Travels

For the first time in a few years, I am about to get on a plane for a cross-country trip. The caveman buried somewhere inside the primitive parts of my brain is jumping up and down, grunting at the idea of a multi-ton metal bird hurtling through the air at breakneck speeds. My stomach hears his grunts and churns in response. My damp palms suggest that they, too, find his unsophisticated argument compelling. In short, I am a bit nervous.

I’ve flown before, of course, though not particularly often. When it comes to traveling, I prefer to simply be somewhere without enduring the process of getting there. There is a certain surrender of control that comes with traveling, whether it be through following someone else’s schedule or literally putting your life in someone else’s hands. It’s not an easy thing for me to do, and the casual game of “what if?” soon becomes a frank consideration of mortality.

Maybe that’s too heavy an approach to a simple holiday trip, especially one that will culminate in a long-overdue reunion with my mom, whom I haven’t seen since I left Florida at the end of 2003. Still, I think it is important to have a realistic grasp of our own mortality, lest we treat people in ways that we think we’ll always have time to make up for.

As I mentioned elsewhere on this site, I am about to turn 30. It is a landmark, of sorts, and I am pretty happy about where I am as a person, emotionally and physically, as I approach it. I am happy to believe that if any day were to be my last, I would be remembered well and fondly. That said, I feel that I do have much more to do with my life, and I have the belief—its apparent grandiosity notwithstanding—that I will have some role in touching the lives of many others.

I am decidedly not a fatalist. I do not believe that we are destined to follow one path and that our exercise of free will is an illusion. Rather, I have a modified view of fate. I do believe that we are born equipped to do particular things and that we discover those things through our natural examination of our passions and talents. Our judicious choices guide us toward an optimum path, its groove carved a little deeper into the ground we walk, perhaps easier to fall back into if strayed from. But our choices are ours to make, and even the deep grooves can be ignored and satisfactory lives lived along the shallower channels. But the physical analogy ends there. I am not sure that the deepest groove—our optimum path—is always the one of least resistance. But I do believe that it is the one of greatest reward, and it's what I hope to find as I move along, enjoying the walk as I go.

A Red Letter Day for Ford and the AFA

After originally bowing to pressure from the American Family Association, Ford Motor Company has reversed its earlier decision to stop advertising in popular gay magazines. Disappointed with this turn of events, the AFA is once again talking about a boycott of Ford products.

In an online statement, AFA chairman Donald E. Wildmon wrote, “All we wanted was for Ford to refrain from choosing sides in the cultural war, and supporting groups which promote same-sex marriage is not remaining neutral.” I salute Mr. Wildmon’s strange grasp of irony, considering his reaction is to Ford’s not choosing the AFA’s side in the war it apparently declared. It is not neutrality he is looking for. Neutrality—if it can be demonstrated by advertising—is achieved by placing ads in The Advocate as well as in National Review. If one segment of the public sees an ad for a Jaguar in Out magazine while another segment sees an ad for an F-150 on Fox News Channel, neutrality is achieved.

Perhaps Mr. Wildmon thinks that those details are mere issues of semantics. If that is the case, I cannot say I am terribly surprised. After all, the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, and just about any other organization with “Family” in its name are right-wing, fundamentalist Christian groups. Of course, that description falls short, as using the term fundamentalist implies a back-to-basics approach to religion and morality, a focus on the fundamentals of a religious philosophy. I would think that those fundamentals would best be learned by studying a religion’s central scriptures.

In the case of Christianity, the New Testament is the chief repository of religious scripture, essentially version 2.0 of God’s message to the world. Some editions of the New Testament conveniently feature red type for the direct quotations of Jesus. In other words, it is a relatively simple matter to leaf through the Bible and count all of the key points Jesus makes about gays. Go ahead and take a look now. I’ll wait.

So, what did you find? Nothing? How can that be? If fundamentalist Christians are so dead set against gays and their manifest threat to their traditional family values, they must derive that antipathy from the fundamentals of their own religion. But they don’t.

Now, it’s true that if you leaf through the Old Testament, you’ll find some passages that prescribe some pretty harsh treatment in cases of homosexual activity—the death penalty, if memory serves. And considering that stoning to death was such a popular method back in those days, it is safe to say that homosexuality was not looked upon too fondly. But then again, there are a great number of differences between the messages delivered in God, Version 1.0 and God, Version 2.0. First of all, God seems to have lightened up a bit after having a kid. He no longer takes sides in wars and wipes out entire armies; floods the world and kills everyone, good or bad; screws over devoted, pious men in bets with the devil; or asks faithful men to sacrifice their sons just to see if they’ll do it. You see, he’s a kinder, gentler God in the New Testament, and were it not for the bit of a downer in Revelation, the book would have the nice Hollywood ending we like so much.

“Eye for an eye” becomes “turn the other cheek”; fire and endless wrath becomes “blessed are the meek.” It’s a much lighter read, and it’s no wonder why it became a hit. If it weren’t for pesky little details, like a man being born to a virgin only to live his life working miracles and conquering death by ascending bodily to heaven after three days in a tomb, it might be a sound philosophy for me to follow. You see, I think the philosophy of Christianity is quite beautiful. Whatever you may think of the people who work in the name of Jesus, the guy himself was pretty decent. He did say a few things in the New Testament that could make you scratch your head (where was that sword he talked about bringing?), but on the whole, his message was of peace and love.

Peace and love. Love thy neighbor. Love thy enemy. The Prince of Peace. And yet now, two millennia after Jesus left us, some people working in his name have declared war on their neighbors, and they have skipped over the very fundamentals of his teachings in the assembly of their fundamentalist groups. Perhaps they don’t have the red-letter edition of the New Testament. Well, Mr. Wildmon, you may have my copy. Even though I am not a Christian, why do I believe that I’m the only one between us who has read it?