Last week I was surprised to see a killing take place across the street from my house. I was sitting on my porch reading the newspaper when it happened. At first I didn't even realize what I was seeing. But a few moments later, there was no mistaking it. I'd just seen a hawk kill a mouse.

I'm not used to seeing birds of prey here in the city. My neighborhood is home to lots of squirrels, chipmunks, the occasional racoon, some mice, a fair number of crows, and more songbirds than you can count. We even had an honest-to-god wild turkey roaming the streets here several months ago. But not a lot of hunters. Which is why this took me a bit by surprise.

The hawk took his meal to a nearby tree and proceeded to eat it. I didn't have a great view of it, and I don't actually know a hawk from a falcon, so I can't be any more specific about what kind it was. It was fairly small, about the size of a crow, which is why I didn't immediately recognize it as a bird of prey when it touched down on the lawn across the street, then took off.

OK, so last night I turned on the TV to see what TiVo had recorded for me, and in among the new Fall-season episodes was a program that had been on PBS about the family of red-tailed hawks that took up residence in Central Park back in the 1990s. It was an interesting program, describing how the couple nested on one of the buildings that surround the park, how their children learned to fly, and so on. It also talked about the phenomenon that surrounded them, the throngs of people who gathered to watch them, follow their progress week after week, and generally treat them like a movie-star couple or British royals. These people gushed about how amazing it was to see something so truly wild in the city.

I thought about the hawk I'd seen the week before. And my own reaction to it.

Yes, it was noteworthy, and I thought some of the same sorts of things that these New Yorkers said. But after watching my hawk for several minutes as he ate, and snapping a few photos in hopes of identifying what kind of hawk he was... I moved on. Because it really wasn't that big a deal. I see hawks out hunting all the time on the highway between here and Lansing. It's not that unusual to see them along certain roads around here, like the one going around the nearby lake. I've even seen an eagle. We have wild-ness here. It's part of our lives.

But apparently the people of New York City are so separated from it, that when it does appear in their lives, it's a huge Event. How sad.

If I hear another veteran arguing that we need to protect the American flag from protesters who might burn it, I'm going to punch him in the face. Anyone who says that is a disgrace to the uniform he once wore.

Understand: I have a great deal of respect for veterans. My uncle flew combat missions in Vietnam, and I'd salute him in a heartbeat. Vets deserve appreciation for their service. But when someone says that the physical banner of the United States is more important than the principles embodied in its Constitution, they are demonstrating contempt for their country. And in the case of a veteran, they're violating the very first article of the oath they took, swearing to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States". Whether they like it or not, the Constitution (as upheld by the Supreme Court) says that the right to burn the flag as a form of protest is protected by the First Amendment. I don't agree with everything the Supremes say, but a soldier challenging their authority is flirting with treason.

There's nothing in the military service oath about protecting the flag; that's just a bit of conditioning they use in boot camp to enforce discipline and promote team morale. Honoring the flag and protecting it from physical harm are noble things. But they don't take precedence over the Constitution and their oath to uphold it.

A few weeks ago, my 10-year-old nephew snickered a little at a photo of his father, taken back when Dad was in college. He was wearing shorts that hung just below his balls. "That's just the kind of shorts people wore back then," I explained.

Of course no self-respecting person today wears shorts that expose his thighs, and even showing your knees is considered a fashion misdemeanor.

And I want to punch whoever decided to make that change.

Not because I enjoy looking at legs. I do, but not in any big way. The fact that - I'm told - I have nice legs doesn't do a lot for my self-image, at least not as much as being told that I had a nice smile or a nice tummy would. Those I appreciate. But I've got enough photos of guys wearing nothing but a smile, so that's nothing to fume over.

No, I hate the arbiters of fashion because the long and heavy sacks that pass for "shorts" these days are way too damn hot! For the small amount of skin surface area I have exposed to the weak breezes, I might as well be wearing full-length slacks!

I suspect the reason "longs" are considered so fashionable today has something to do with popularity of baggy clothing in general. It's related to the fattening of our society. Young people these days are carrying around more fat and less muscle than ever before. Tight shirts and short shorts would show that off. So instead they hide under the folds of their fashions. And force us all to go out in 90-degree, 90%-humidity weather and sweat and sweat and sweat.

News Item:

In Little Falls, Minnesota, a lion and a tiger that were being kept at an auto body shop by their owner, escaped from their cage and critically injured a 10-year-old boy. The local sheriff reports that the lion and the tiger were euthanized.

Now that's fucking stupid. They should have euthanized the retard who was keeping these dangerous animals, and who let them get out.

Ever since the terrorist attacks of September 2001 there's been a resurgence of unapologetic American pride. You can see it on bumper stickers and hear it on the airwaves. You don't have to read between the lines; people spell it right out: "I'm Proud to be an American". It's been so strong that a president who campaigned calling for a more humble America, now uses pride as the central virtue of our society.

I've found this all a bit troubling. Which is why I found this quote I ran across interesting. It's a statement by Christian theologian C.S. Lewis from his book Mere Christianity, which is an attempt to outline the core tenets that underlie all the various flavors of the religion:

"Pride is the complete anti-God state. Pride is the chief cause of misery in the world! As long as you're proud, you can't know God! Pride is Spiritual cancer! It eats up love, contentment and even common sense!"

So if the United States is such a Christian nation... why doesn't it believe this?

I'm not a breast man.

OK, I like chicken breasts (preferably boneless), and I have a certain fondness for a muscular male chest (which is technically a "breast"). But I haven't been interested in seeing a plump female mammary in decades. In fact, I'm tired of seeing them paraded about for advertising, and opening a porn-video mailing and unfolding a flyer full of boobies is a huge disappointment. I am not comfortable seeing them in the flesh.

But I was even more disappointed by the anti-breast actions of County Clerk Mary Hollinrake (Kent County, Michigan), as described in The Grand Rapids Press this afternoon. A woman - there at the Clerk's office for official business - was very discreetly feeding her baby, and Hollinrake had the audacity to come out and ask the woman to either stop, or leave!

Hollinrake ducks responsibility for it, of course, claiming she was responding to complaints from other visitors. OK, so she has to respond to them. But the appropriate response would be to tell those visitors to stop whining and... deal with it.

There is nothing more natural, healthy, and for-the-love-of-god wholesome than a mother nursing her child. To say nothing of the fact that it's something a mother's just gotta do when the baby needs it. She shouldn't have to go hide in the bathroom and sit on a toilet, like someone with an intestinal disorder. The fact that some people are uncomfortable seeing it - and I'm one of them, remember - is their problem, not hers.

There seems to be a growing misconception in our society that people have some God-given right not to be offended or upset or uncomfortable. Demonstrators are shoved off the to side where the people they're protesting won't have to see them. Gay and lesbian couples are asked not to kiss or hold hands or hug in front of homophobes. And breastfeeding mothers are asked to please go away.

I'm sorry, but that's not the way a free society is supposed to operate. I'm offended by the very presidency of George W. Bush, but I don't expect to be shielded from its existence. I don't demand that his smug, contemptuous addresses to the nation be put on Pay Per View where I won't stumble across them whilst channel surfing. I don't expect rich SUV owners to keep their conspicuously expensive environmental hazards off the road where I won't have to see them. I don't ask that Christians make their crosses less visible and take any self-righteous and insulting messages off the signs on church lawns. That would be selfish, and most certainly rude. So I don't whine, and I... deal with it.

The right-wingers have been bitching for a while now about "political correctness" and how you can't say anything without offending people, and how horrible that is. But it seems pretty clear to me that the right-wingers are at least as guilty of that as anyone. Hollinrake is no bleeding-heart liberal, after all; she's part of the local Republican Party, and a regarded as a "good conservative". Unfortunately, she's just demontrated again that this makes here a bad public servant, one far too quick to enforce her constituents' Victorian disapproval of breastfeeding (!) against a responsible mother.

What next, a crackdown on "offensive" apple pies?

The Dove Foundation, a non-profit group that was founded to promote family-friendly (and consistent with mainstream Christian values) movies, has released a study "proving" that G-rated films are more 11 times as profitable as R-rated films, and PG and PG-13 films fall in between. They say their stats show that "what the people want" are the more openly-rated films.

Except that's not true.

I'm not questioning their statistics. Just the way they're trying to misinterpret them. The thing is, Hollywood makes way more R and PG-13 files than either PG or G. Compared to 1,533 R-rated films put out from 1989-2003 that were included in Dove's study, there were only 123 G-rated films. And those dozens of G-rated films included some megablockbusters, including the entire output of Pixar, a bunch of heavily-promoted Disney animations, and so on. All this tells us is that the percentage of G-rated movies that get huge promotion and attract a big audience is bigger than for R-rated movies. If the number of R-rated movies released was restricted to just the best (or most commercial) 123 of them, their average profit would be a lot better, because fans of sex, violence, and "adult language" would all have to go to the same 1 or 2 films playing at any given time. On the other hand, there are a lot of "experimental" and "artsy" movies - stuff no one expects to make any money on - in the R-rated bucket, which the public just doesn't go to see in any number.

Plus, there's the fact that once upon at time... such as the Dark Age before 1989... G-rated films had a tendency to bomb at the box office. Star Trek fans cringed when they saw that ST: The Motion Picture had gotten slapped with a "G" because they were afraid no one would go see it, and the franchise would be doomed. Fortunately (yes, I mean that), the trekkies turned out by the thousands, and the film got good enough reviews to overcome the stigma - yes, stigma - of a G rating. When Disney returned to feature animation in the late 1980s, there were similar fears. And they, too, beat them with quality.

That's what it really comes down to. Quality (which I have to admit probably means "quality of the special effects, marketing, and star power") makes money. The Dove Foundation is trying to dispel the myth that G-Rated films don't make money. But in doing so - by convincing the movie studios to take more chances and green-light more of these kid-friendly films that are being shopped around Tinseltown - they're helping to reduce the average quality of G-Rated films that get made. That in turn will reduce their average profitability... maybe even to the levels that nearly killed off the "G" in the late 1970s.

I just read in the newspaper about a new book by an old acquaintance of mine. David Myers is a Psychology prof at religiously conservative Hope College, and the author of a long-running millions-selling college textbook on the subject, of which the college is very, very proud. They're not as proud of his latest book, however. It's a more mainstream bookstore-friendly - but still academically sound - analysis of gay marriage, from a Christian perspective. The surprise (at least to those who don't know him or his co-author Letha Scanzoni, or their previous scholarly work) is that the book comes down firmly in support of it. The book is entitled What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay Marriage.

This is certain to lead to some controversy at Hope College. Especially given the timing. News recently broke about how James Bultman, the president, pounced hard on Miguel De La Torre, a Religion prof who dared to poke fun of fundie demigod James Dobson in an essay published in the local paper. (He ridiculed Dobson's recent rant about Spongebob Square Pants.) Bultman bit into him so hard that he quit. Even with tenure. Read this article in The Muskegon Chronicle for more background. The following quote from a letter Bultman wrote to De La Torre is significant:

"Hope is dependent on enrollment and gifts to drive the college financially," the president wrote. "When people are displeased with what we do, their only recourse is to exercise their options with regard to enrollment and gifting. Several have indicated their intention to do so."

Bultman is talking about people such as Rich DeVos, co-founder of Amway, and a political ally of Dobson. Bultman has since issued a statement that he wasn't talking about DeVos, who hadn't made any such threats (at least not yet), but it's obvious that DeVos was prominently on Bultman's mind when he wrote that. DeVos is, after all, the billionaire who extorted then-President Lubbers of Grand Valley State University - a decent man trying to do the right thing - into backing down from a promise to offer equal benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees, by threatening to withdraw his millions of dollars in financial support for a major construction project in downtown Grand Rapids. DeVos is now bankrolling Hope's new basketball fieldhouse. Connect the dots.

Fortunately David Myers has something better than tenure to protect him. For one thing, he's famous. He's been on national TV (most recently for his book about... happiness.) People at lots of other colleges know him, and being able to boast about him is a big feather in Hope's cap. Also, he's not latino. The administration see him as "one of us", a longtime member of the family, contrasted with De La Torre, who's fairly new to the college, an "immigrant" if you will. David's also just a very nice person, the kind that's hard to hate. Not that this would protect him from the administration by itself, but it gives him some immunity because stomping on him would produce just the kind of money-threatening controversy that De La Torre's comments did. You see, there are also people in the Hope-funding community who like David personally. So the administration has tolerated Myers' open tolerance of gay students for a very long time already. They'll tolerate this.

But this whole intertwined combination of events is a great example of how - at its core - Hope College is a sham. They go on and on (and on and on) about their commitment to Christian values, but year after year, decade after decade, administration after administration, they betray that. It isn't even about homosexuality. Sure, the administration is packed with hysterical, bed-wetting homophobes. But what really sets their sheets to soaking is their devotion to money. Granted, they have to be concerned about finances. We all get that. But whenever it comes down to a question of money, or the basic Christian priniciple of compassion, money always wins. I've seen them go out of their way to willfully harm people, all in service to their true god, Mammon. Not just by stomping on innocent people who bring "bad publicity" to the college, but also by covering up the misdeeds of the guilty, brushing genuine scandals under the rug. They're amoral. This isn't coming from Myers, or even from De La Torre; I've heard this from a bunch of people I know who've worked there. Mostly past-tense. After some soul-searching, a straight, Dutch friend of mine - also a Hope alumn - declined a job there that he'd be perfect for... but he said he didn't want to work at such a racist institution.

So, anyway... kudos to David Myers, for having the insight and the courage to write this new book. Condolences to Miguel De La Torre for learning the hard way the wages of speaking your mind with only tenure and an expectation of compassion to defend him. And a pox on the administration of Hope College, who deserve every shred of bad publicity that leaks out despite their best efforts, and who deserve precious little of the sweet nectar of money that their god rains down upon them.

For earlier articles on this topic, see God's ex-Boyfriend, volume one.