I was going to go for the easy Falwell angle. He was probably expecting me to throw together some angry tirade full of vitriol and name-calling (which he got to an extent and which will continue to some degree – hey, I'm brash and unconcerned with decorum). To that end he's going to probably be a little disappointed in me, and there's no doubt I'm going to be repeating myself here, going over ground I've already footprinted rather heavily. However, with all due respect, I'm much less concerned with being predictable than I am with applying my stamp of disgust and disapproval to my small fraction of the Internets on an issue that concerns me deeply. What hasn't affected me yet, but has affected so many others, I fear is in serious danger of causing havoc in my life. In fact, I think the biggest mistake I could make is keeping quiet for fear of seeming a broken record.

Plain English: you, Evangelicals, you are fucking ruining my once-great country, and frankly I'm goddamned sick and tired of it.

Falwell was your poster boy, and rightfully so. Jerry may have been backwards and criminally uncultured, but what he wasn't was stupid. In the late 1970's/early 1980's this man had a finger on the pulse of the Evangelical nation, and what he saw was a group of people (uncoordinated sheep) that could be rallied (herded) under a common ideology (discriminatory fantasy of fear) and molded (brainwashed, manipulated and used) for the political (power mongering) and financial (tax-exempt) gain of the faith as a whole (authoritarian-level only). That in and of itself – while saying nothing about his organizational and charismatic skills – is a fucking impressive business and legislative feat.

Of course the whole ball of wax centered around a deistic theology that preaches hatred, exclusion and fear, but the worst part isn't that Falwell gave it to you. Oh no. The worst part is not only that you were dumb enough to listen, but stupid enough to buy into it and arrogant enough to try to force it on the rest of us. A motherfucking asshole with bad ideas and hateful rhetoric is just a motherfucking asshole; you can tune him out if you don't want to hear him. But 25 million motherfucking assholes practicing what that bag of shit preaches? That's a direct threat to the other innocent 275 million Americans.

And you know what, let's just get this out of the way right now: if you're going to come on here and try to spin my assertions as though I'm intolerant of your beliefs, you best pedal your Big Wheel and keep going. If we're talking about what people believe on a purely self-contained level…I don't really give a fuck. Seriously. I could absolutely not care less. Want to hate gay people? Hate them. Want to hate black people? Hate them. Want to think the world was created in six days 6,000 years ago? Have at it. Want to believe that abstinence-only sex education programs really work? Delude yourself. Have a goddamn ball! In fact, tell anyone who will listen EXACTLY what you think. Get a bullhorn and shout it from the rooftops. Make signs and slap up pictures of aborted fetuses on your AstroVan.

Because I don't care what you THINK. I don't care what you practice FOR YOURSELF. In fact, I will go to the end of the pier to make sure you have the right, every single day of your life, to your beliefs. I swear to you I will. Because as long as you don't infringe on my liberties or those of others, that's your right as defined by the Constitution. Be Evangelical. Revel in it. Assume that you're right and that you're going to Heaven and I'm not. I hope you enjoy the feeling. But forgive me if I stand in front of you, middle finger extended, and ask that you get fucked. Because while I and millions of other Americans extend you the courtesy of your full and unmitigated rights, you're sure as balls not willing to do the same, are you?

Because Evangelicals, as a political movement, are the only group that seem to have an almost preternatural need to step into other people's lives to tell them how they should live it – according to the Evangelical system. And I'm sorry, I know I'm recovering ground that I already covered a few times again and being cliché in the process, but I don't think you're getting the fucking point: that's not the way it works.

Why do you think everyone should live by your standards? Why? Because you're standards were written by "God"? Is that it? And the proof that you offer is a shabby, contradiction-infested book of fables written by men – not "God" – that has seen literally hundreds of different translations over a few thousand years? Really? Your basis for living your life is predicated upon a document that has all the historical authentication of a 16 year-old girl's Trapper Keeper-based rumor diary? That's funny. Really, it's hilarious. But wait, wait…I know where this is going to go again. America was founded as a Christian nation on Christian values, right?

I'm inclined to disagree. First of all, while many of the framers of the Constitution were indeed Christians, they approached the writing of the document with a solidly Deistic tone. They refer to a generic "God" and "Creator" in the document and in several other places so as to encompass a wealth of different beliefs; you'll find no mention of Christianity specifically as a basis, nor will you anywhere in any of the building democratic materials for this country find the word "Jesus". Anywhere.

And then the Ten Commandments. Oy. I hate to break it to you, fellas, but the Ten Commandments are little more than a laundry list of common sense and a few rules that the Constitution breaks specifically to keep everyone from HAVING to be influenced by Christian "values" (and you'll see me use those quotations a lot as per "values" – this is to denote that I see very little value in your "values"). Honor Mom and Dad, don't cheat, don't steal, don't lie, don't kill. A full ½ of your vaunted Pillar for Righteous Living (TM) is basic common sense, so you can't claim it as "Christian Ideology"…unless you want to try to tell me that, before the Ten Commandments, people didn't know that any of this was wrong. And even YOU guys don't have an excuse lined up for that.

The rest of the Constitution – save for "Don't be Jealous/Don't Covet", which is a whining dictation if I've ever heard one – falls under the "Honor God" emblem. Here's the rub – guess what? The Constitution is framed SPECIFICALLY to separate Church and State. In other words, the laws of our country instruct us that we have ZERO obligation to honor the Sabbath, not take God's name in vain, and worship the Christian God. Fuck – looks to me like the Founding Fathers were telling us that not only do we not have to live in a Christian Nation, but it would be BETTER if we didn't.

I guess this idea slipped past you guys at some point, because MAN…have you ever fucked this place up doing exactly what the Constitution was trying to guard against.

I know, I know…it's UNFATHOMABLE to think that two people of the same sex might find happiness in being married to one another. I get it – you think they're sinning. Understood. Must be hard for you to grasp. That being said…how is their sinning hurting you? Really, I'm dying to know this. Because that's the only reason you should try to stop them from being happy – if their happiness is causing a decline in the quality of your life or preventing you from living it to the fullest. Are you telling me that you care that much? Hey, look, I think you're a douchebag! I think it's sad and pathetic that you've spent a good portion of your life dictated by a mess of fairy tales and taking advice from an imaginary friend in the sky, but I'm not trying to stop you from going to Sunday School. You playing with diseased toys doesn't infect anyone else's sandbox, so why should I let it bother me? And last I checked, being gay wasn't illegal, much as you continue to mislabel the state of being as a "choice". So how it can be illegal to marry someone who's not being illegal?

You can't help but meddle, can you?

It's not enough to deny the gays the right to marry and/or share the same legal benefits of heterosexual couples. You also have to tout your abstinence-only public school sex education programs, because Abstinence is a contract that you make with God to keep yourself pure until you get married. This one REALLY gives me a laugh (when it doesn't make me want to vomit). There are two reasons for this, first and foremost being…you must all really have your heads jammed so far up your asses that the bile is burning your eyebrows. You think even the fear of God and Eternal Damnation has any chance of winning out in a battle of conscience against raging teenage hormones, critical-thinking immaturity and a house that's devoid of parents after school? I mean…come ON. Nothing can compete with that. Most of your teenagers that are keeping themselves sexually inactive? They're not, and if they tell you they are they're lying to you. Check the stats: abstinence-only programs are failing across the board.

And now you've stepped up and are trying to block PUBLIC school districts from giving young girls the HPV vaccine, a one-time medicinal treatment that could, down the line, kill their chances of developing cervical cancer. And why? Because everyone at the Evangelical Clown College has convinced themselves that it'll lead to teenagers abandoning their Abstinence Pledges (excuse me for a second while I chortle) and lining up to fuck in Math class. Let's not even suggest the idea that a woman could wait until marriage to have sex only to be HPV'd by a partner who was a little less than careful in their pre-matrimonial years, or be raped by someone with a similar affliction. We don't even need to bring that up – the idea that a kid would throw caution to the wind simply because they've been vaccinated against one particular STD is just outlandish.

And, come to think of it, doesn't it DIRECTLY contradict what you're supposedly teaching them so well? I mean, even if the shots DID encourage them to go out and have more sex…your abstinence-only doctrine is working, right? Do you don't even need to worry about it, right? Because they're listening to God, right? If God's love is powerful enough to make them abstain without the vaccination, it's still powerful enough to make them abstain with it, no?

The funniest thing about this entire premise is that the "don't tell them about sex and they'll never figure it out" is also in DIRECT OPPOSITION to another favorite Conservative (and let's be honest, Evangelicalism and Conservatism go hand-in-hand these days) station: gun control. For years I've listened to Liberals and Neo-Cons debate this issue, and the Liberals always say the same thing: teach your kids that, if they see a gun, they should leave it alone and run and tell an adult. Neo-Cons always answer back the same way: kids can't be trusted, as their curiosity gets the best of them; better to teach them how to handle a gun so they can safely disarm it, lest they pick it up with no previous reference and accidentally blow someone's head off. It's actually a great argument, and one I'm that seems totally valid to me. Unfortunately, it's also wildly contradictory to the sex education argument. I mean, let's get this straight: you're willing to teach kids gun safety, but not sex safety? Their blind, ignorant curiosity can't be trusted around a gun, but it can be trusted around a willing vagina/penis? Logic and knowledge can protect them from a bullet, but those same faculties can't be trusted with premarital intercourse, requiring them to have a Contract with God (TM)? Why can't God's love protect them from being shot?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: In proofreading this, I realized that I may have inadvertently conjured for you a disturbing hermaphroditic vision with the term "vagina/penis". Apologies across the board. I don't think that such a thing as a vagina/penis does exist, but if it did it would probably be more aptly written as "vagina-penis". OK, if you weren't thinking about that before you probably are now, so I'm going to stop incriminating myself.)

Sorry, I have to clear my head…because the arguments that ya'll are currently making are blowing my mind from a total fucking lack of sense. And, Christ…I haven't even gotten started on abortion. Or Creationism. Or State Personal Sex Laws. Or State Blue Laws. Or Christian Rock. Without breaching those topics I've said enough already, and I'm just now coming to my main point.

What's really frightening is that Evangelicals have bought into the idea that everyone else needs to be saved. We all need saved! Heathens, every last non-Evangelical man, woman and child! Abominations! On many individual personal levels, this is true. It's part of your agreement with God (there seem to be a lot of those floating around out there); if someone hasn't found Jesus, they need you to show them the way. Insane, but I can follow the flawed logic. Still, there are so many others that have lost that viewpoint – the genuinely caring, if misguided, notion that non-believers are in for an afterlife full of misery if they don't Go With God (TM). Most Evangelicals, I'm convinced, just don't want to be disagreed with. They have no faith – in other words, they don't BELIEVE in their religion. They instead assume that they're right, that they've found the ultimate truth...and really they just can't stand that someone disagrees with them. Of course on the highest corporate levels of religion, more followers "saving" more people means more parishioners which means more donations which means nothing but more revenue. If that idea comes as a shock and a blaspheme to you…well, you've got a HELL of a lot of catching up to do.

What's even MORE frightening is that, on an almost perfect level, Evangelicals are taught to believe that we're in the End Times. Armageddon and the Four Horsemen are at our doorstep and dying to get in to provoke a fiery bloodbath so apocalyptic that you would think Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer were the ones who ghost-wrote the Bible. And what's even MORE frightening than THAT is that these same people are electing officials to our government who believe the same thing. I've gotta tell you…that doesn't make me feel too fucking safe. We're sitting at the feet of a President who figures he's already got one foot out the door; it doesn't matter what he does in this life, because he believes in Jesus and he's going to skip through the Pearly Gates when it's all said and done. Forgive me again if this makes my bowels threaten to release on me, but I'm not tickled with the prospect of a LEFT BEHIND believer in the office.

I could go on and on and on and on and bring up countless examples of the ways you jokers are pissing in the sociopolitical pool, but I think I've made my point. Are you the only problem? Naw, but you're the damn biggest and most influential, that's for sure. And yeah, you absolutely fucking deserve to have the scope firmly set on you. I don't see Jews lobbying Congress to pass a bill stating that everyone has to keep kosher. I don't see Muslims trying to shove stone carvings of the Koran in front of courthouses. I don't see Indians harassing me to pay a tithe to a six-armed goddess. Most practitioners of other religions are content to keep their faith to themselves. Why can't you follow that lead? And let's let another cat out of the bag: if any of the representatives of these faiths even sniffed the idea of trying to pull something like that, you would scream discrimination and their intolerance like bloody fucking murder. Because Christianity is its own breathing double-standard in this country, a faith of demagogues and manifest destiny.

Shit, sorry, I forgot – you don't have "faith". I meant "simple fanaticism". My mistake.

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Lost in all of this, buried under an immense pile of public debate and back-and-forth positioning, are good, salt-of-the-earth, tolerant, moderate Christians. The ones who follow the REAL lesson of Christianity; the ones who understand that the religion, at its best, is meant to be about love and hope and inclusion, not divisiveness and terror and exclusion.

These are the people I feel truly bad for. To a degree.

Real Christians get lumped in with Evangelicals too often – as do Catholics, but that's a whole 'nother blog – and it's a shame because they're subject to persecution and ridicule from people who, like me, are on guard against tyranny but who, unlike me, can't delineate. These are the people who have REAL faith – they believe something unconditionally because their heart tells them they have to. It's that simple. And though I personally still think their religion is a joke – and not just Christianity, but ALL religion – I can't help but respect and admire that. They just want to believe and be left in peace.

In asking for that, though, it's my opinion that they've dropped the ball. These are exactly the people that should be standing up to the Wal-Martified McFaiths that Evangelicals are setting up all over this country and using as a pulpit to speak for the all of Christianity, which, in practice, has quite a varied set of sub-sects. By and large, real Christians are doing nothing to stop the plague of political Evangelicalism...and to me, that's guilt by association. It's like showing up at a bar with a drunk buddy who's not REALLY your friend, then making excuses for him as he aggressively hits on a girl and grabs her ass while her boyfriend is standing right there. The right thing to do is protect the kid from getting the piss beat out of him all the while denouncing him as an idiot. The wrong thing to do is pretend like it's not a big deal or blowing it off as "not my problem", therefore silently admitting that it's OK.

There are a lot of good Christians out there. It's time for them to stand up to the Evangelicals and be counted among those in dissent of their policies. It's time for them to take their drunken friend to the car, drive him home, and put him to bed. He's already become an annoyance, and pretty soon – if he continues on his way unchecked – he's going to get behind the wheel himself and really end up hurting someone.

And the chances that he's going to be deterred by a stranger aren't as good.

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This started out as a blog about the death of Jerry Falwell, one of my Five Least Favorite People on the Planet (TM) and it's going to end that way. But first, as governed by the laws of logic, I have to make an admission:

Everything Jerry Falwell said, everything he stood for, everything he claims to have believed…there's a chance he could be right about it. About every last thing. I have to recognize that or I've lost the structure necessary to have intelligent debate about it. That's the way it goes.

In making that admission, however, I'm prepared to follow it up with a statement. I said this once to a Christian believer; his immediate response was, "You don't mean that." The fact is that I do. I mean it as much as I've ever meant anything in my life, and as a free-thinking, caring, good-at-the-end-of-the-day person, here's what I'll say to make my peace with Reverend Falwell:

Maybe you were right, Jerry. Maybe gays are sinners and deviants. Maybe I should have kept my penis out of vaginas until I was married. Maybe the ACLU was responsible for 9/11. Maybe black people are inferior to white people. But know this: if you are right, and if the Heaven you so adamantly preached about exists, and if that Heaven is tainted enough to let a heinous cretin like you in…well, I don't want to ever get within a thousand esoteric miles of the place. I'll spend my time in Damnation content in the fact that I might be burning but that I wasn't enough of a coward to have such a brutally flawed God brainwashed into me, that I didn't let the idea of a hateful son of a bitch like that ruin my time on Earth – and that I didn't ruin anyone else's by proxy.

One of the Evangelical stalwart comebacks, upon finding out that someone is an Agnostic, is the conceited and fluff-filled, "Wow, it must be an empty feeling to not have something to believe in. Something to hope for." It always makes me feel good when someone attempts this thinly-disguised barb, because what they fail to recognize is that I've got all the hope in the world believing that they've got the universe so very, very wrong.