Ask not whether Obama goes to church

I call bulls*** on The New Republic's John B. Judis:

Am I the only person who is really irritated by these unctuous reports from the Politico that President-Elect Barack Obama is not attending church on Sunday? Here is an excerpt from reporter Ben Smith’s dumb story:

As my colleagues Jonathan Martin and Carol Lee noted last week, Barack Obama -- despite undergoing a campaign maelstrom over his pastor -- isn't a regular churchgoer. He didn't often attend Sunday services on the trail, and--unlike Presidents-elect Bush and Clinton--hadn't been since his election.

This is the kind of reporting one would expect from the Christian Broadcast Network, whose editors and reporters presumably view less than weekly religious observance as an offense against God, and as a sign of moral depravity in a public official, but why is this presumably secular publication making such a big deal about it? I regard as an invasion of Obama’s privacy.

JOHN B. JUDIS, it is apparent, guards Barack Obama's privacy much more jealously than does the president-elect himself. I wonder what he would say about a press corps that treated President Bush with such extreme deference?

Obama, for one thing, made his own Christianity a campaign draw in his efforts to court both the religious left and elements of the religious right. Pictured above -- and here -- is a campaign flier from the South Carolina Democratic primary last winter.

Did Obama invade his own privacy? Was that entire aspect of the Obama '08 campaign something "one would expect from the Christian Broadcast Network [sic]"?

Did Obama's Christianity cease to be in the public domain once America cast its ballots Nov. 4?

Has George W. Bush's privacy been violated when commentators of a certain stripe blame his Christianity for every boneheaded thing he's ever done as president? Has Bush's privacy been violated by all the armchair psychoanalysis of how his Christian faith has intersected with public policy?

Indeed, was the Washington press corps way out of bounds when reporters noted Ronald Reagan rarely attended services?

IT IS TOO MUCH to expect perfect objectivity from any journalist -- mainly because such a thing doesn't exist. It is ridiculous to expect such within The New Republic's realm of "viewpoint journalism."

But is it too much to expect a little reportorial legwork . . . and a little intellectual honesty as well?

For example, let's look at the July 12 edition of Newsweek:

The cross under which Obama went to Jesus was at the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ. It was a good fit. "That community of faith suited me," Obama says. For one thing, Trinity insisted on social activism as a part of Christian life. It was also a family place. Members refer to the sections in the massive sanctuary as neighborhoods; churchgoers go to the same neighborhood each Sunday and they get to know the people who sit near them. They know when someone's sick or got a promotion at work. Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama met in the context of organizing, became a friend; after he married, Obama says, the two men would sometimes get together "after church to have chicken with the family—and we would have talked stories about our families." In his preaching, Wright often emphasized the importance of family, of staying married and taking good care of children. (Obama's recent Father's Day speech, in which he said that "responsibility does not end at conception," was not cribbed from Wright—but the premise could have been.) At the point of his decision to accept Christ, Obama says, "what was intellectual and what was emotional joined, and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that through him we could achieve eternal life—but also that, through good works we could find order and meaning here on Earth and transcend our limits and our flaws and our foibles—I found that powerful."

Maya says their mother would not have made the same choice—but that Ann understood and approved of Obama's decision: "She didn't feel the same need, because for her, she felt like we can still be good to one another and serve, but we don't have to choose. She was, of course, always a wanderer, and I think he was more inclined to be rooted and make the choice to set down his commitments more firmly."

After his stint as an organizer, Obama went to Harvard Law School. He didn't officially join Trinity until several years later, when he returned to Chicago as a promising young lawyer intent on becoming a husband, a father and a professional success. Around the time Obama was baptized, he says he studied the Bible with gifted teachers who would "gently poke me about my faith." As young marrieds, Barack and Michelle (who also didn't go to church regularly as a child) went to church fairly often—two or three times a month. But after their first child, Malia, was born, they found making the effort more difficult. "I don't know if you've had the experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it's not easy," he says. "Trinity was always packed, and so you had to get there early. And if you went to the morning service, you were looking at—it just was difficult. So that would cut back on our involvement."

After he began his run for the U.S. Senate, he says, the family sometimes didn't go to Trinity for months at a time. The girls have not attended Sunday school. The family says grace at mealtime, and he talks to the children about God whenever they have questions. "I'm a big believer in a faith that is not imposed but taps into what's already there, their curiosity or their spirit," he says.

Amid the hubbub, Obama continued to try to work out for himself what it meant to be a person of faith. In 1999, while still in the Illinois State Senate, he shared an office suite with Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew. Obama peppered Silverstein with questions about Orthodox restrictions on daily life: the kosher laws and the sanctions against certain kinds of behavior on the Sabbath. "On the Sabbath, if I ever needed anything, Barack would always offer," remembers Silverstein. "Some of the doors are electric, so he would offer to open them … I didn't expect that."

Since severing ties with Wright and Trinity, Obama is a little spiritually rootless again. He lost a friend in Wright—and he lost a home, however tenuous those ties may have been toward the end, in Trinity. He has not found a new church, and he doesn't plan to look for one until after the election. "There's an aspect of the campaign process that would not make it a good time to figure out whether a particular church community worked for us," he says. "Because of what happened at Trinity, we'd be under a spotlight."

Nevertheless, his spiritual life on the campaign trail survives. He says he prays every day, typically for "forgiveness for my sins and flaws, which are many, the protection of my family, and that I'm carrying out God's will, not in a grandiose way, but simply that there is an alignment between my actions and what he would want." He sometimes reads his Bible in the evenings, a ritual that "takes me out of the immediacy of my day and gives me a point of reflection." Thanks to the efforts of his religious outreach team, he has an army of clerics and friends praying for him and e-mailing him snippets of Scripture or Midrash to think about during the day.

IF POLITICO is guilty of anything, it's not invasion of privacy. It's of not reading Newsweek.

Invasion of privacy? Lay off the church thang?

Yea, I pray thee, Brother Judas Judis, giveth thou me a break.

Their god is a frightened god

In London, The Telegraph tells the story of an Iranian family suffering for its Christian faith because the god of Islam -- as understood by that country's civil and religious leaders -- is a frightened god to whom free will is a mortal threat.

Or should I say an immortal threat?

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled "Islamic Penal Code", which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against.

Imposing the death penalty for changing religion blatantly violates one of the most fundamental of all human rights. The right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in the European Convention of Human Rights. It is even enshrined as Article 23 of Iran's own constitution, which states that no one may be molested simply for his beliefs.

And yet few politicians or clerics in Iran see any contradiction between a law mandating the death penalty for changing religion and Iran's constitution. There has been no public protest in Iran against it.

David Miliband, Britain's Foreign Secretary, stands out as one of the few politicians from any Western country who has put on record his opposition to making apostasy a crime punishable by death. The protest from the EU has been distinctly muted; meanwhile, Germany, Iran's largest foreign trading partner, has just increased its business deals with Iran by more than half. Characteristically, the United Nations has said nothing.

It is a sign of how little interest there is in Iran's intention to launch a campaign of religious persecution that its parliamentary vote has still not been reported in the mainstream media.

For one woman living in London, however, the Iranian parliamentary vote cannot be brushed aside. Rashin Soodmand is a 29-year-old Iranian Christian. Her father, Hossein Soodmand, was the last man to be executed in Iran for apostasy, the "crime" of abandoning one's religion. He had converted from Islam to Christianity in 1960, when he was 13 years old. Thirty years later, he was hanged by the Iranian authorities for that decision.

Today, Rashin's brother, Ramtin, is also held in a prison cell in Mashad, Iran's holiest city. He was arrested on August 21. He has not been charged but he is a Christian. And Rashin fears that, just as her father was the last man to be executed for apostasy in Iran, her brother may become one of the first to be killed under Iran's new law.

Not surprisingly, Rashin is desperately worried. "I am terribly anxious about him," she explains. "Even though my brother is not an apostate, because he has never been a Muslim – my father raised us all as Christians – I don't think he is safe. They assume that if you are Iranian, you must be Muslim."

OBVIOUSLY, Iranian Muslims and their leaders have their deity all figured out. And we know what Flannery O'Connor said about such -- "remember that these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn’t be worth understanding. A God you understood would be less than yourself."

And this is apparently what's understood about Allah in Iran -- that the Muslim deity is a puppetmaster and mankind is a puppet. That Allah fears that man would not, could not love him freely, so man must be forced to do so. That Islam is not so much about knowing, loving and serving Allah as it is being a "soldier" in a Mafia of a billion-plus souls.

Once in, there's only one way to get out -- be rubbed out.

IF JESUS is the good shepherd, the ayatollahs' Allah must be Michael Corleone. And Muhammad is what? Al Neri?

That makes Ramtin Soodmand the Iranian version of Fredo, I'm afraid.

Nice conception of deity you have there, guys.

The Broom Man goes home

There's a party in Heaven today. It has nothing to do with the Olympics.

Nor does it have a thing to do with Warren Buffett's making another billion or three. And today's big headline, Barack Obama picking Joe Biden as his running mate, was sooooo yesterday's news before it even happened.

NO, IT'S PARTY TIME for the Heavenly Host because the Broom Man has, at long last, come home. The Omaha World-Herald has the big news:

The blind broom peddler who whistled as he walked Omaha streets for more than 55 years has died.

The Rev. Livingston Wills, who often said "God is good," died Friday at St. Joseph Villa Nursing & Rehabilitation Center. He was 91 and had been living there since May.

"Rev," as he was affectionately called, sold brooms as a way to help support himself and his family.

When Wills began going door to door in the 1950s, Omaha was a much smaller city. Six days a week, he would put on a suit and tie, sling brooms over his shoulder and head out the door.

Often he would catch a bus near his north Omaha home and then walk through Florence, Benson, Dundee or some other neighborhood, never seeming to get lost.

"God will take care of me," he would say. "Do you need a good broom?"

He couldn't tell a $10 bill from a coupon, so he simply trusted people, said his friend Sandy Nogg of Omaha. Cars bumped him several times, and sometimes people slammed the door in his face, but he never became discouraged.

"The hearts of the people of Omaha were for him," said Bernadine Jefferson, a friend of about 50 years. "I think a lot of people felt like he was part of their family. He was joyful and he had a good memory. He really enjoyed being around people."

(snip)

Wills didn't make brooms, though. He attended Union College in Lincoln, where he studied English and history. After graduating, he moved to Omaha in the late 1940s, intending to teach, but instead he felt a call to ministry.

He was ordained and served for many years as pastor at the Tabernacle Church of Christ Holiness at 25th and Seward Streets. Wills was elevated to bishop in the church in 1975.

Last year, The World-Herald's Goodfellows campaign drew attention to Wills' failing health and financial needs. He had fallen behind on his utility bills, and readers sprang into action.

Within a week, more than $2,000 in donations arrived, in checks big and small. They all came with a message: Please give this to the Broom Man.

THE TRAGIC FLAW at the heart of the human condition is that, when we saw the Broom Man walking down the street peddling his wares, we saw the Broom Man walking down the street peddling his wares.

By virtue of our human fallenness and our cultural conditioning, we're quite incapable of seeing anything below surface trappings. We actually think, probably, that it's better to be like Bill Gates than to be like the Broom Man.

God forbid, most of us probably think it would be better to be President Bush than to walk a dark mile in the Broom Man's shoes.

We value, I think, the wrong kind of success. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say we put inordinate value on the wrong kind of success.

Bill Gates' fundamental contribution to the world has been -- pretty much -- the "blue screen of death." (Can you tell I'm a Windows user?) George W. Bush's big contribution has been to drag a nation further into the mud, injecting what might turn out to be a fatal dose of "preventive war" and a torture-state ethos into our body politic.

REV. LIVINGSTON WILLS, on the other hand, gave a Midwestern city a living example of what it means to trust God and love one's fellow man.

And Omaha's Broom Man sold a damn good broom at a reasonable price. You can't beat that.

God will take care of us. Though we could use a good broom.

Holy crap! I can't believe in Jesus anymore!

Oh my unLord! Christianity has fallen!

A first-century BNC (Before Not Christ) Hebrew tablet has been found that's shaken my now ex-faith to its now ex-core. Apparently, ancient Jews had an idea the Messiah would be raised from the dead after three days!

THE NOTION is not a Christian exclusive, and I'm headed out in a few to go a drinkin' and a whorin', because it don't matter now.

Really, it's all in The New York Times:

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

(snip)

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

OH, INSERT Anglo-Saxon expletive here. Jesus and his followers didn't even bother to make this s*** up. They ripped it off from Shlomo the Stone Scribbler. And, come to think of it, the stuff J.C. and the Dubious Dozen were going around preaching sounded an awful lot like some stuff that was in Isaiah, in the Old Testament.

You know, all that "suffering servant" crapola. House of David, my eye!

The Big Guy was even ripping off Psalm 22 when he was dying on the cross -- all that "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" stuff.

And . . . and . . . the former deity known as "Jesus" -- with all this rising after three days stuff -- was ripping off the Book of Jonah, which the stone scribbler also apparently bastardized into some sort of literary "prefigurement" of the Resurrection. I mean . . . really:

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

"Either declare the tree good and its fruit is good, or declare the tree rotten and its fruit is rotten, for a tree is known by its fruit.

You brood of vipers, how can you say good things when you are evil? For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.

A good person brings forth good out of a store of goodness, but an evil person brings forth evil out of a store of evil.

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak.

By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you."

He said to them in reply, "An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.

Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.

At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and there is something greater than Jonah here.

At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and there is something greater than Solomon here.

JOHAH. ISAIAH. PSALMS. STONE TABLET. You'd think that what would happen to the "Messiah" was no secret, that ancient Jews had lots of clues in literature and tradition. That all this stuff was of a piece.

That it was prefigurement . . . allegory . . . prophecy. That it all somehow makes sense from a Christian perspective.

Oh, wait . . . it does.

And, while I'm thinking of it, there hasn't been anyone who's come up with a bag of bones six feet under a tombstone reading "Jesus H. Christ, Alleged Son of God."

(Sound of crickets.)

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . perhaps I was a little hasty, Lord.

I can call you "Lord" . . . right?

Sir? Your Almightyness?

Trashing the boss is an Idiot's Delight

I'm so happy I didn't make that pledge to one of my favorite radio stations.

Saturday evening, I'm out in the yard, slingblade and shovel in hand, turning a weedy plot into a big vegetable garden. Sitting a few feet away, on an old railroad tie, is a radio, tuned to my little AM transmitter that's pumping the Internet feed of WFUV -- the voice of Fordham University, "The Jesuit University of New York" -- into this weedy little expanse of Flyover Country.

I LIKE WFUV. It, over the years, has become the resting place of some of New York's most legendary FM jocks from the days when FM mattered to a music-loving world. Jocks who dictated how a nation listened to music at legendary stations like WNEW. Jocks like Dennis Elsas and Pete Fornatale, who were later cast off as Corporate America set about killing radio.

Even today, Elsas and Fornatale do some of the smartest music programming on the airwaves . . . or what's left of the airwaves, alas. Saturday, it was Fornatale's wonderful Mixed Bag Radio that kept me company as I turned the earth, by hand, like Nebraskans of old.

And as my back got in touch with every one of my 47 years.

Soon enough, 7 o'clock rolled around -- time for "New York's last freeform DJ," Vin Scelsa, with Idiot's Delight. Little did I know.

The following is verbatim from the archived program:

So we're in Studio V [Scelsa's home studio -- R21], and here at the beginning of the show tonight, I want to acknowledge and celebrate an important judicial decision that was handed down by the state supreme court in California this week -- it's about time. We've got another state now joining Massachusetts, having its highest court say that gay people just have -- have just as much right to marry as anybody else.

Gay people have equal rights in this country! Or at least in the state of California, and the state of Massachusetts. Yes!

We celebrate this -- it's the last bastion of . . . of old thinking that exists still in this country. You know, you read about like, uh, the history of interracial marriage in this country. There was a woman who died recently who, back in the 1950s, was forced to leave her home -- she and her husband. It was a black woman and a white man who grew up in a very interracial, mixed community in the state of Virginia, I believe it was.

And this was back in the 1950s. They got married and were forced to leave their state and told they couldn't come back, and we look at that and we go, "Man, that's absurd,' you know? It seems like the Dark Ages, not the 1950s, but in that sense, the '50s were the Dark Ages. And we still are in the Dark Ages when it comes to gay people and gay rights, and . . . and civil unions don't cut it. (chuckles.)

Civil unions is a compromise. Civil unions is appeasement, and we know how we all feel about appeasement.

Until gay men and women have equal rights in this country, there is a big, black cloud hanging over us all.

So, here at the beginning of the show today, we salute California with a little set of traveling music.

[Set of music about California, ending with Judy Garland singing "San Francisco," live at Carnegie Hall, 1961.]

I forgot about that little speech at the end. You can smoke or drink or get married, here in San Francisco or in California. No matter who you are, no matter what you are -- race, religion, gender no longer matter in San Francisco. And this opening set tonight is a celebration of that state supreme court decision that came down in California this week legalizing gay marriage.

Finally, equal rights. Let's hope it sticks.

The governor, Schwarzenegger, says that he will, umm, he will not support any move to battle this decision.

It's the writing on the wall, friends. It's the handwriting on the wall -- it's gonna happen, it's happening slowly . . . it's happening too slowly, but the same thing was true with, with umm, uhh, you know, the civil rights movement back in the '50s and '60's, it happened too slowly. The women's movement happened too slowly, but gradually changes are made, changes are made because the world is changing, people are changing.

Kids, and young generations now, just take it for granted that people love whoever they love. And, and if they want to make a commitment to the person they love, then they should be allowed to make a commitment just like anybody else. It's . . . it's taken for granted by young people. They're . . . they're much hipper and smarter and world, uhh . . . world wise than, uh, so many of their elders.

[Promos, station ID, comes back to list selections in the previous set, then in the middle of the back announce. . . .]

Do you think that most people who are against the idea of same-sex marriage, of gay marriage, have . . . just have never met a gay person? Is . . . is that it? Is that what it comes down to? That they've never met a gay person, that all they know about gay men and women is, uhh, you know the . . . the sort of stereotypes that they see on the TV and the movies?

And . . and in real life they've never . . . a lot of white people have never met a person of color. That's hard to believe here in New York, you know, 'cause we're such a . . . a multicultural city -- and in this whole area of the country. But when you go to other parts of the country, and you can, you know, go for a couple of days and never see anybody who doesn't look white. And that has a lot to do with, with fostering prejudices, you know?

If you . . . if you, if you only have your imagination and the fears that have been instilled -- you've got to be taught. South Pacific is back on the Broadway stage over at Lincoln Center, with that great song . . . 'You've got to be taught to hate and fear, it's got to be drummed in your dear little ear, you've got to be carefully taught.' And then if nothing ever comes along to, to, to shake those things that you were taught . . . to shake them up and make you think differently -- well, then you're not going to think differently.

Oh, don't get me started on this subject. I think I already am started on this subject. I feel adamant. And angry. Because I do know people who are in this situation, people who are discriminated against simply because they love somebody who a certain part of society says is unnatural, and illegal in the sense that, you know, you're not gonna get locked up or arrested or whatever, but you're not gonna have the same rights as the rest of us.

That's absurd! Absolutely absurd! (chuckles)

There's no logical reason for it except that people have been taught this, and they never learn anything different. Arrggh!

But in California this week, there was a victory! And . . . and, and every man and woman in America should celebrate it, not just . . . not just people who are gay. Not just people who are in same-sex relationships, but every man and woman. Because until . . . you know, it's the old cliche: Until we're all free, then, none of us is free. Until we all have the same rights in this country, then none of us has those rights. It's as simple as that.

[Returns to announcing songs in the previous set.]

WELL, IT'S GOOD TO KNOW exactly how big an idiot am I. Exactly what a mean oppressor am I. How narrow-minded am I, as a resident of one of those bucolic hellholes lying outside New York City, where I probably haven't seen a Negro forev . . . never mind, there goes one now.

Likewise, I guess I need to inform a gay friend of mine that he must not be after all, being that I have known him for 20 years and still oppose same-sex marriage -- an opposition that, according to Scelsa, must be rooted in my complete ignorance of homosexuals.

Yea, verily I stand before thee as a hater, for I have been carefully taught. By the Catholic Church.

Well, slap mah mouf and call me Nellie Forbush.

Of course, Vin Scelsa is entitled to his opinion, no matter how ungrounded in natural law or human anthropology. On the other hand, Mr. Scelsa last weekend took a nice little chunk of his program to trash part of the mission statement, as it were, of his employer. You know, the Jesuits. A wholly owned subsidiary of the Catholic Church -- that bigoted bunch of haters who carefully taught the likes of lil' ol' me to hate the poofters, don't you know?

WHICH, TO BE SURE, isn't even true. Nowhere does the Church say to hate anyone. Nowhere does the Church say that same-sex attraction is even sinful.

What the Church does say is that marriage -- defined as the union of a man and a woman for many millennia now -- is "a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring." Same-sex unions not only never have met the "marriage" litmus test but, according to how marriage has been defined throughout all of human history, never can meet that standard.

What the Church also says is that sex outside of marriage is sinful, not to mention societally disruptive. Therefore, while homosexuality is a condition that is neither virtuous nor sinful, it is a disordered condition in regards to how intimate relationships were biologically and sociologically designed to operate. And, therefore, homosexual acts are sinful -- there is no way for them to occur in a morally licit context.

IT WILL BE INTERESTING to see how far gone the Jesuits are -- whether they've gone from mere doctrinal squishiness to out-and-out self-hatred with anti-Church proclivities. Really, are the Jebbies so far gone that they'll tolerate letting their employee use their facilities to trash a fundamental teaching of their Church, and then insinuate they're a bunch of mind-poisoning bigots?

I can't speak for the Jesuits, but let me ask you this: Would you let it slide if you invited someone into your home (or into your employ), only to have the wretched little troll take your money, eat your food, insult your religion and your moral values after having hijacked your PA system?

Me, I think you'd probably sock the sumbitch in the schnoz and throw his ass into the street. That's what I think.

But I guess I could be wrong " . . . because the world is changing, people are changing."

Goodnight, America. Sleep tight.

It's all over but the fulminating. Gay "marriage" is here to stay.

IT'S IN ALL the papers and on all the news wires. And it's here in the Los Angeles Times:

The California Supreme Court decided today that same-sex couples should be permitted to wed, ruling that gay unions must be given the "respect and dignity" of marriage.

In a 4-3 vote, the court became the first in the country to apply the constitutional protections reserved for race and gender to sexual orientation. The Massachusetts high court struck down bans on same-sex marriage in 2003, but under a different legal theory.

The court held that people have a fundamental right to marry the person of their choice and struck down marriage laws limiting matrimony to opposite-sex couples as a violation of the state constitution's equal protection guarantees.

"One of the core elements embodied in the state constitutional right to marry is the right of an individual and a couple to have their own official family relationship accorded respect and dignity equal to that accorded the family relationships of other couples," wrote Chief Justice Ronald M. George, joined by Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Carlos Moreno.

State laws that have limited gay unions to domestic partnerships "impinge upon the fundamental interests of same-sex couples," George wrote.

Justices Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan dissented.

The court majority "does not have the right to erase, then recast, the age-old definition of marriage, as virtually all societies have understood it, in order to satisfy its own contemporary notions of equality and justice," Baxter wrote.

One hundred people lined up outside the state courthouse in San Francisco at 10 a.m. today to purchase a copy of the decision for $10 apiece. Some people bought 10 to 15 copies, calling it a historic document. One man said he planned to give them out as Christmas presents.

Outside, couples, once denied marriage, hugged, kissed, shouted and shook their fists at the sky. Holding up a sign that says, "Life feels different when you're married," Ellen Pontac hugged her partner, Shelly Bailes.

"The best day of my life was when I met Ellen," Bailes said. "This was as good as that." (An earlier version of this story incorrectly gave Pontac's first name as Helen.)

Added Bailes: "This feels good for us. But I can't imagine what it means for all those young couples with their entire lives ahead of them."

The state high court’s ruling was unlikely to end the debate over gay matrimony in California. An initiative that would amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage is expected to qualify for the November ballot.

WE'RE A VILLAGE PEOPLE kind of country, now, and we're not going to hold gay marriage to Massachusetts and California. When the sole standard of what is right and wrong in a nation revolves around "do what thou wilt," any impediment to that is, naturally, discrimination of one sort or another.

Unmoored from the cultural context of the society that birthed it -- and that society's religious underpinnings -- sooner or later the United States Constitution will be used as a battering ram of persecution against religious traditionalists who see gay marriage as a funhouse-mirror image of a holy sacrament entered into by a man and a woman.

Today, we worship the great I AM. Only we're the "I" . . . and the "AM," and it's almost like the original "I AM" never was.

So much so, that I'll bet a majority of you out there have no bloody idea to what -- or to Whom -- I refer.

I know the handwriting is on the wall (a saying of lost patrimony today, no doubt), because I have seen the leaders of tomorrow. To them, the notion that gays can't marry is as offensive as the notion of anti-miscegenation laws and African-Americans sitting in the back of the bus.

AND THE PLACE I have seen those future arbiters of what goes in America is firmly inside the Catholic Church. This is from a January post on this blog:

For years, we have volunteered with our church's youth group. And for a while now, we've been going to the weddings of kids the same age as our ghosts, then watching them have their own children.

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

I not only cannot improve upon how Joni Mitchell describes the "Circle Game" of life, I -- and my wife -- have been doomed to not fully participate in it. My better half says there's one question she wants to ask Jesus when she dies, being that we live in a country where there's so few children even to adopt because so many parents don't want to be . . . and can make that so.

I'll bet you can guess what that might be.

We live in a society that feels free to take our pain and use it as a weapon to smash the natural law to politically correct bits. In fact, during one youth-group session, we sat there dumbfounded -- and seething -- as a "Catholic" theology professor speculated upon the possible ecclesiastical permissibility of "gay marriage" someday, on grounds that -- hey -- infertile couples can't fulfill the procreative nature of matrimony, either.

A roomful of societally brainwashed Roman Catholic teen-agers nodded approvingly.

I wanted to kill the son of a bitch. Who, naturally -- being a Catholic theologian teaching at a Jesuit university -- was impervious to objections raised on catechetical and natural-law grounds.

IT SEEMS TO ME that American Christians who stubbornly persist in believing all that Biblical crap will come to be persecuted solely because of our own failure to communicate eternal truths to the culture -- and to our children -- in this era of instant gratification.

We have failed -- utterly. We have pandered to the most inane compulsions of popular culture instead of seeking to transform that culture. That's going to bite us in the ass.

Have you ever volunteered with a Catholic youth group and watched in horror as the teen-agers charged with leading prayer for the night -- many of them Catholic-school students -- managed to conduct an entire closing "prayer" without once mentioning God or Jesus? I have.

That's because we are our own gods, and a growing majority of god says "Go for it!" Those who stand astride history yelling "STOP!" are going to get the same kind of treatment most of the Old Testament prophets did.

Not to mention the New Testament Messiah.

'Jesus Is for Losers' and other wise words

Christian music really needed Steve Taylor to save it from not only a piety overload, but also from a thought shortfall.

Unfortunately for Taylor, evangelicals' piety oftentimes overloaded their thought process. (Note: Jesus IS for losers.) And the biting satire of "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good" was lost on every side of the abortion debate.

It sucks being a genius. But it's great that, years later, we can watch all that genius on YouTube.