David Triguiero's Idaho

Phantom Ray Holocaust

 

            Boeing has developed a new highflying drone called the Phantom Ray capable of carrying a 4,500-pound payload, which can be dropped on unsuspecting “enemies” from 40,000 feet in the air.  Not only does the pilot get to stay safe at home, he doesn’t even have to guide the Phantom Ray with a joy stick as with the now old fashioned drones. He simply enters the target coordinates into a U.S. Air Force computer and its nifty programs take care of the rest.

             Is there no end to the marvels of modern technology?  Probably not, but there may be an end to civilization as we know and enjoy it; and it’s getting here a lot faster than climate change. We may blow ourselves up before the rising oceans cover our coasts while the inland dries up, bugs destroy our forests and crops and cancer fries our skin.

 There is something satisfying about that. You know, to be destroyed by our rational brainpower instead of our irrational stupidity.   But is there a difference? We are just as dead either way.

             Fundamentalists on the religious end of the spectrum would say we are doing God’s will and the devil made us bomb him and kill ourselves in the process; but that’s okay because everyone who counts is raptured up to heaven where Jesus and 72 virgins await. Those at the other end would say man is still the measure and rational logic survives even if we do not.

            Why is it worse to be destroyed by a pilotless drone than a bomb dropped from a B-52? For the same reason that Hitler’s holocaust was worse than the pogroms preceding it, the Armenian genocide in Turkey just 20 years earlier and the Rwandan genocide, is still going on 15 years later.

            I think it is because human passion was dispensed with by the Nazis who set up a killing machine to eliminate Jews and other unwanted minorities rationally and efficiently. Like spraying mosquitoes. 

            Jews responded to this ultimate horror by establishing the state of Israel in the land of Palestine, which had been ruled by the Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, various Crusaders, Turks and Great Britain since the original state was destroyed in 70 C.E.  In perhaps the ultimate irony, the new Israel would be for Jews only. Arab Muslims and Christians were pushed into ghettos on the West Bank and Gaza where they dream of returning home and take pot shots at the Israelis who answer with bombs.

            Round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows. Well, not nobody exactly; just nobody anyone pays much attention to. People like Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of Tikkun (Hebrew for repair the world) magazine and a tiny movement to apply liberal spiritual values in American politics, the Deli Lama, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jesus Christ, perhaps the most ignored, misunderstood and misrepresented of the lot.

            What is the answer? – love. Not love that demands love in return as a reward; not Christian or any other religious love; not patriotic love of home and country; not tough love and those other radio psychologist cliché loves. Unconditional love, unmindful of material stuff, self-aggrandizement or self-preservation.   

                         

Dialing Up the Future

 

 

            Weiser was one of the last places in Idaho to get dial telephones; maybe one of the last in the United States. Certainly, it was the last town of more than 4,000 people to be hooked up to the worldwide telephonic web.

            It was a Monday in late September of 1959. I was a freshman at Weiser High School and we were called to an assembly. “All students will accumulate in the auditorium at 10 a.m. this morning,” assistant principal Walt Kerfoot  announced over the intercom. “Second period classes will be canceled.”

            I was thrilled. I had not read the two chapters of Silas Marner assigned for Miss Coons’s English class that day and was not looking forward to dodging her questions. We all knew what the assembly was about. The boys from AT&T had been installing new dial telephones in our homes for the past month. Tuesday we would be able to dial our own calls without going through the operator, just like they did on television.

            Our number was 479-R and we shared the line with two other households. This often made it difficult to make a call, especially when Arabella Long was playing records over the phone to her boyfriend. It also made for good entertainment listening in on other party’s calls. This took some skill as you had to pick up the phone very carefully while quickly pressing down the release button with the finger of your free hand. If you let the button up slowly enough there would be no click sound informing the talkers of your intrusion.

            Problem was, everyone knew people could be listening in so it was rare to hear anything particularly juicy or informative. If you were discovered, you might be reported to the phone company, which would notify your parents bringing serious consequences. Your parents could lose their telephone service, especially if you inserted snide comments into the conversation as my friends and I liked to do.

            As soon as dial telephoning was up and running children began dialing. Northam-Jones Funeral Home had cleverly, they thought, claimed the number 549-1234. For weeks afterward, their phone rang morning and afternoon as Weiser kids played with their new toy.

            Things soon settled down and before long most people forgot that there was anything new about dialing your number. Before long you didn’t have to go through the operator for directory assistance. I’ve always kind of missed picking up the phone, waiting for the operator to come on with “Number plea-uz”. You’d say “information please,” and she would say either “One moment plea-uz” or “This iuz”. You would tell her the name and she would tell you the number and say “A’ll connect yew” and you would have your party.

            I once went into the old telephone office on Main Street in Weiser when paying bills with my father. It all looked very ordinary to me at the time. But, as I reflect back on it, I realize we were in the presence of a bygone era. Lined up at the call board were three or four women in headsets moving plugs on the end of long cords in and out of holes. They all looked exactly like Ernestine Bass, comic Lilly Tomlin’s now iconic operator parody.

            Things were changing fast in Weiser, but everything was still human. None of us foresaw the day when there would be no operators, no directory assistance and virtually no human contact telephonically. .

               

Raging Dentistry

 

 

            Whenever someone roams nostalgically into “the good old days”, a friend of mine always interrupts saying, “I have two words for you: modern dentistry.” It works every time. Their tongue darts quickly over their teeth, their lips pucker as their cheeks draw thoughtfully between their molars and they shut up; usually with a knowing chuckle saying, “Okay, I’ll give you that one.”

            You don’t have to go back very many years to reach a time when dentistry was a lot more painful and much less successful than it is today. When I was eight or nine years old in the mid 1950s, my family went to Dr. Holmes in Payette. The 12 mile drive from Weiser was worth it because Dr. Holmes had been my mother’s dentist, my grandparent’s dentist and, for all I know, my great grandparent’s dentist.

            He was old, officially retired and therefore cheap. My father would later inform me that he didn’t care for dentistry and only did it because it paid considerably more than his first love, cabinet making.

            Dr. Holmes’s workshop in a converted garage behind his Center Ave. home was a sight to behold with every piece of modern woodworking equipment the 1950s had to offer. Think Norm Abrams’s New Yankee Woodshop fifty years earlier.

 His dentist shop above my uncle Clyde’s Thurston’s Drug Store on Main Street was a testament to nostalgia. His drill was electric, but, for all I know, may have dated from Edison’s time. It ground slowly and surely into my molars in search of nerve ends that would set me screaming and jerking in near hysterics. You see, Dr. Holmes believed pain medication was for sissies. He didn’t stock any, never had, never would.

I was a sissy and didn’t care who knew it.  Nothing aggravated Dr. Holmes more and, since he was always aggravated to begin with, my screaming fits had him constantly grumbling about my unmanliness. “Your little sister was here this morning and she didn’t make any fuss; now here you are acting like a little girl. Maybe you should be wearing the dress. Now stop this and get your mouth open so we can get this done,” he would say in his grumpy, soft voice.

I knew my little sister better than Dr. Holmes did and he was either lying or managed to fill her tooth without hitting a nerve. Not only would she have screamed, she would have called him a few not so choice names that she had picked up from her former best friend’s teenaged brothers.

Dr. Holmes mercifully died before I’d had more than a couple of fillings and we started going to Dr. Westberg in Weiser. He used a brand new, super high speed drill and always filled up your gums,   teeth and much of your face with pain medication. In fact, he insisted on it. Going to the dentist was not a good time, of course, but you didn’t need to hide in the woods to avoid it.

 

Religion Out of Contexts

            There are many reasons to be suspicious of charter schools, but the Idaho Public Charter School Commission has set upon the most insignificant of them to question the efficacy of Nampa Classical Academy.

The school wanted to use the Bible, Book of Mormon and the Quran in its secular history and English literature classes. In its questionable wisdom the commission dictated that using such “primary religious texts” in public schools violates the constitution.

 Just how this is accomplished is not specified in newspaper reports of the incident, but it is safe to assume that the ban has is based on the amendment requiring the separation of church and state. My first reaction was disbelief mixed with satisfaction and hope. When a state where students are forced to proudly pledge allegiance “under God” to their flag and country every day bans the Bible from its schools, that’s a sign of  rational thought lurking somewhere in the deep recesses of the body politic.

My second reaction was disappointment. Clearly, these people do not understand the meaning of the separation of church and state clause in the constitution. Worse, they likely believe that the Bible actually contains the words and dictates of God and that’s why the godless liberals don’t want religion in the schools. What’s needed is a new Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment that puts daily Bible reading and prayer back into the schools where they belong.

So why should these religious texts be used in schools? Simple. Because they contain the stories, myths and history that form the basis of Western civilization. Northrup Fry, the 20^th Century’s foremost literary critic and analyst, said all Western literature is based on concepts, themes and philosophies contained in the Bible. You cannot fully understand English literature without a solid foundation in the Bible. Similarly, all Western history is based on the Bible.

The Quran holds the same position in the Muslim world. To understand the history and culture of the Middle East, it is necessary to have at least a limited understanding of the Quran, which, incidentally, also contains some of the best poetry ever written.

We live in Idaho and the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints played a significant role in our state’s history. At one point in history, Mormons were not allowed to vote in Idaho. Why was that? In part because of polygamy and partly due to pure, hard prejudice, something that has not disappeared. Knowing what the Book of Mormon says is integral to knowing Idaho history and why it is the way it is today.

The only one of these religious texts that I have read is the Bible, but I think they are enough alike that each of them is virtually impossible to understand if you read them like a text book or a novel with a beginning, middle and end from which you can draw conclusions. They are a record of human relationships with each other and with God, or the unknown and unknowable, if you prefer. 

Each one is a vital part of knowing our literature, our history and who we are. That may be something the State of Idaho and its Idaho Public Charter School Commission don’t want you to know.

Schoolyard Casino

            When I was in grade school, marbles was a springtime passion. That it was not an altogether respectable activity for upstanding young boys made it even more alluring. Some schools considered marbles a form of gambling, which technically it was, and banned matches on the grounds.

            Pioneer School in Weiser had a progressive principal who allowed games as long as they weren’t played for keeps. Since keeping marbles shot out of the pot – a large ring drawn in the dirt – was the whole attraction of the game, the rule was universally ignored and soon passed into oblivion. The opposition converted its energies setting up an alternative circuit of tournaments with Schwinn bicycles as prizes, but to little effect. We played for keeps and played for bicycles too.

            In fact, the keeps circuit was squeaky clean. There were good players who ended up with most of the marbles, but clear rules were observed by all and hardly anyone was reduced to nothing.

            Only once did a real marble hustler appear. He arrived one day just before spring planting began. Not much older than us in years, but eons ahead of us in experience, his cool, confident presence dominated the playground. His name was Umberto. Like Brazilian soccer stars, he had only one name.

            He carried his marbles in a soft leather bag. An amazing number were agates and he sometimes used them for “dates” – marbles placed in the pot to be shot at. We were lucky to have one agate shooter and instead always dated glass cat’s eyes available at the local five and dime. I got one of my best shooters in a tense match with Umberto.

            At the time Louis Antensio was the accepted schoolyard champ. Dennis Lolly was the best shooter and dominated school tournaments but nearly always wilted under Louis’s pervasive self-confidence in a high stakes game. Louis said tournaments were for sissies.

            Apart from tournaments, Dennis built his reputation and his marble collection – carried in a much envied purple velvet Crown Royal bag – from lower grades and stiffs like me.

            Umberto smelled out Dennis as an easy mark right away. He blew Dennis away in a seven-up (each player put in seven dates) mano-a-mano taking the agate shooter his grandfather had brought home from the Grand Canyon. Umberto shamed him into dating it without uttering a word. He dated five agates himself then stared casually at the gorgeous blue and green rippled shooter until Dennis tossed it into the pot with uncharacteristic bravado. Umberto drilled it on his first shot.

            While all this was going on, I was gradually improving my status from stiff to worthwhile opponent at a heavy cost in cat’s eyes. I didn’t much want to play Umberto because the whole school always gathered to watch him clean some poor sucker. I didn’t need the humiliation when I was trying to challenge the top of the ladder and establish myself as a contender.

            The rules didn’t allow you to turn down a challenge, however, and one day I found myself face to face with Umberto and a little cabal of lower-grade groupies that he never acknowledged. There was no way out. I decided to feign self-confidence and dated two lesser agates into a five-up pot in order to avoid the same trap that snared Dennis. To my surprise Umberto offhandedly toss in the wondrous shooter he had won from Dennis.

            What a prize, if I could win that beautiful agate I could lose all my dates and still come out ahead. It landed tantalizingly close to the edge almost like he wanted my to hit it. I didn’t question his motives and shot it out of the pot on my first shot. Dennis pestered my for months to trade for his Grand Canyon shooter saying Umberto had cheated him. If any one was a cheater, though, it was Dennis. You had to watch him constantly to make sure he wasn’t fudging over the line and he always wrangled selfishly over close calls.

            Umberto was an impeccable gentleman around the pot always giving opponents the benefit of the doubt with a shrug and a smile. He left school soon after the planting season began in earnest and was never seen again. I never gave Dennis a chance to win back the Grand Canyon shooter and still have it to this day. I figured that was the way Umberto had planned it.

           

Fellow Traveling With John Birch

            The Tea Party movement has endorsed Idaho’s own and only Democratic Representative Walt Minnick, apparently in an attempt to assert its nonpartisan credentials to a skeptical public. It also endorsed his front-running Republican opponent Vaughn Ward, a former Senate aide currently supported by his wife, who works for Fannie Mae, currently supported by a taxpayer bailout opposed by her huysband.

            DINO (Democrat in name only) Walt opposed the bailout, too along with health care reform and he is opposed in the Democratic primary this month. So it’s possible Idaho voters may have a real choice on the November ballot. If they do, the Republican candidate will certainly win, ending the Idaho Democratic Party’s brief stint in Washington.

            It won’t be the first time the Democrats have tanked in the state where some suspected Sen. Joseph McCarthy of being a Communist fellow traveler. In 1950, the Democrats nominated an eighth-grade educated pretend cowboy for the vacant U.S. Senate seat handing the victory to Republican Herman Welker, once a lawyer for the John Birch Society.

            Welker grew up in the upper country north of Weiser, which would later produce Sen. Larry Craig, and practiced law there until Wallace Beery wooed him to Hollywood to be a lawyer for himself and other stars. After the war, he returned to live in Payette, Idaho’s most conservative town, just 10 miles south of Weiser.

            The John Birch Society was not considered an aberrant movement in those days. Like the Tea Party today, it was the refuge of people terrified of change, especially change initiated by socialists infiltrating the federal government. They were called communists in those days, of course.

            Lloyd McGrath was in charge of the John Birch Society’s unofficial youth league at Weiser High School.  He may have been the only member for all I know, but he was in demand as a speaker at the Kiwanis and Lions clubs and other community organizations. He also lectured high school classes.

            Lloyd hardly ever mentioned the Soviet Union or Red China. The real Communist menace, we were told, came from within. Communists were secretly infiltrating every facet of American life. Sen. Joe McCarthy was a plant charged with undermining The  House Unamerican Activities Committee.

            We learned to our horror that most of the Russian war machine was being financed by foreign aid supplied by none other than President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself. In the hushed tones of a camp counselor telling ghost stories, Lloyd told how a Communist teacher could spread subversion.

            “He would take the flag and say something like, ‘This is such an important symbol it should be shared by everyone equally.’ Then he’d cut it up and give every student a little piece. Our flag would be desecrated. (Pause for effect) And no one would know.”

            My best friend Barry Wright, who read fellow traveler Walter Lipman each week in godless Newsweek, said, “So, what difference does it make if no one knows.” I am the only one who laughed. We were put in our place by icy stares from Lloyd that made it clear our patriotism was in question.

 Barry, who had once provocatively stenciled CCCP one of his sweatshirts, snorted another derisive laugh and rolled his eyes. I wasn’t so sure. We read god fearing Time magazine at our house and Barry and I argued continually about politics. Still, silly was silly regardless of the politics. I couldn't help myself; I laughed along with Barry and became a fellow traveler.

 

Big Town, Little History

 

 

 

            Boise is a big town, almost three times bigger than it was when my family went there shopping for school clothes every fall in the late 1950s. Only my sisters got clothes; everything I needed was readily available in Weiser at Everybody’s Department Store. Actually, my sisters didn’t get more than one dress, shoes and maybe a coat. The selection was bigger in Boise, but the prices higher.

The reason for the trip was to get out of Weiser.

 My father, who never needed clothes, went to the music stores where he tested out the new home size electric organs, which he hated but could not resist doodling on, bought sheet music and chatted with the sales people, who in those days knew a lot about music

 My mother enjoyed shopping at The Mode, Falk’s ID and other downtown stores we in the hinterlands considered classy. Sometimes a great bargain fell into her lap; like the year she found a White Stag car coat that fit my older sister perfectly for $9, marked down from $16. Nine bucks was a lot for a car coat – Everybody’s had them for $6, but they weren’t White Stag and didn’t have the running deer logo on the collar.

The highlight of the trip was C.C. Anderson’s Department Store. It had escalators that glided you up and down from the ground floor to the mezzanine. If I promised to be good, my mother let me go and ride the escalators while she and my sisters tried on stuff. Often I would run into another aficionado about my age and we would race each other up the down escalator, ride sitting on the moving handrail and otherwise not be good.

We always ate lunch at C.C. Anderson’s in the restaurant on the mezzanine.  Sometimes C.C. Anderson himself would appear in the restaurant. Old, small, round and bald like Winston Churchill in a three-piece blue serge suit, he would chuckle and toss the kids small packets of Chiclets gum. I always got my school shoes at C.C. Andersons and later would get my high school graduation suit there.

Last month C.C. Andersons closed for good. It had been Macy’s for about 20 years and, before that, it was The Bon Marche for almost 30 years. The family had sold the store after C.C.’s death sometime in the early 60s. You can imagine my surprise when The Idaho Statesman ran a story purportedly about the store’s history that didn’t mention C.C. Anderson. So soon they forget, or, more likely, never knew. The Statesman is owned by McClatchy Newspapers, a California based chain that only knows or cares how much money Boise puts in its coffers.

You can still go to Macy’s at The Boise Town Square Mall, which has lots and lots of escalators, but no kids playing on them. The uniformed security guards wouldn’t put up with it, I am sure.  It has a big food court selling everything from cinnamon buns to Mexican food all of it tasting pretty much the same.

You can sit there all day and no chuckling old man will toss you a packet of Chiclets.

 

Blazing Hyperbole

 

            When the guns were blazing again at Colorado schools  not long ago, tragedy was averted because a teacher confronted the shooter, tackled him and took away his rifle.

 I wonder what went through the minds of arm-everyone-for-safety gun advocates when they heard the story? Probably something like, “Boy, what a moron! That’s a great way to get yourself killed. If he’d pulled out a 357 a wasted the guy – no problem.”

That could be the way it would have gone down. The shooter would be dead – no need for an expensive trial – and nobody else would have been hurt. Problem is it is very difficult to hit anything, including the side of a barn, with a high caliber handgun.  To be even reasonably sure of hitting his target, the teacher would need months of intensive training.

 So it is very likely that the teacher would have missed the shooter. He might have hit someone else – a student running from the scene, perhaps, or a neighbor looking out the window to see what was going on. Meanwhile the shooter could have been drawing a bead on the teacher with his rifle.

 What if we lived in the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) dream world and all of the adults in the area had been armed. Let’s suppose someone had turned into the school parking lot right after the teacher shot the gunman. He pulls out his trusty Colt 45 rolls out of the car and opens fire on the teacher from behind the open door – just like on TV.  The police arrive and seeing the two dead bodies open fire on the good citizen. The rest of the staff pours out of the school firing at will.

I agree, that is much less likely than the NRA’s favored scenario, primarily because very few people choose to carry handguns even where they are permitted to do so. Here in Idaho it is very simple to get an “open carry” permit for a pistol and only somewhat more difficult to obtain one for a concealed weapon. But you never see anyone walking down the street wearing a gun in a holster.

Lots of people could be packing concealed handguns, but I somehow doubt it. People out here don’t like shooting other humans any more than they do in Washington, D.C., New York or Los Angeles. But, just as much, they don’t like being told how to live their lives.

 Hunting and target shooting are as much an integral part of conservative Idaho culture as touch football and sailing are of eastern liberalism. When we hear casually dismissive statements like “guns are just penis substitutes”, we are offended. Nobody ever questions a sailor’s manhood even though a motorboat will get you where you are going a lot faster and safer for a lot less money. It’s a sport, they like it; who are we to say it’s stupid and dangerous.

We like guns. We like to shoot deer and elk and birds even though the meat ends up costing us more than beef in the supermarket. In the off-season we like to shoot trap and skeet; it’s fun. We like shooting pistols. It takes skill and we enjoy developing that skill and teaching our children. It’s a bonding experience and part of our culture.

When the argument gets personal, we are just as capable of resorting to hyperbolic taunts as the next guy. So, we come up with stuff like the country would be safer if everyone packed heat; and maybe it would be. We know for sure that everyone is safer when we make an effort to understand and accept each other for what we are.

Milk Man Mash

 

            Television is such an integral part of our life now that is almost impossible to conceive of a time when it was only a side light, even for those of us old enough to remember. When I was in the early grades of elementary school, late afternoon programming was all local with the shows virtually indistinguishable from the commercials.

 The Merry Milk Man and Meadow Gold Milk on KBOI, channel 2 went head to head with Sheriff Spud and his Ore-Ida Tater Tots on KIDO, channel 7. There was no channel 6 and would not be for more than 10 years. My gang of third graders formed the core of the Merry Milk Man’s following. This was Jimmy Henngelar’s decision and the rest of us went along because his family owned the only television set.

One afternoon the Merry Milk Man announced that he would be coming to Weiser the next month to see all his little Meadow Golders. We were speechless. No one really famous had ever come to Weiser to give a show for us. Bing Crosby, Phil Harris and Gary Cooper came regularly to hunt pheasant, but they didn’t mean much to us, whose movie going was confined to Saturday afternoon B Westerns.

In less than three years, the Merry Milk Man had achieved name recognition in his own market area equal to that of Bing Crosby. An early indication of what the penetrating power of television would do to the entertainment industry.

When the big Saturday finally arrived, every kid under 12 – and a large number of older ones willing to risk embarrassment to see a real celebrity – were packed into the East Side School gymnasium. We were all pressed up against the stage where the Merry Milk Man would walk. Jimmy was leading the cheers.

When the Merry Milk Man finally appeared everyone stomped and cheered like crazy, but soon a very perceptible pall seemed to fall over the gym. I honestly don’t remember what he did to entertain us for the next hour, but whatever it was, it did not live up to the anticipation. Even as the initial accolade was fading, a collective sigh of “so what” stole over the audience.

Much of the act consisted of telling overeager kids not to lean onto the stage. As the performance proceeded, his merriness faded and towards the end the Milk Man was quite testy indeed. At one point he brought a well-polished shoe down on Jimmy’s fingers. The mashed fingers were painful, but what really hurt was the malevolent little smile that accompanied the transgression – no mistake about it, this was no accident.

Henceforth, the Henngelar’s television was tuned to Sheriff Spud and four o’clock every afternoon and we were all Li’l Taters. It wasn’t really the Merry Milk Man’s fault. Like everyone, he was an ordinary person who could hardly be expected to live up to the image television had given him.

The Hills are Killers

            I ran into a pretty young thing that claims to be a prophet on The Huffington Post the other day.  She also claims to be Miss Beverly Hills, which is a rather unique combination of hubris and narcissism to say the least. Lauren Ashley, a candidate at the up coming Miss California USA pageant declared on Fox News that God says homosexuals “shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.”

            Pretty grisly stuff for a beauty pageant you would think, but gay bashing has become part of the program in California since Carrie Prejean won the crown with it last year. Playing the piano and singing were once the primary talents exhibited at these beauty extravaganzas, but those take a lot of work. Channeling the Almighty is much easier to pick up and apparently works just as well.

            Miss Laura certainly has the beauty part down pat looking at the picture accompanying the Post’s story. It is a head and shoulders shot, so there is no way to evaluate her body. Her shoulders and upper arms are bare, however, indicating she is either wearing nothing or something that shows off her hills to best advantage.

 The city of Beverly Hills said Miss Laura and her hills were nothing to do with them. The city “does not sponsor a beauty pageant and has no association with Miss California USA,” it was quoted as saying.

 The drilling for sex look in Miss Nowhere Hill’s eyes is more temple prostitute than humble servant, but that’s religion these days. Abstinence makes the heart grow hotter so marry early and steam iron the sheets, you can always divorce him/her when things cool off. Boys on girls is a blessing, boys on boys is an abomination. The Bible doesn’t say anything about girls on girls – women were irrelevant when Leviticus was written. Nonetheless its quoters seem to take it for granted that girls will end up blood spattered too.

They take a lot for granted, as a matter of fact. They presume that God wrote Leviticus when scholars have proven beyond reasonable doubt that the book was pieced together over many years by several different writers. Those scholars also determined that each of the pieces was written to address a specific situation at a specific time in Jewish history. The stories have resonance in our time because they record God’s interaction with the people of Israel that formed the foundations of Western society.

None of his indicates that God approves of homosexuality today, only that it was not the issue being addressed in Leviticus or anywhere else in the Bible. We do know that Jesus Christ never directly addressed the subject, although he did touch on it indirectly in the Gospel of Luke. He cured a Roman centurion’s catamite of a terminal illness and then said of the soldier “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

Yes, the Bible story refers to the boy as “a slave whom he highly valued” and there is a remote possibility that he was simply good with horses. However, history is absolutely clear: Roman centurions’ most highly valued slaves were catamites. Jesus knew this but never broached the subject.

Miss Nowhere Hills apparently considers herself a better Christian than Jesus.