Sinner Visits Red State and...

I now have the pleasure of introducing an article written by a great guy who is a friend of mine, and who has something he wants to say.... so he's saying it here. I must say I'm glad that my former home state is the Blue State of Illinois, which allows me to visit without the accompanying desire to pound heads against walls until sense is regained. So here we go:

A SINNER VISITS A RED STATE AND LIVES TO TELL ABOUT IT

Every San Diegan, Republican or Democrat, ought to visit a red state now and then. I did just that recently when I spent a week in my home state. My part of Indiana couldn’t be redder if it was on fire. About the time I start believing Mike Royko’s old saw about California being the land of fruits and nuts I go back to the land of my childhood. A few days there and I feel better about my adopted state and about myself -- but about not my country.

Some of my old Hoosier friends, many dating back three-quarters of a century, are sure I’ve gone completely off the trolley and become a one of "those loonies from California." They were wary when I became a dreaded liberal and when I expressed doubts about religion. They started speaking circumspectly in front of me when I admitted that I voted for Bill Clinton. My explanation that I just couldn’t accept that Bible story about a woman who talked to a snake shocked them beyond belief. Some things aren’t to be questioned in Indiana.

But now, as a freelance writer, I have the temerity of putting my heretical notions in writing. That’s just plain awful in the land where James Dobson and Pat Robertson – not to mention Rush LIMBAWWW -- are revered. According to their lights nobody should be allowed to criticize religion, or any silly aspect of any of it, including the notion that we should go to war because god wants it.

Of course it's still all right to criticize religion as practiced by papists, Muslims and followers of other false gods.

For the fundamentalists, things have gotten so far out of hand that their preachers have urged their congregation to vote folks out if they support the wrong candidate.

Still I don’t think many were shocked at what that North Carolina preacher suggested. After all the “wrong” candidate in this case was one who didn’t oppose stem cell research and other forms of killing unborn babies. As for me, the humanist and the skeptic, I’m glad that the right to attend church in California isn’t decided by popular vote. I wouldn’t be able to go to the weddings of my grandkids or the funerals of many of my friends.

For all the hand wringing piety and overbearing sanctimony I didn’t find myself feeling inferior to those who accepted a vengeful God without reservation or a modicum of evidence. I certainly don’t feel inferior to an old classmate who went along when his church excommunicated his teenage daughter because she had a baby out of wedlock. I learned that they not only tossed her out, they hauled her up before the congregation and humiliated her for flaunting god’s law, this at about fifteen years of age.

A rebellious child thus became an incorrigible woman, and how ironic that the two institutions touted as being necessary for stability, religion and family, were the very institutions that turned their backs on a teenager struggling to find her way in this world.

When I paid my toll the lady in the booth said "Did you enjoy your visit to Indiana?" I replied, "Mostly but it has too much Jesus, too many Republicans.”

Believe me, I’m glad to be back in the land of fruits and nuts.

So thanks, my writer friend, for letting me post your work! I'm glad you're back safe in California. And believe me, no matter how aggravated I get with San Diego's financial and political situation, I ain't leavin'. No way, no how.