Backbone

[note: Originally written in November, 2007]

Politicians come and go, and political parties go in and out of power in Harrisburg. One thing stays constant – the Pennsylvania Legislature is firmly controlled by the gun lobby. The other day the House Judiciary refused to even let two very limited attempts at gun control come up for a vote in the full House.

What radical assaults would these two bills have taken on our precious right to bear arms? One would have limited a person to purchasing one gun a month. The other would have allowed cities like Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Lancaster to have somewhat tougher restrictions on gun ownership in those places than the state as a whole. Who needs to buy more than twelve guns a year? Drug dealers and hit men, that’s about all. How many hunters that you know are planning to bag a buck near the Liberty Bell or on Market Square?

I come from a family of hunters and I own a rifle and shotgun myself. I am committed to allowing law abiding citizens the right to use firearms for legitimate purposes. No reasonable person wants to separate the deer hunter from his 30-06. But we have an epidemic of gun violence in our cities, mostly by handguns and automatic weapons. Ours is the only western democracy that has no meaningful restrictions on gun ownership. As a direct consequence, we have many more homicides by firearm than similar countries, particularly more policemen killed by guns. Sure, we need to enforce the laws we already have. But our policemen and sheriffs are telling us that we also have to stem the flood of guns going into the hands of bad actors.

Why doesn’t it make sense that a prospective gun owner should have to go through a process to that for a prospective car owner? Too many hunters have bought into the NRA tripe that if we allow any restrictions on gun ownership, next week they’ll be coming for your shotgun. It’s the same garbage that the tobacco lobby got away with for decades. How many more dead cops will it take before our Legislature grows enough backbone to take some action?

Are we who we say we are?

The other night I went with my Dad to a men's group we are both members of. The guys there are generally well meaning and I enjoy going, mostly to do something with my Dad than for any other reason.

The speaker was a guy from a nearby chapter, and the title for his talk was something like "Are we who we say we are?" The first part was a diatribe about how wrong gay marriage was, why we need prayer in the schools, and that gays are the way they are my choice, not due to biological or psychological makeup. It was probably copied from Rush or Sean Hannity or another right wingnut. Then, it got a little more interesting. He read something about how he is glad that he is older, because it has freed him to make choices that are right for him, like having an extra dessert and in general not worrying as much about what other people think of him.

I guess he really doesn't appreciate the incredible hypocrisy of the two parts of his talk. I think it is great that he has gotten to the point in his life where he can do what feels right for him, rather than what society or others think. But I guess for him that freedom doesn't extend to others for whom their inclination, biology, etc. has led them to a different choice. If someone has decided to hell with diets, I'm going to have an extra dessert; well that's fine. But if someone else decides that the right choice for her is to enter into a lifelong committed relationship with another woman; well no, we can't have that.

Currently, the right wing in this country has two sets of beliefs, and they are inherently inconsistent. (The left wingers are just as inconsistent, but that is the subject of another rant.) The first is that our faith has to be a part of every aspect of our lives. But not any faith, just our particular brand of literalist Christianity, because, after all, God is a Republican and we were founded as a Christian nation. The other set of beliefs can be lumped together as essentially libertarian. Reduce our taxes, get the government out of our lives. You can see where this is going. The government must be kept out of our lives, except of course the government must be allowed into the bedroom as the policeman. Otherwise, a woman might make the wrong choice about what to do with her body. Worse, two women might decide to sleep together.

Our speaker cited that famous passage from an Epistle of Paul about how wrong it is for woman to lie with woman, and man with man, etc. According to him, that is the final word, and there is no room for deviation. There are so many responses to that and so little space in the blogosphere. First of all, that was Paul speaking, not Jesus. There is no record of Jesus speaking about homosexuality. Second, many credible Biblical scholars think this was really a swipe against the awful goings on in the court of the Roman Emperor Caligula in Paul's time, rather than against homosexuality in general. Third, if Paul's statement is the ultimate, final statement on the gay lifestyle, what about other equally unequivocal statements in the Bible? Does
"Thou shalt not kill." mean war is never justified, or you may never kill to defend your family? Fourth, and for me as a committed Christian, most importantly, is the simple question: "What would Jesus do?" Jesus's impulse when dealing with a sinner or downtrodden was to first offer assistance and then forgiveness. Remember how he dealt with the woman was accused of adultery? “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” That doesn't mean that there is no sin. To me it means that it is up to us to live our lives the best that we can, and it is not for us to judge others. But what do I know? God hasn't spoken to me personally and told me who to vote for.

The idea that the USA was founded as "a Christian nation" is a curious one too. Anyone who researches our founding fathers in an objective way will learn that many of them (including Washington and Jefferson) weren't even Christians in the way that we think of the term today. They were really deists, which means they believed in God as a creative force, but didn't believe that God interferes in human life or the laws of the universe. They would have to conceal this belief in order to run for high office today as a Republican or a Democrat. They could have established Christianity (or some strain of it) as the state religion of the infant U.S. But the founding fathers had had a bad experience with a state sponsored religion, The Church of England. Concerning religion they put two core principles into the Constitution: (1) The state should not interfere with the practice of religion. (2) The state should not sponsor any particular religion. It was an excellent idea 221 years ago. It remains one today.


Are we who we say we are? Mostly we are, when it suits our purposes. But when it comes to supporting the rights of somebody who looks different from us or has different tastes than us, that's another matter.