A little humour for you this afternoon, from Out.com.

Curing Blindness
Mark 10:46-52; 7:24-30
by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones
Cathedral of Hope – Oklahoma City
6th Sunday after the Epiphany
12 February 2006

My first year in full-time ministry I found myself planning a youth mission trip. Now, the curious thing about this is that I had never been on a mission trip before. Seriously. Somehow I had grown up a Southern Baptist, active in the youth ministry, gone to a baptist school, and spent my adult years as an active layman, but I had never gone on a mission trip. So, the first one I was set to go on was one I was in charge of.

Our church, Rolling Hills Baptist in Fayetteville, Arkansas, had decided to send our kids to Helena, Arkansas as part of the new work being done there by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Arkansas. Nationally the CBF had adopted the twenty poorest counties in the country to focus our domestic missions efforts on helping to improve life in those counties. Two of the counties were in Arkansas, so the state fellowship had decided to focus its energies in the town of Helena.

Months before the trip, I took a scouting trip of my own, to meet with a CBF of Arkansas representative and the local charity we were going to be working with. That morning I drove south from I-40 and along the state highways into the Helena. There is something special about that landscape. Like so many places in America, the Mississippi Delta has its own unique beauty. The fields, especially of cotton. The trees. The old homes and shops in the small towns.

I arrived in Helena a couple of hours early, so I decided to drive around and take a look at the town. There were beautiful, grand, old homes, but there were also homes that evidenced extreme poverty. One thing I noticed was the campaign posters. Despite the fact that Helena is an African-American majority city, the faces on the posters of the candidates running for sheriff and other offices were primarily white.

I ended up parking on the old main street. Blocks and blocks of buildings were empty. Fifty years ago this town had a population of 40,000; now it was less than 10,000. I went into a little café run by an African-American woman and had the best grits and the best coffee I’ve ever had. While sitting there, I started talking with the other customers and got into a deep conversation with a man who actually happened to run one of the organizations in town that helped teenagers. He moved over to my table and really opened up and shared a lot with me.

He had grown up and gone away to college, one of the benefits of integration. But he hadn’t come back home; he had stayed away for decades, until he realized that he needed to go home and help the young people there. He told me that integration, though clearly a good thing, had had negative affects on the town. For one, there was a capital drain when many of the white people fled to the suburbs of Little Rock, Memphis, and Jackson. There was also a drain of talent and intellect from the African-American community that was finally able to go to college and get good jobs in other parts of the country. The most devastating impact, however, had been the death of black businesses. Once all the shops were open to everyone, the African-American business district slowly died out, ridding the city of its professional class. This was an eye-opening conversation for me, I’d never had its like before or since, really.

I excused myself and went to my meeting. The local organizers I met were the Rev. Dr. Mary Olson and Ms. Naomi Cottoms. Dr. Olson is a white woman and a Methodist minister. Ms. Cottoms is African-American. Together they had moved to Helena to try to help with issues of poverty, housing, health care, democracy, etc.

As I entered their offices, I wasn’t sure what to make of this meeting. Frankly, I was nervous because I’d never done anything like this before. They later told me that they were not sure what to make of me. Here I was, a young, white guy from the affluent part of the state, and a baptist at that. Maybe I was going to just bring my youth, have some fun, but not really help.

But, something just clicked between us. Have you ever met people like that, strangers who you suddenly realize you can connect with deeply? It was like that for me and Dr. Olson and Ms. Cottoms. Over the course of a few hours, we talked logistics and plans, and then drove around to look at the town and the worksites. I even met some of the elderly people whose homes we would be working on.

In 2002 in the United States there was a city with neighborhoods that did not have running water, where the residents had to go to a central spigot and get water for their homes. In this town there were human beings living in shelters where we wouldn’t house our animals.

Though I knew extreme poverty existed in this country, I didn’t really know it. Though I knew that racism still deeply affected society, I didn’t really know it. All the time people say that they go on some trip or have some experience that forever changes them. I think people use that line too often, because you usually can’t see much of a change at all. But I can honestly say that my day in Helena, Arkansas that April in 2002 forever changed me. My eyes were opened. It awakened parts of me that had never been this alert before. It changed my ministry, because I now realized that I had to work actively in the communities in which I lived to improve life. I developed a passion for issues of race, poverty, and justice.

That’s what our gospel lessons are about tonight. The last two weeks I’ve been talking about how the disciples were blind, that they failed to understand Jesus and what he was all about. The reason they couldn’t see is because they were so trapped in the status quo. They wanted to get ahead in society – they wanted position, power, and freedom.

In the ancient world power within society was structured like a pyramid. In fact, it still is. A small number of individuals are at the top, with larger numbers toward the bottom. In first century Palestine, the Roman Emperor would have been atop the power structure, with the local authorities below that, then the Jewish authorities and the well-to-do. The peasant class from which the disciples came would be toward the bottom. Yet, below them would be women and children. And below even them would be the diseased, the disabled, the mentally ill. In fact, as I believe it is Elizabeth Schusler Fiorenza who says, many of these minor characters in Mark like the blind and the lepers would have been under the pyramid, being crushed by it.

Scholars on the book of Mark agree that there are three main groups of characters – the disciples, the authorities, and the minor characters. The minor characters include those like the Syro-Phoenician woman and Bartimaeus, whose stories we read tonight. Included are the Centurion and the cross, Jairus, the woman with the issue of blood, the paralytic, the demon-possessed, etc. Basically all these characters that Jesus encounters in his ministry. Most of these characters have something in common – they are powerless people. Except for the centurion and Jairus, these characters are those who would be at the bottom of or even under the power pyramid.

There is one thing that they do all definitely have in common, they all get it. Whereas the disciples fail to see the full meaning of Jesus’ ministry and his teaching about the reign of God, the minor characters get it. They understand what Jesus is all about. They see. In fact, in the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman, she seems to understand better than Jesus does in this moment.

Scholars do not think it is a coincidence that these social outcasts are generally the ones who grasp what Jesus is all about. This is described as the “hermeneutical advantage of the poor.” It seems that the more one participates in the social structure, gaining power and wealth, acquiring stuff, trying to get ahead, the less likely one is to have true spiritual insight. Now, this gospel isn’t saying that you have to be poor to truly understand what Jesus is all about, but it is saying that the more your life becomes focused on your position within society, the less likely you are to develop the ability to truly see.

So, many of us are blind to things, and we don’t even realize it. Just like I finally had to take notice of a place where poverty and racism destroy hope in order to really learn. I had all this head knowledge, but I didn’t truly see. So, we’ve got to get out of our comfort zones, put ourselves in different settings, talk to people with different perspectives, all to cure our blindspots that we don’t even know are there.

When my youth group got to Helena we spent the week working on the homes of elderly folk. I took an average group of kids, typical teenagers. Not a perceptive, sophisticated bunch. Not even great workers, generally. Many of them rather dorky, as middle schoolers can be.

During the course of the week, we got to know a number of local people. Next door to the place where we stayed was the Ford family. Cedric Ford, one of the sons, was in a wheel chair, couldn’t walk, and had difficulty speaking. He had numerous illnesses. But our youth befriended him. They also watched all week as his mother Willa would pull up in her car and then carry her son into the house up the back steps. So, when we had some extra time and money, we built a wheelchair ramp for Willa’s house. The first time she walked out that back door, I thought she was going to dance down that ramp.

For our entertainment, we would go swimming at the local pool. We were the only Caucasians swimming in the pool. Near the end of our stay, something happened. I was sitting with some of the adults while we watched something happen that we didn’t know was going to happen nor had we prompted our youth in any way. Cedric Ford decided he wanted to go swimming; he had never gone swimming before, ever, in his life. He was 29 years old. But I watched as Willa Ford lifted her son out of his wheelchair and down into the pool into the waiting arms of four of my dorkiest middle school boys who spent the rest of the afternoon carrying Cedric around the pool. Those boys seemed to be having the time of their life. We adults cried. We cried when we told the story later.

And you know what? Those average, dorky boys never understood what the big deal was. Yet, they had understood fully. That day I saw Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Jesus was incarnate in those middle school boys.

May we be cured of blindness so that we might truly see Jesus.

Did you see Meet the Press yesterday? Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence Chair, was sounding even more like a grumpy old man than he usually does. But it wasn't amusing. He actually twice stated, and once as clarification of a question from Tim Russert, that the presidency has inherent constitutional authority to supercede the law when it comes to national security. Wow!

In my understanding this not only rejects a fundamental principle of our democracy, that everyone is equal before the law, but even rejects THE fundamental principle of Anglo-American political history since King John signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede, that every member of society is subject to the rule of law.

The Atlantic Monthly raises the spectre of a new nuclear issue -- American primacy. It seems that the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction (as ridiculuous as it was, illustrated in Dr. Strangelove) has actually been replaced by American primacy with neither the Russians nor the Chinese having sufficient capacity to contain the United States.

According to mutually assured destruction, if the US, say, attacked the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union would have had sufficient capacity to destroy the US before the Soviet Union itself was destroyed, and vice versa. This, of course, kept either side from pushing the button, though we came very close a few times. However, Russia no longer has the capability. Its forces have diminished as ours have grown more technically advanced. The once lauded fleet of Russian ballistic-missile subs, for instance, has declined by 80% in the last fifteen years and the remaining are in a woeful state:

A viable Russian deterrent demands that a number of [subs] be at sea at any given time and that they successfully evade the U. S. attack submarines that stalk them. But in fact most Russian [subs] must now remain pierside -- the Russians weren't able to conduct any patrols in 2002 and could carry out only two in 2004.

The great Russian navy conducted no submarine patrols for an entire year?!

The leading negative result of the decline of the Russian program and the current state of the Chinese is that they are less centralized than than the US and Soviet systems were throughout the Cold War.

Lest we think that this American primacy is a victory, it actually raises disturbing questions about the potential for abuse of American power (and given the abuses of American power we've seen in recent years . . . ). The final paragraph of this startling essay:

American military preponderance now embraces the entire "spectrum of conflict," as Pentagon planners put it. That is to say, we're miles ahead of everyone in every type of warfare. But if that preponderance is leading to a world in which Russian and Chinese launch commanders are fingering nuclear hair triggers, the game may not be worth the candle. Without any public scrutiny or debate the United States has emerged as the nuclear hegemon, in possession of a destablizing first-strike capability. It does not matter whether this has come about by accident or design, or whether America's motives are worthy or malign; the condition itself is a problem. The ramifications of this state of affairs are of the gravest significance to America's security -- and the world's. It's time for scrutiny and debate to begin.

The editors of The Atlantic Monthly, reflecting on the occasion of their 150th anniversary, write the following. My question is, is it true in 2006? I'm not convinced that it is.

What is "the American idea"? It is the fractious, madening approach to the conduct of human affairs that values equailty despite its elusiveness, that values democracy despite its debasement, that values pluralism despite its messiness, that values the institutions of civic culture despite their flaws, and that values public life as something higher and greater than the sum of all our private lives.

My monthly column for Hard News Online.

It's an odd time to be gay in a Red State. We still spend our time responding to bigots who attack gay politicians or fighting to keep the library commission from creating a new form of segregation. All the while, our friends who live on the coasts are gaining all sorts of legal protections and freedoms, support from their employers and a broad acceptance in the larger culture. . . . [Read more]

What Blinds Us?
Mark 10:13-31
by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones
Cathedral of Hope – Oklahoma City
5th Sunday after the Epiphany
5 February 2006

Jesus was traveling with the disciples and noticed that they were arguing with one another. He didn’t take the time to ask what was going on, but later in the day, when they had arrived at their destination, he asked them what they were arguing about.

Having been a youth minister, I’ve got a good sense of this episode. Sometimes when you are on a church van driving hours to some camp or mission trip, you may notice some issue arising between two kids sitting in the back of the van, but you just can’t deal with it at the moment. You are too tired or fed up or you just want to take this one moment to relax and listen to the song on the radio. Later in the day, when everyone is settled into the place you are staying, you draw the kids involved aside and ask what happened. Your better able to deal with it in this moment. I imagine those of you who are parents have had similar episodes, and so you understand what’s going on for Jesus in this moment.

So, Jesus asks “Why were you arguing?” And no one answers. Which we all know means there is something serious here and that the guilty conscience stays quiet. So, Jesus sits down; clearly this is going to take some time and focus. The text doesn’t record that any of the disciples told Jesus what the argument was about, but I guess he had overheard enough that he knew they were arguing about which of them was the greatest.

Can’t you just see it. Peter, James, and John were sort of an inner circle for Jesus, so I’m sure they were lording that over the others. Andrew may have claimed seniority as one of the first two disciples. They each must have cited the most prominent things on their resumes or told their stories of meeting important people or bragged about their financial achievements or their personal accomplishments or how great the grandkids were. They were just people, just like we are just people who do the exact same things.

But in this instance it was worrisome. Because this isn’t just harmless competition sneaking into conversation. Jesus was trying to train a group of leaders for the new community he was forming. And time and again they are proving that they just don’t get it. So, once again, he sits down to illustrate.

He calls the twelve and says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then, Jesus takes a child and places it among them. Can’t you picture this? Here is Jesus, tired and exhausted after a long day of walking during which his friends have been fighting with one another. He’s sitting down with these big, proud, adults males. He’s trying to make his point, and let’s imagine that he looks and sees little Hannah playing and calls her over and has her stand in the middle of this group of grown men. And Hannah is cute and precious and he speaks gently to her and she smiles, and he picks her up and holds her in his arms. Then Jesus looks around at these stubborn guys and say, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

Then John tries to change the subject. He says that the disciples met someone who wasn’t part of their group who was casting out demons in the name of Jesus, and they tried to stop the guy. Jesus then explains that they shouldn’t have tried to stop the guy, because it isn’t important that God’s work only be done by the “in crowd.”

Then Jesus gets back to his point with the children. I imagine he’s still holing precious little Hannah. Jesus says,

If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone where hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.

Now, then, that’s pretty strong language. And you would expect it to be pretty clear what Jesus means.

But, then, we have the episode that was in our gospel lesson tonight. Only a few paragraphs separate these stories. Together these episodes reveal the blindness of the disciples – they just aren’t getting it, they keep failing to understand.

People are bringing their children so that they might be blessed by Jesus, and the disciples get angry. This reminds me of when I was a toddler and I would stay at my grandparents house. My mother’s youngest brother was still living at home at the time. And he would get angry when my grandmother would give me my way. He was a teenager who was jealous of the attention that a two year old got. Oh how silly we humans can be. Here are these grown men, angry and jealous because some children want to touch Jesus.

The gospel tells us that Jesus became indignant. You know, by now I would be a whole lot more than indignant. If I were Jesus, I would have gotten so angry at these guys that I would have just walked off and left them. I wonder if he was ever tempted to smite them with fire and brimstone? If so, this must have been one of those moments.

“Let the little children come, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. In fact, whoever doesn’t receive the kingdom like one of these kids, will never enter it.”

Jesus is making a profound statement here, and I don’t want us to miss it. Part of the message is that God’s reign is inclusive of everyone, even the children. Yes, the children represent the powerless, the endangered, the innocent, etc. It is even a message that society ought to be restructured to give children more protection and better treatment. But there is more to Jesus’ message than that.

Sharyn Dowd of Baylor University writes,

Children in antiquity, who had no control, no claim, and no status, could welcome whatever came their way with open arms, not because they were innocent and trusting, but because they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. According to the Markan Jesus, people enter God’s realm, not in a proud triumphal procession, but in complete vulnerability, with no claim to any rights or status.

To be like a child is to be open to possibility. When you get nostalgic or sentimental for childhood, what is it that you miss? Maybe you miss the freedom that you had when you didn’t have any financial obligations. Maybe you miss living so fully in your imagination. Maybe you miss the creativity – spending hours drawing pictures or building castles out of blocks or making up games. You probably miss the sense of play. And maybe it is also that you miss the openness of the future. For children, everything is new and fresh and exciting. Life is full of discovery and novelty. The future is this great expanse in which you can do whatever you want.

For too many of us adults the world has become too structured, too settled, too organized by responsibilities. We sometimes feel trapped by the choices that we’ve made, even the good choices. And that’s just part of adulthood; we do have obligations to fulfill. And no nostalgia or sentimentality will solve that.

However, we are remiss if we forget to play. If we lose our imaginations and our creativity. The truth is that the future is still this wide open realm of possibility, even for us. No matter how settled our life is, every moment in time has an indefinite number of possible futures and you have the freedom to actualize any of those. If you really want to change something about your life, you can. It might be really difficult, but you can do it.

I think that so often we adults experience a failure of imagination. We are unable to see what chances are out there. We aren’t as open to creativity and play.

During the first year of the American Revolution, the American forces had besieged the British forces in Boston. The British had command of the town and Bunker Hill, which they had won only after losing many men. The British ships also occupied the harbor. The American forces had control of the surrounding country, and the siege continued for many, many months. Neither side would risk an all out attack. It was a stalemate, and it looked as if nothing would break it.

The highest point in the area was the Dorchester Heights. But no one controlled it. From the Heights one would have a commanding position over the city of Boston and over the harbor. The British commander, General Howe, knew this, but felt no need to go occupy Dorchester Heights, unless the Americans made a move on it. General Washington didn’t make a move on it, because he didn’t think he had the troops to spare.

Into this mix came Henry Knox, a young, inexperienced commander. Maybe because he was young and inexperienced, Colonel Knox had the imagination to present a daring plan. He would travel to Fort Ticonderoga and bring its artillery to Boston. This meant weeks of travel, bringing the guns hundreds of miles, during the winter, across lakes and rivers, along muddy roads, over mountain passes. It was daring, bold, probably even impossible. But Knox did it.

When the Ticonderoga guns arrived, the Americans conceived a second daring plan. In one night they would take advantage of the darkness to occupy the Dorchester Heights and position the artillery. Hundreds of men moved efficiently and expeditiously to create an artillery emplacement and its defenses all within a few hours.

In the morning the British awoke to discover the guns commanding a position over their forces in the town and their ships in the harbor. Howe and his commanders were stunned. They had not imagined that the Americans were capable of such a bold move. Without engaging in battle, the British had just lost Boston. Unwilling to go through what would have surely been a mass slaughter, Howe retreated from Boston. It was the first great American military victory, and it rested on one person’s ability to think creatively and imaginatively.

Jesus’ frustration with the disciples is that they can’t see. Why is it that they keep failing to understand Jesus’ point about the children? Well, let’s look at the second story that was contained in today’s gospel lesson.

A man comes to Jesus and asks how to inherit eternal life. Now this is a pious man who has spent his life keeping the commandments. Here’s the person who says, “I’ve done everything I was supposed to do, why isn’t life better than it is?” Wow. I know I’ve been there. Many times. How about you?

Well, for this particular person, Jesus diagnoses his problem. Jesus senses, correctly it turns out, that this man is trapped by his desire for stuff. This man has assumed that following all the pious rules and being successful at business are the steps to the good life. But Jesus overturns that applecart. Jesus has the audacity to tell this guy that he lacks something. But this guy doesn’t lack anything. He has everything he needs and wants. What he lacks, though, is freedom. He’s trapped by his stuff. He can’t imagine life being lived any other way. He’s not happy, but he’s unable to see how to change.

Oh, this describes us too. We don’t want to risk unemployment or financial ruin or a bad reputation, and so we stay in the job or the marriage that makes us miserable. Don’t get me wrong, neither Jesus nor I am advocating some sort of chaotic, bohemian life that’s completely free of obligation. No, that sort of life often ends up being too self-centered. But sometimes we do become so trapped in the status quo that we fail to see the genuine opportunities open to us.

Michael and I have spoken often about this sort of thing. In the 1980’s when Michael was diagnosed as HIV positive, he had a job making great money. He was a part of the rat race of career ambition and making more and more money to get more and more stuff. At the time, there weren’t yet the legal protections for HIV positive employees. When Michael’s bosses discovered that he was positive, they fired him, and Michael had no legal recourse.

As you can imagine, it was a bad time. One of many in the ensuing years. But, Michael eventually began to view things differently. As he says now, often the events in life that seemed to be the worst, turned out far differently. In the long run, they often ended up being beneficial because they opened up new opportunities and forced him to see things he otherwise wouldn’t have seen.

So, Michael is happy that he’s no longer trapped in that mindset of getting ahead and getting more stuff. Because he was so abruptly kicked off that train, Michael was suddenly opened up to new things. In order to make sense out of life, he had to learn to be healthier and more holistic. He became more concerned with well-being instead of getting ahead. His life began to focus more on the spiritual than the accumulation of stuff.

This is the point of Jesus’ statement to the rich man. This guy is trapped, and Jesus is trying to set him free.

This episode ends up revealing that the disciples too are trapped, because they are quite confused by what just happened. You see, they have bought into the power structures of their society. It suddenly becomes clear that they really want to get ahead in life. In first century Palestine, you move ahead in life by gaining power. If you want more freedom, then you’ve got to have more power. One way to get more power was through wealth. When Jesus says that wealth doesn’t gain you access, the disciples are shocked and wonder, “If wealth doesn’t do it, what does?”

Scholars of the Book of Mark are pretty tough on the disciples in this particular story. There is a consensus that in this moment it becomes clear that the disciples think that following Jesus is going to get them ahead in life. Oh, following Jesus probably isn’t going to make them rich, but they do think it is going to bring them greater power and greater freedom. See, they must not be realizing that when Jesus talks about a “kingdom,” he’s really using a metaphor. Because they seem to think they will be the princes and lords in some new social structure.

Once we realize this about the disciples, it explains so much. They are debating who should be greatest among them because they assume that life is still about getting ahead. They are upset that someone not part of the group is casting out demons in Jesus’ name, because they have assumed that they are the insiders with special knowledge, special access, and special power. How dare someone else be able to do what only we are supposed to do! And they get mad about the kids because Jesus keeps saying that these children get it better than the disciples themselves do.

Oh these poor disciples. They are so blinded by the status quo, blinded by their desires to get ahead in life, blinded by their assumptions that freedom comes from gaining power over other people, blinded by wanting more stuff.

But, don’t you see? The author of the Gospel of Mark wants us reading this book to realize that we are just like the disciples. We too can be blinded by exactly the same things. There’s an Irish folk tale that goes like this:

Once upon a time a medieval monk died. He was buried, as was the custom, in the monastery wall. One day the monks heard noises from within the wall and removed the stones to find their brother alive and well. He began to tell them what he had learned on his journey beyond. And everything he said was contrary to the teachings of the church. So the brothers put him back in the wall and sealed the crypt forever.

In the case of these monks, blindness is a willful act because they are too scared of the implications of genuine insight. We need to become more like children and less like the disciples, because the children are closer to having genuine spiritual insight. The children still have imagination and creativity. They still have a sense of play. They still see that the future is open to all sorts of possibilities. We’ve become trapped in the status quo and fail to see. Sometimes are blindness is the result of a willful act. We lack the true insight that is essential for the Christian journey and is one of the key themes of the Gospel of Mark. As we read this story, may our eyes be opened and our blindness cured, so that we might be set free to live the life of grace and joy that God desires us to live.

There has been lots of good commentary on lots of issues in recent magazines. I've planned on highlighting some here, but have been too busy the last few weeks. I did want to draw attention to Andrew Sullivan's piece "Your Taboo, Not Mine" on the rioting in the Muslim world over the cartoons in European newspapers. An excerpt:

Excuse me? In fact, the opposite is the case. The Muslim world needs to do something to appease the West. Since Ayatullah Khomeini declared a death sentence against Salman Rushdie for how he depicted Muhammad in his book The Satanic Verses, Islamic radicals have been essentially threatening the free discussion of their religion and politics in the West. Rushdie escaped with his life. But Pim Fortuyn, a Dutch politician who stood up against Muslim immigrant hostility to equality for women and gays, was murdered on the street. Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who offended strict Muslims, was killed thereafter. Several other Dutch politicians who have dared to criticize the intolerance of many Muslims live with police protection.

Muslim leaders say the cartoons are not just offensive. They're blasphemy--the mother of all offenses. That's because Islam forbids any visual depiction of the Prophet, even benign ones. Should non-Muslims respect this taboo? I see no reason why. You can respect a religion without honoring its taboos. I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite. As a Catholic, I don't expect atheists to genuflect before an altar. If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one. Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.

The special committee formed to create the special section in the library for gay-themed and other "controversial" books has submitted its report to the full library commission. There will be lots more from me on this issue in the coming weeks, but here is the motion and further information:

Motion from Special Committee:

The special committee moves that a special section be created with the children's area of all MLS locations. Materials for easy readers, readers, and tweens will be shelved in this section.

The collection within this section would include all books/materials identified as:
child abuse, child abuse prevention, child sexual abuse, child sexual abuse prevention, domestic/family violence, drug abuse, substance abuse, medication abuse, alcoholism, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex. Other subjects identified as useful to families based on requests, patterns of use or, in the judgment of staff, are thought to support our patron's needs in parenting may be included.
=============================================

Left out of the motion is the item of the agenda relating to the policy of implementation from the January 31 meeting as follows and was agreed to in the discussion:

All Easy, Reader and Tween titles (currently owned and future additions) with the subject heading 'homosexuality' or 'homosexuality--fiction' will be permanently placed in this section.

This will be on the agenda of the full Commission on February 16, Thursday, 3:30pm
Village Library, 10307 N. Pennsylvania.

As the administration bends over backwards to defend breaking the law to do domestic wiretaps, I want to reiterate a point I've made before.

But first, a lead up. The first line of administration response is that their actions were done to protect America. That misses the point. Pretty much everyone gets why it would be a good idea to wiretap suspected Al Qaeda members. And pretty much everyone agrees that if the existing FISA process wasn't working in this new era, that Congress would have amended the law. The real point is that the administration broke the existing law.

Their next line of defense gets to my main point (the one I'm reiterating). They argue that the power to circumvent the law in this case was based on the power of the President to prosecute the war. So, this is a presidential war power. And, yes, there are war powers of the presidency. I might even be able to get behind this possibly being one.

However, we are not legally at war. We are, de fact, at war, but not de jure. It takes 2/3 of the Congress to place this country at a state of war and to provide the president with war powers.

The administration says that the force authorization resolution is sufficient. But the Constitution doesn't discuss force authorization resolutions, and I have always found them to be of questionable constitutional standing. The Constitutions does expressly discuss what is necessary to place this country at a legal state of war, and this action has not been taken since 1941. So, no president since Harry Truman ended WWII has had the legal right to exercise war powers.

So, until 2/3 of Congress expressly vote to place this nation at a legal state of war, the president in breaking the law by executing powers that are not currently his.