Admittedly, I was more than a bit surprised to read the headline this evening proclaiming that an Iowa district court had struck down the state's so-called "Defense" of Marriage Act, effectively legalizing same-sex unions there. I could almost hear the self-proclaimed moral authorities chomping at the bit to make a spectacle out of this.Mitt Romney? Mitt? Where are you, Mitt? Yes, I'm talking about you!! Don't you have something to say about this?!? Don't you understand the disaster that has just occurred?!? Oh...good, here you are. Phew. You had me worried. You don't want to drop in the Iowa GOP polls, do you? I didn't think so.Actually, in fairness to the former Massachusetts governor, there are a few other righteous public figures whose names surface at the mention of opposition to gay marriage. Mitt isn't alone. Let's see, who else? Oh, yes: Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho; Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana; former Rep. Mark Foley of Florida; and the Rev. Ted Haggard of Colorado. Have their comments been sought on this matter?*Editor's Note: Occasionally, this blog will employ heavy sarcasm to illustrate already-glaring (but often completely overlooked) stupidity.
As an infant, long before I was old enough to remember it, I was baptized into the Christian faith. To this day, it's part of my identity, and it's a faith I've learned can have countless interpretations. Mine is but one among many. Christianity is all about exploration.Maybe that's why my anger is stoked when I read an article like this one. It profiles an organization of Christian adolescents whose main objective is to rally against pop culture and its supposedly harmful influence on youth. One 16-year-old interviewed at the beginning of the story said he stopped listening to the Beatles because the band had a "negative effect" on him.Indeed, there are various interpretations of Christianity, but certain principles arguably transcend them all, chiefly: love, humility, peace, service to others, and human fallibility. Sadly, this particular organization seems to recognize none of the aforementioned. A group whose message instead implies that its members are somehow "above" or "more pure than" all things worldly espouses an entirely different value: arrogance. The organization's founder brands pop culture as "the enemy." His dubious perspective is compounded by the group's insistence on broadcasting its message to all who will listen, telling them of the corruption to which they're exposed and the self-proclaimed superior level of holiness and righteousness that this organization embodies. People are entitled to adapt their own interpretations of a faith as broad and unresolved as Christianity. But no one should be so conceited as to suggest that they have all the answers — or, for that matter, a special audience with God through which they've discerned wisdom beyond that of "secular" folks.Such a message is in part what causes disillusionment toward Christianity. People don't need or want to be told by other people how morally depraved they are, or how their lifestyle choices are responsible for their own destruction. This isn't what the Christian faith should be about. It should be about accepting and helping people, recognizing their inherent value and freedom to make personal choices. Maybe I'm being idealistic — indeed, I could take my own words more to heart — but so what? Not all Christians are self-righteous and judgmental. Some are downright nice people.
What is the difference between a stout and a porter?Last weekend, I was at Snoqualmie Falls Brewing Company with some co-workers when this question came up. Realizing I simply didn't know the answer, I felt unworthy of being there.Then I had a blackberry porter. And all was well again, and somehow I felt redeemed.
Several weekends ago, I went with a friend from work to Gig Harbor, Wash., a quaint, touristy town along an inlet of Puget Sound near Tacoma. The downtown area near the water is filled with all kinds of specialty shops and restaurants. It's one of those places where one could stroll down the main street looking for a specific type of artwork, and upon finding it, walk a few steps farther to a fair-trade, organic coffee shop. This could be followed by a leisurely jaunt to the harbor, where one could gaze across the water to the multimillion-dollar mansions situated on the other side. It's one of those wealthy and yet hippie towns, where big money and progressive causes are paradoxically situated side by side.I confirmed this notion when we encountered a LEED-certified building (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) there. Apparently the offices of a private organization, it was a structure boasting a rooftop garden at street level (the rest of the building was underneath), timber framing from a wind-fallen forest, patio tiles that filter rainwater before discharging it into the harbor, recycled steel, and windows for natural light that reduce the use of electricity. To say the least, I was impressed by its environmentally sustainable design.But it also got me thinking. When I got home, I surfed the Web for more information about this building and the town of Gig Harbor itself. As it turns out, the visitor site for Gig Harbor has an entire page devoted to the concept of environmental protection. Again, I was impressed, but made less so when I realized I was viewing the tourism site for a very upscale town in the Pacific Northwest, the type of place where going "green" is trendy.That's the biggest drawback of the environmental movement in America: it's too trendy. Our culture doesn't treat environmental protection as something urgent or essential — which it is. We treat it as something hip. It's why green buildings, hybrid vehicles, and environmental campaigns are prevalent in cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Seattle — which are icons of American culture where trends are set — or in affluent towns like Gig Harbor, where many people simply like to spend money on showy stuff. Don't get me wrong — any effort on anyone's part to preserve the natural environment is commendable. But for such efforts to make any meaningful difference, they need to be more widespread. If I see a LEED-certified building on Manhattan's Upper West Side or in Chicago's Lincoln Park, I'll consider it a trend statement. If I see one in Gary, Ind., or Tulsa, Okla., I'll consider it an inspiration.
In Arkansas, infants can legally marry — but gay couples of any age are entitled to no legal rights. I'm sure that's a "mistake" lawmakers there would never make.What a great state.
While surfing the Web, I'll occasionally visit dubyaspeak.com, a site that documents the speaking gaffes, ignorant missteps, and other assorted public incidents of George W. Bush. One such incident recently highlighted was particularly striking to me — not so much because of its humor or shock value (sadly, it was way too believable), but because of how well it captured the essence of his inept and destructive time in office.Giving a speech last month in South Carolina about his disastrous war of choice in Iraq — and his insistence on continuing to fund it — Bush apparently managed to mention the name "al Qaeda" 95 times during the course of a 28-minute script. Unrelenting repetition, as history has taught on countless occasions, is one of the most effective means of disseminating propaganda, thereby influencing public opinion and policy. It's a tool the Bush administration has used time and again for more than six years — repetition of tag lines ("weapons of mass destruction"), catch phrases ("flip-flopper"), and words ("liberal"), but also repetition of more subtle messages. It's how Bush successfully sold his lies about Iraq in the first place; how he operated his smear campaign in 2004; how he has thus far achieved compliance from a spineless Congress; and now, how he's attempting to reinforce the falsehood that Iraq was initially connected to the fight against al Qaeda.Repeating the name "al Qaeda" nearly 100 times in a half-hour long speech about Iraq is one good way to do that. Under such circumstances, the content of the speech becomes irrelevant. When the audience hears two terms consistently more than any others during Bush's time at the podium — "al Qaeda," "Iraq," — mental connections are drawn.And that's precisely the intent.
Following last week's sudden collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, states all across the country are now scrambling to inspect their own bridges for signs of structural deficiency that might lead to a similar disaster. Of course, no one would have entertained such a thought before last Wednesday, even though this was hardly the first time that such a tragedy had taken place in this country. It was a bridge for a major interstate highway, and the main north-south transportation artery through a major city. There must have been all kinds of checks and balances on it, right? No one would have overlooked any details, or left anything to chance on such a high-profile, important structure, right?Sadly, wrong. There's a paradox to be revealed by this event. If it's true that Americans live in fear, often for nonsensical reasons — which we do — then it's equally true that we take our safety for granted. How many people who drove on that bridge the morning of its collapse considered the notion that it might be structurally unsafe? Most likely, no one did, for the same reason no one usually gets into a car wondering whether the brakes might abruptly fail at 70 mph. We simply trust that someone else has taken the necessary steps to assure our safety. (I've never personally inspected the brakes on my car, but I'm sure someone else has.) It's a peculiar mentality to take in a culture where we seem to worry about so much — and simultaneously seem to do so little about issues that are genuinely worrisome. Like the stability of a 40-year-old bridge that carried 140,000 vehicles per day.We'll hear about bridge safety in the news for the next several weeks, no doubt. Political candidates will debate America's "crumbling infrastructure" and how they plan to fix it (they won't). Governors will issue executive orders calling for bridge inspections in their states. Then, the issue will slowly and quietly fade into oblivion, and we'll move on to the next topic over which everyone will be worried, and about which nothing will be done.Pessimistic? Yes, but true.
