Bible James and the Ass Jackets

Back when I was a teacher in Perrydise, I taught a kid named James.  James had been homeschooled and I think he was in his first year in public school when he came into my classroom.  Gangly and quiet, he might have been any other student except for the fact that the first thing he did after sitting down was place a large Bible on the corner of his desk.  This wasn't one of those little New Testament jobbies that the Gideons hand out to hungover college students on Monday mornings, either.   No, ma'am, this was a big, solid, thick, nicely- bound BIBLE, hanging out on his desk for all the world to see.

I blinked to see it there, and then I moved on.  I blinked because, hey, whoa, there's a teenager with a Bible on his desk.  (I was used to seeing lip gloss, notes, or giant piles of crumbling notebooks, but not religious texts.)  I moved on because as a state employee, it was not within the law for me to tell this child he couldn't have a religious text on his desk.  Nor, as a believer in the Constitution, would I have wanted to.  He wanted to have a Bible on his desk?  Whatevs.  As long as he was doing his work (which he did, almost flawlessly) and not starting religious-themed conversations that caused riots in my classroom, he could have the Bible on his desk.

The other kids called him Bible James; they were an original bunch.  But what might have started out as an easy way to tease somebody who almost literally wore his faith like a badge became a term of endearment.  James was a great guy.  He had a sharp mind, an acerbic wit, and he was genuinely nice most of the time.  I only rarely had to say, "Give me a break, Bible James.   You're making me crazy."  Because I called him Bible James, too.  I couldn't help it.  It just SUITED him and he would smile and nod when somebody called him that.

I thought of Bible James today (and his Bible) when I read where Mike Huckabee (you know, the preacher to whom Fox News gives a weekly pulpit) noted that the reason that there were situations like the one in Aurora, where an insane orange-haired man killed twelve people, was because God had been forced out of public schools.  He actually said,  "....What we have is a sin problem.  And since we've ordered God out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn't act so surprised...when all hell breaks loose."

Let me introduce you to Mike Huckabee, the Ass Jacket.

Y'all know that I'm fond of the term "asshat."  I like it because it's funny and flippant and it really gets to the heart of what an asshat is.  An asshat can't really help being an idiot or mean or whatever it is that makes him or her an asshat.   Asshats are born into it.  Asshattedness is something they pull on naturally.  Like, you know how boys (maybe this is a Southern thing) put on baseball caps the minute they get up, even if they aren't going to play ball or do anything outside?  Yeah, that's how asshats are.  "Don't mind me, I'm just going to be an asshat 'cause that's what I do."

Ass jackets, on the other hand, are idiots with a PURPOSE.  They are mean because they have thought about it.  They have formulated a message to go with their ugliness and they wrap it around themselves as protection against the storm of indignation that comes their way when they say something AWFUL.  And then, because they use the word "god" or "bible" to stitch that sucker together, they can say, "Woe is me!  I'm being PERSECUTED."

Now, not all people who claim to be persecuted are ass jackets.  They aren't even all asshats.  Most of them, in fact, aren't.  What they ARE is a little confused about what the First Amendment means, as well as what the word "persecution" means.  Because problems start to arise when people who are honestly trying to be faithful to their...uh...faith listen to the ass jackets and hear words like "persecution" and remember that there are parts in Scripture that talk about persecution and then decide that any word of disagreement to any of their statements about faith is persecution.

Omagawd, that is one WACK paragraph. Look at it.  It's just sitting there being all...incomprehensible.  

Let me explain:  When people don't agree with you because you state something from your faith which is antithesis to how they feel, you are not being persecuted, nor is your right to free speech being abridged.  Free speech is being able to say what you want without government intervention.  If President Obama said to you, "You cannot put a quote of Leviticus up as your Facebook status" and then he banned you from Facebook, that would be a violation of your Constitutional right to free speech.  If your sister says, "I'm sick of you using that verse as a way to make other people feel bad," she isn't violating any of your rights.  (She might be making Thanksgiving dinner uncomfortable, however, and if I were her, I would perhaps send you a private message or call you so that the rest of us don't have to watch your Southern Gothic family drama unfold.  Gah.)

Or let me put it this way:  by this point in time, everybody knows that Dan Cathy went on the radio and in a magazine and said, "Yeah, we believe in the Bible definition of marriage and we support programs that also do that.  Get over it."  To be fair, he did NOT say "get over it."  He did say, "Guilty as charged," which was pretty much his way of saying, "Get over it if you don't agree with me," which was his right to say in our civil society.   It is my right to point out that the Bible definition of marriage to which he subscribes is NOT the one where you can kill your wife if she's a not virgin when you get married or the one where you can get a quickie marriage to the slave you're about to rape or the one where you get to marry your brother's widow, but the one where you marry a person of the opposite sex.  I am not trying to persecute Dan Cathy when I point this out, nor am I trying to take away his right to believe in ONE of the Bible definitions of marriage.  Whatever floats his proverbial boat, you know?

What floats MY proverbial boat is to publicly say that it really burns my biscuit that Dan Cathy takes my money and gives it to organizations dedicated to denying my fellow citizens equal protection under law, or worse.  (The "worse" part is the programs he supports which aim to pray the gay away.  Oy vey.)  I'm not trying to hurt Dan Cathy when I say this.  I'm not trying to hurt Christians when I say this.  I'm simply stating my point AND removing my money from the free market system-supported business Mr. Cathy oversees.

When the Henson company pulled their products from Chick-fil-a, they weren't trying to torture Christians. They were making a political statement in a free market economy:  they didn't agree with Cathy's religious stance, so they weren't going to continue to help the company make money.  Cathy (and company) were not tortured by this.  They weren't afflicted or bedeviled.  THIS is what persecution is.  Persecution is when people try to HURT you because of your religious convictions.  And being a Christian (and a multi-millionaire), I'm pretty sure that Dan Cathy isn't hurt by any of this.  Because he said what he said for a purpose.  He MEANT to define himself a certain way and it was his RIGHT to do so, because he's an American.  So I doubt highly that he is suffering any actual torment right now.

But let's be clear:  it is ACTUAL TORMENT to be denied rights that your fellow tax-payers have.  It is ACTUAL TORMENT to be denied legal access to the children of your partner if you happen to be homosexual.  It is ACTUAL TORMENT to have somebody tell you that you aren't as good as they are if you practice a sexuality that is deemed unworthy of his or her god.  Dan Cathy and the Chic-fil-a company give hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations that deny people rights based on religiosity.  They are practicing persecution.  By definition.

This week has worn me out.  I mean that literally.  I feel BARRAGED by people who are complaining about being persecuted or denied their right to speak their mind about their faith.  Are these people serious?  Have the ass jackets won so much ground in the battle for our country's identity that people honestly believe that a few people pointing out that we DO have prayer in school and we DO have the right to complain about stuff in this country equals persecution?  Is our society as a whole so rotten to the core that we equate a corporation losing money for giving money to a political ideology that not everybody agrees with to TORTURE??

Apparently yes, Virginia.  The ass jackets are winning.

The ass jackets have gained the power and the position to convince everybody else that the Constitution means a completely different thing than it actually means.  The ass jackets can weaken a deity to the point where the ass jackets' words mean more than the deity's.  The ass jackets can equate corporate profit with personal liberty, unless that corporate profit comes from marketing campaigns that don't feature their versions of righteousness.  AND PEOPLE BELIEVE THEM AND TURN TO THEM AS LEADERS.

Y'all.  Children are going hungry in America right now.  Babies have lost their mamas and daddies to war. Our economy is in the toilet.  The midwestern farmers are suffering and our food supply will be doing the same in months to come. There are people right now living in cars or dying alone in their homes because of the awful heat.  There are people who are so crazy that they become obsessed with a movie, order thousands of rounds of ammunition online, booby-trap their houses, and kill a dozen people in a span of minutes.

And yet, somehow, the ass jackets have convinced millions of people that they are being persecuted because somebody photoshops some rainbow-colored cream onto an Oreo.  They have convinced people that even though there is prayer and, yes, Bibles, in schools and on military bases and in courthouses every day that are protected by the Constitution, their religious rights are being trampled.  They have convinced the majority that when the minority speaks up, the minority is trying to take something away or is plotting an overthrow of an entire society.

Do you know what we used to call people like that?  Despots.  Tyrants.  Dictators.

Do you know what tyrants and despots and dictators do?

They persecute people.

Ass jackets are just tyrants, waiting for a little more power and a little more fear and a little more hate.

In order to combat the ass jackets, I'm going to suggest, with love and respect, that if you feel you are being persecuted by somebody using the phrase "Hate-fil-a," you ask yourself the following:

1. Am I caused true emotional pain by this?
2. Am I caused true physical pain by this?
3. Am I made to feel less of a person because I am continuing to choose to drink the tasty deliciousness of Chick-fil-a lemonade despite the fact that the Cathys support organizations that seek to deny gay rights, when I am not a big proponent of gay rights anyway?
4. Am I being forced by anybody not to say that I think that Chick-fil-a is just PEACHY for supporting organizations that seek to deny gay rights?
5. Am I being forced by anybody to deny my faith or being made to feel that there will be serious repercussions if I avow my faith?

If you answered no to these questions (and I'm pretty sure you did), you can relax, because you aren't being persecuted.  Whew!  I know that's a load off your mind.

Meanwhile, those of us who are caused emotional pain by being denied equal protection under law (or who are feeling emotional pain because our loved ones are denied it), who are beaten up or threatened (or who watch our loved ones be beaten up or threatened) because of sexual orientation, who are made to feel less human or worthy of love because we seek gay rights, or who feel as if criticizing a restaurant or talking openly about our non-majority faith will cause us loss of work or companionship in our community...well, I think we're going to keep talking.  

I don't think it's a conversation that Mike Huckabee, Ass Jacket wants to have.  But in the (paraphrased) words of Dan Cathy, he can just get over it.