A little Sex, Politics, and Religion

I think I’ve shared with you before that I always hoped that this would be a place where we could talk about many different things, including the things people often avoid talking about. I even thought about naming the column “Sex, Politics, and Religion.” I certainly tend to write an awful lot about at least two of those three.

Almost every week I feel guilty about writing too long. This gets compounded when the paper comes out by Bethany’s sighs. Sometimes I get a little too heavy politically or preachy and I honestly do try to balance stuff out with some humor the best that I can. I even try to make every third column a light and fluffy humor column.

Some of you have shared with me that you actually enjoy how diverse the subject matter is from week to week. One person even told me that they liked how I tend to wander from topic to topic within each individual column. I knew my Attention Deficit Disorder would pay off someday!

Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip once said “…if you do not say anything in a cartoon, you might as well not draw it at all. Humor which does not say anything is worthless humor. So I content that a cartoonist must be given a chance to do his own preaching.”

I realize that a picture is worth a thousand words and believe me, I know I'm no Charles Schulz, but I like to think that I apply his philosophy to this column. Interestingly enough, I noticed that long time political cartoonist Pat Oliphant has a syndicated column too now. No doubt Dave Barry will be drawing his own illustrations soon.

I can't resist the chance to talk about sex, politics, and religion all in one paragraph. Here goes-CNN.com recently ran a headline that read "The House of Bishops voted Tuesday evening to confirm the Rev. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, making him the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church's history."

Now that I've done it, I really shouldn't touch that one with a twenty-foot pole. Okay, I'll say this much, I understand that their own canonical law doesn't allow divorced priests to become Bishops. Robinson divorced his wife and now lives with a man, to whom he's not married. Therefore, although it's not my place to say since I'm a Lutheran, but whether or not he's gay is irrelevant, even if the Bible didn't call homosexuality a sin, the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire still violated church rules.

Now, let's try giving sex, politics, and religion each their own paragraphs.

Politics: I'd have written Randy Steffen's name, but I showed up five minutes after the polls closed. I guess I drove too slow coming back from parent/teacher conferences in Dunlap.

I think I'm leaning toward Dean mostly because it looks to me like Gebhardt and Kerry are opposing him, more than they are Bush. It would take two or three columns to explain why I'd choose any of them over Bush, but I'll spare you today.

Religion: We took in the movie 'Luther' at the Donna Reed last week. It was much better than I expected. Of course, being a History major, you could expect me to enjoy a period piece like that. Even with the peasant's revolt included there wasn't nearly as much gore as 'Braveheart' or 'Gladiator.' There also wasn't any nudity, and barely any explicit language so it won't be a major box office hit.

I'm not only no Schulz, I'm no Luther either, but it was kinda neat to learn that he posted his 95 theses when he was only 33, since I'm only 33. Of course, he had a doctorate by the time he was 29 and I'm a long way from my Master's.

They sort of made it look as if Luther was a political cartoonist on top of being a theologian and musician. If I'm not mistaken Lucas Cranach the Elder and Albrect Durer handled most of Germany's propaganda art during the reformation.

Sex: no comment.

Humor: Well, Bethany tells me that I should update you about Halloween. The Spiderman costume came on time and Grace had a ball. Boy, that was funny. I missed trick or treating again. I was not sitting in a pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, I was freezing my tail off watching Boyer Valley get beat up in Lake View. Or was it Wall Lake?

The cheerleaders didn't bug me about wearing costumes. That's because the boss (our principal, Becky Panzi, a former cheerleading coach herself) read one of my columns where I anticipated that problem, came into Yearbook class and read them the riot act. God bless her.

Hey, I just got an idea! Let's see how few words I can use in a sentence and still mention sex, politics, and religion…"God bless Senator Clinton." Okay, okay, I know that how many Republicans read this, but I refuse to damn anyone, even if I don't like them. For the Republican's sake I'll add race and humor (but not racist humor, at least I don't think it is): "God bless President Carol Mosely Braun." See, her candidacy is kind of a joke because she's not even one of the front runners, so that's the humor. Okay, it wasn't all that funny. Okay, that also went from just four words to six. I guess we'll have to keep trying

I really wasn't sure what to write about this week. Did it show? Well, as the German philosopher Goethe once said, “One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going.”