DriveThru – Get What You Need

All of the DriveThru bloggers want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

From a policy perspective, 2009 has been an interesting year for one-man, one-woman marriage. Bad: Iowa, Vermont, D.C. Good: Maine, New York and New Jersey. But I have to be honest, the marriages making the news are pretty discouraging.

Tiger’s philandering, Kate and Jon’s public ugliness, Beyonce’s parents—married for 29 years—divorcing in the wake of a paternity suit. And too many people I actually know are also divorcing.

Ugh.

Marriage needs a little Christmas, as the song goes, and it’s needed now. Thankfully, the Christmas story inspires.

It’s difficult to imagine entrusting an unborn child, let alone the holy child, to a young teenage girl and a man who is not the father, but the Christmas story is about beating the odds. Statistically, it was improbable that the couple would marry–let alone stay together to raise a family–but God knew something about the heart of Mary and the integrity of Joseph, that made them perfect for His divine plan.

The rest of this story is impossible to ignore. It thrills and divides and challenges and repels. If untrue, we are hopeless and hapless humans in search of meaning and our own solutions. If true, the impossible is possible—from feeding the hungry, to living with and faithfully loving another impossibly flawed person. It’s not humanly possible. The touch of the divine makes it possible.

Every marriage needs a little Christmas, a little more divine grace for one another, and now is the perfect season to try it out.

I love Joe Arpaio, the hugely popular Maricopa County, AZ, sheriff, who drives the ACLU nuts for making his inmates wear pink underwear, or feeding them bologna sandwiches rather than hot meals at the taxpayers’ expense.

And he’s stepped in it once again. Apparently believing that Christmas music may improve inmate morale (fewer fights, knifings, disputes over the TV remote, etc.), Sheriff Joe is piping all sorts of seasonal music 10 hours a day into the common areas of Maricopa County jails during the Christmas season. The inmates are only free from the aural assault if they stay in their cells.

So far, six lawsuits have been filed this year to stop the Sheriff’s annual musical torture, alleging that Christmas music constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the 8th Amendment.

I was about to write the prisoners’ complaints off to the fact that they have too much time on their hands and are chafing from the pink underwear.

Then I had a more empathetic, kind of a ghost-of-Christmas-past reaction: “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” gives me a nervous tic every time I hear it. Jose’ Feliciano’s 1970 “Feliz Navidad,” was fine for the first 30 years and 10 thousand times I heard it, but it now makes me curse in German. And any song sung by Burl Ives immediately causes a stabbing pain behind my right eye (or is that the pencil that I’m jabbing into it?). There are several more such songs that evoke similar reactions in me.

I’m sorry, Sheriff Joe, but unless you’ve got some Mannheim Steamroller or Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas music piped into the lunchroom, I’ve got to go with the prisoners on this one.

Oh, and I’m okay with the “barking dogs” rendition of Jingle Bells. That never gets old.

UPDATE: No I don’t really know any German curse words. And please don’t send me any, either!

Yet more evidence revealing the dark side of GLSEN–the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network—has surfaced. (GLSEN is the group founded by President Obama’s “safe school’s czar,” Kevin Jennings.)

At issue this time is a GLSEN fundraiser featuring a theatrical play called Santa Claus is Coming Out!

GLSEN’s fundraiser invitation says the play depicts “Santa in his heartfelt struggle to reconcile his romantic relationship with Italian toy maker Giovanni Geppetto.” Pictures on a Web site promoting the production depict Santa in not-so-subtle sexually suggestive situations. The play also mocks those who support traditional values.

It’s sad that GLSEN, which claims that it wants to protect kids, has chosen to use a fundraising tool that perverts the innocence of Christmas and sexualizes the longtime, child-revered icon of Santa Claus.

Public comments made by the play’s writer and performer, Jeffrey Solomon,  provide more enlightening insight into the true agenda of homosexual activists and groups like GLSEN.

In recent interviews, Solomon explained that he “was inspired to write Santa Claus is Coming Out by his research into the parents’ rights movement to keep gay issues out of the classroom.”  He said the central message of his play is “a challenge to speak truthfully to children.” What is his version of “speaking truthfully?” Consider this anecdote Solomon shared:

I was dressed as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and I had a sign saying ‘Rudolph Supports Sexual Diversity.’ And the owner of the pharmacy on Commercial Street came out [shouting]. ‘I’ve got kids inside. Get out of here. They’re asking questions. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see that sign.’ … We love this lie of Santa Claus and when we mess with that ‘they’ [the anti-gay activists] get very upset. The same summer I was promoting the play, and I had the poster ‘Santa Claus is Coming Out.’ A straight couple with a very young boy about 7 asked me directions, and the kid was kind of looking at the poster. Suddenly, the mother clenched her hands over his eyes as I was giving them directions, and she held them there the whole conversation. And it’s very funny. In both these instances, the play is playing out in front of me.”  (“Santa Claus is Coming Out: An Interview with Actor-Writer Jeffrey Solomon,” by Deirdre Donovan, Nov. 29, 2009, TheaterScene.net)

Clearly homosexual activists like Solomon have no qualms about using shock tactics to expose children to homosexuality.  And it’s sad that GLSEN promotes these tactics.  Apparently, GLSEN wants to have it both ways: On one hand, it wants to be perceived as a mainstream group for public schools that’s worthy of parents’ trust. On the other, it wants the freedom to desensitize kids and attack parents’ God-given rights to protect their innocence.

Michigan, the neighboring state to one of the more noisy atheist organizations when it comes to complaining about celebrating Christmas in the public square, is the scene of this year’s first “atheists-complained-so-you-can’t-have-a-crèche” brouhaha. Story  here, and the lawsuit is here.

Seems to me that local governments are way too skittish when it comes to complaints from folks with official sounding names like “Freedom from Religion Foundation.” The knee-jerk reaction of this Michigan county to deny a permit for what has become a yearly Christmas tradition is sadly typical. The only thing worse than a bully is a person who cowers at the first sign of a bully.

Kudos to the Christmas crèche defenders who didn’t join the county in its unconditional surrender, but decided to see if perhaps the First Amendment might just dictate a different result.

The constitutional issues are rather simple, despite the huffing and puffing in FFRF’s letter to the county. If the county in this case grants permits for residents to put all types of expressive materials in county-owned medians, then it can’t engage in viewpoint discrimination and bar a religious message from what is, for First Amendment purposes, a “public forum.” If the totality of the facts indicate that the county’s medians don’t rise to the level of public forums, then this particular crèche may ultimately have to end up on private property somewhere. 

On the flip side, the “public forum” scenario works in favor of the FFRF folks as well as for anyone else. They should be able to put up a “Bah, Humbug” display under the same terms and conditions as anyone else. If they’re going to disapprove of Christmas, they might as well do it out in the open where we can all take note, rather than hiding behind a threatening letter.