How to annoy an atheist

It's amazingly easily. Just say you want to, and he'll do the rest. Really, some of these no-godders are caricatures of themselves. This week, in possession of some tickets I couldn't use, I fired off a note to a couple of hundred people in our Backbone Americans group on Facebook. The subject line was "Annoy an atheist, attend the Christmas parade." The tone was jocular and ironic, with no edge to it, and concluding with the historical-cultural truism, "Christ is born in Bethlehem. Deal with it, everyone!" (See full text below.)

Well, Facebook worked again, in terms of both useful networking and screwball connections. I not only heard back from some of my favorite young families, one of whom was able to attend the parade. I also smoked out a couple of humorless atheists who apparently can't deal with the Bethlehem thing.

A guy in Arizona wrote me directly: "The Christmas thing is a divide-and-conquer. I don't want anything to do with it. Freedom doesn't use religion as a weapon. I have unjoined your group." In a comment posted on the Backbone Americans page, he added: "I'm a free man in a free country and I don't need your permission or your approval to observe the holiday season differently than you do, and I don't care to debate about it either."

Touchy, touchy. Checking out this fellow's Facebook profile (he and I weren't linked as "friends" and obviously shouldn't be), I found that his political identification is "Individualist Anarchism," and under religious affiliation he asserts, "Organized religion is dangerous." At least to your own blood pressure, amigo.

Also finding the holiday season stressful is another Facebooker in Denver, again someone who had joined Backbone Americans without our knowing each other personally at all, who wrote on the groups page, "Is this a Ted Haggard fan club in disguise?" Huh? Who said anything about Ted Haggard?

On the web profile, this cheerful soul tagged himself politically as a libertarian and religiously (oops, I guess that's an oxymoron) as an atheist. One assumes he wouldn't have joined the Backbone Americans group to start with if he had noticed our dedication to America's founding principles -- which extend atheists toleration but not a veto power over theists' free expression.

When I wrote the original message, I expected the non-believers to send either no reply at all, or good-natured banter and shrugs of the sort I got from Ross Kaminsky, who styled himself "your favorite atheist, whom you can't annoy with a Christmas parade because I think people can believe anything they want as long as they don't try to make me submit to their beliefs."

We need to prescribe some of Rossputin's happy pills for my other overwrought correspondents. Until then, I will try to remember not to incite a panicked rush to the exits by yelling "Christmas" in a crowded Ayn Rand seminar.

Here's the offending Facebook note that started this whole tempest in a Wassail bowl:

Denver area, first come... two adult & one child reserved seats for the renowned Channel 9 Parade of Lights, 8pm Friday. Excellent view of the "Merry Christmas" banner that Hickenlooper tried to 86. See the shocking Nativity float and jolly elf Santa himself at parade climax. We can't use these tickets, let me know if you can.

Outside Denver, start a thread on the Backbone Americans page with what you are doing - or your wildest fantasy - to annoy the atheist grinches in your town.

"Christ is born in Bethlehem." Deal with it, everyone!

Are media feeding copycat suicides?

The troubling report in today's Denver Post about a rash of teen suicides in Douglas County strangely says nothing about last week's huge national story on the Florida teenager who took his own life while an audience watched via live webcast. Here's the Nov. 26 Post story. The AP dispatch on Abraham Biggs' self-murder was carried by the Denver Post online and in print beginning Nov. 21.

Copycat suicides, like copycat school shootings, are a well-documented phenomenon of the sick times we live in. Science writer Malcolm Gladwell, for example, discusses the problem in detail in his 2002 best-seller, The Tipping Point.

The Post did not, to my knowledge, carry a still photo of the tragically deranged Biggs, nor did it link to video of him. But if you Google for "Abraham Biggs suicide video," you get more than 54,000 hits. Horrifying.

Some of those are from unedited wildcat websites of the sort that are now ubiquitous and getting more so. Restraint on the part of those new-media actors can only come from internalized moral scruples of decency. Good luck there.

But shouldn't the responsibly edited news outlets such as the cable and broadcast TV networks be expected to hold themselves to a higher standard?

Fox News Channel, for instance, claims some fidelity to traditional values, but when tabloid sensationalism is in the air, they don't seem to resist very well. They didn't on the Biggs story, from what I saw.

What Biggs did is indisputably "news," as are the technology that he used in doing it and the passively curious or in some cases actively macabre reactions of online witnesses. It had to be covered, and analyzed, up to a point.

But news organizations, in helping give the deceased his wish for global fame, have not only coarsened the moral tone of our times. They have also incentivized more such incidents, arguably abetting a number of deaths that need not have occurred.

Our word "obscene" comes from the ancient Greek ethos that recognized certain human emotions or actions as unworthy of portrayal to an audience -- hence confined to occurring off-scene and receiving no more than secondhand description on stage.

This was done in the interest of (1) preserving dignity for all concerned and (2) protecting onlookers from the very real danger of moral contagion. Those obscenity concerns are as valid in modern America as they were in ancient Athens.

Poor Abraham was diagnosed with severe mental illness, but I'll bet what he did was hastened by just such contagion from the culture. Other Abrahams are all around us right now, in Douglas County and everywhere else. You shudder to think what messages they are receiving from the celebrity he's been given. Obscenity rulings from our courts, or enactments from our lawmakers, are too much to hope for in this licentious age. Self-policing by those with the biggest megaphones, perhaps pushed by a revolted and fed-up public, is the best hope I can see.

The dangers of temporizing with passion

Temporize (verb): To act evasively in order to gain time, avoid argument, or postpone a decision. Washington Post, November 14: "The backlash against those who supported a ban on same-sex marriage continues to roil California and nearby states. Protests and vandalism of churches, boycotts of businesses and possibly related mailings of envelopes filled with white powder have followed the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages."

Surely readers are familiar with many of the details of the lengthy Post article. The "gay" backlash against the popular will shows no signs of abating. For no matter how much we compromise with the homosexual lobby, it will not be satisfied with anything less than our full moral blessing.

We are in this mess today because we were willing to temporize with a passion that admits of no moderation. This error has its roots in the sexual revolution that hit with full force in the 1960s. The central idea was, "if it feels good, do it." The plain truth is that all manner of things which don’t feel good or are downright repulsive to most people, feel good to others.

Given society’s then generally heterosexual point of view, what felt good at first was the pleasure of sexual intercourse with members of the opposite sex. However, those who accept the pleasure principle have no real quarrel with those who derive pleasure from members of the same sex. "Hey, man, if that’s your thing, go ahead."

The first victim of the sexual revolution, of course, was marriages, strained by men and women trying to "find themselves," or to regain the pleasure that somehow had gone out of their marriages. Accompanying but also enabling the sexual revolution was the invention of the birth control pill, which made it possible to avoid pregnancy, the primary argument against sex outside of marriage.

Just as the sexual revolution unhinged relations between the sexes, so did it change the practice of homosexuality. Previously the province of "intellectuals" in rebellion against the allegedly confining mores of bourgeois society, homosexuality became more popular and, hence, more vulgar. The broader public’s impression of that practice soon became dominated by news of bathhouse orgies and the spread of the HIV-AIDS virus.

Along the way, the personal became the political. If these liberated urges were to be freed from social or political limitations, their practitioners needed to organize and to importune friendly politicians to make speeches and pass laws on their behalf.

Governor Jerry Moonbeam Brown of California (1975-83) persuaded the legislature to remove laws against the practice of sodomy, one of those "blue laws" which were honored more in the breach than in the observance anyway.

When the AIDS crisis developed in the early 1980s, elite opinion was already poised to ignore the overwhelming evidence linking homosexuals’ reckless behavior to the disease and to maintain the fiction that it was as likely to spread by heterosexual contact as it was by homosexual means.

Having for all practical purposes put homosexuality on the same moral footing as love between the sexes, it was but a small step to the establishment of civil unions. Knowing that the vast majority of Americans understood marriage to be the union of a man and a woman, the advocates of "domestic partnerships" paused at a halfway house that was marriage in all but name.

I am convinced that civil unions were designed to prepare the public mind for what it could not accept back in 2000, when Californians voted overwhelmingly to preserve marriage, just as all of mankind had understood it for millennia. But then along came, first, the Massachusetts, then the California and Connecticut supreme courts, to decree that the "right" of same-sex marriage was entitled to the equal protection of the laws. Anything less would be unfair to this oppressed minority.

In short, the path to the present state in which angry mobs (and zealous lawyers) demand what no society in its right mind has any reason to grant, began with the intellectual and moral errors that characterized the sexual revolution. Nothing less than revisiting and rethinking those errors will suffice to avoid a chaotic future for us and our children.

He who says A must say B. If we have a right to do "whatever turns us on," there is no objection to same-sex marriage. If, on the other hand, same-sex marriage is wrong, its premise must be also.

Campaign continues against Prop 8

Californians joined Arizonians and Floridians last week in approving a constitutional amendment affirming that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized." However, the vote in its favor in this state was only 52.3 to 47.7 percent, or a margin of slightly more than a half million votes out of nearly 10.8 million votes cast. That means that a shift of only about 250,000 would have been enough to produce a different outcome. This explains, although of course it does not justify, the rush to the streets by supporters of same-sex marriage. The thousands of men and women who have been married since the outrageous 4-3 ruling by the California Supreme Court that "equal protection of the laws" requires same-sex marriage, have been frustrated in their desires and left in a kind of legal limbo.

This is not the fault of those who oppose the corruption of marriage but of those in the executive and legislative branches, as well as the judicial branch, who have led their fellow citizens down a treacherous path. It came close to working.

Proposition 22, the statute that affirmed marriage in 2000, won a whopping approval of 61 to 39 percent. Yet public opinion appears to moving away from common sense, which doubtless was the whole reason for passing domestic partners laws, that is, to prepare the public mind to approve what it had so recently disapproved.

But politics is full of surprises. According to exit polls, while a majority of white voters opposed Prop. 8, majorities of as much as 70 percent were obtained among voters of African and Hispanic descent. The most obvious explanation is the influence of the church, Evangelical and Roman Catholic respectively, in those communities.

Similarly, a statewide network of religions, including not only Evangelical and Roman Catholic, but Greek and Jewish Orthodox, and the Mormons, worked strenuously for Prop. 8's passage. However, the Mormons were singled out last week for the hatred of the mob.

From Utah, the headquarters of the Latter-day Saints, millions of dollars were spent promoting Prop. 8, and thousands of Mormons in California walked precincts, sent mailers and made telephone calls. Theological differences were put aside as many more thousands of people of different faiths united in an effort to save marriage.

It is not hard to understand why California’s measure attracted out-of-state attention. For if same-sex marriage takes hold here, it will be very difficult to keep it from spreading to other states, notwithstanding that 30 states now have constitutional provisions supporting marriage. We are, after all, the most populous and most influential state in the Union.

Those whose politics are left of center talk and act as if they have a monopoly on the virtue of tolerance. But leftists exhibit precious little tolerance for those who disagree with them. For years, the most respectable form of bigotry among them was anti-Catholicism. But one must add to that anti-mormonism.

Thus, it was no surprise that an anti-Prop. 8 mob chose to demonstrate its outrage in front of an LDS temple in Los Angeles. After all, in the closing week of the campaign, television viewers were treated to a particularly vicious ad in which two Mormon emissaries were shown knocking at the door of what turned out to be a married lesbian couple, demanding to see their marriage license and then ripping it up.

Characteristic of those with a paranoid mind is the belief that people who disagree with them are actually out to harm them, verbally or physically. Once they’ve convinced themselves of this, the next step is to strike out against them pre-emptively in order to avoid harm. In plain words, you demonize your critics in order to justify brutalizing them.

Lest this sound over the top, I have heard such persons call into radio talk shows and accuse those who oppose same-sex marriage of advocating violence, for to them to oppose someone is to hate them and ultimately to attack them directly. Yet, millions of Americans have been worshiping God in different ways in this country for more than 200 years without causing them to attack one another.

By my count, three lawsuits have already been filed in the courts to challenge the passage of Prop. 8, the most prominent one asserting that it was "improperly decided," whatever that means. But between mobs in the streets and bogus lawsuits, we’re in for a rough ride. It’s not time for Californians to put away those "Yes on 8" signs yet.

Want to fireproof your marriage?

In the new movie "Fireproof," Caleb is a fire captain and Katherine is PR director for a hospital. Their marriage is crashing after seven years. Whose fault is it? Probably more his than hers, but it's not clear. He has an anger problem and a pornography problem. She's aloof, too perfect, and has a wandering eye at work. But when Kat asks for a divorce, it's Caleb who digs in to fight for their marriage, with encouragement from his dad, a new Christian. "The Love Dare," a 40-day rescue plan, is what slowly turns him, and the relationship, around.

Through plot twists we learn that the rescue plan has been found to work as well for a woman on the brink as for a man, and for couples a generation older than the young Holts. Caleb's lieutenant, a black guy named Michael, turns out to have it together a lot better both spiritually and maritally than his boss.

While the movie makes a direct but non-pushy evangelistic appeal, this isn't church or a revival meeting -- it's terrific entertainment. What could be a heavy couple of hours is deftly lightened by Kat and Caleb's funny coworkers at the hospital and the firehouse, as well as by the deadpan neighbor who is always outdoors at the wrong time.

"Fireproof" was shot on a shoestring budget and with few professional actors. It's the third feature film from Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, which previously shook up the cinema world with "Facing the Giants." At their website, FireproofMyMarriage.com, the "Love Dare" book is also for sale.

Donna and I loved this movie because, like most couples, we've had to learn a lot of lessons about marriage the hard way. We're encouraging all our friends to see it and talk it up. Its theater run won't be very wide or long, given the bias of Hollywood and big distributors toward a totally different ethic and message. Catch it while you can, or if necessary, get the DVD later on. This one's worth owning and seeing again!