"Since the man who told me off for my less than perfect hijab was carrying a gun I didn't argue back."

The travails of a female BBC reporter in Iran.

One woman, one man -- and Manitowoc.

Here in Wisconsin, we're contemplating a state constitutional amendment that would restrict marriage to one man and one woman. How is this affecting people aroung the state? Consider the congregation at the First Reformed United Church of Christ on Waldo Boulevard, Manitowoc:

The local congregation, with 275 members, is scheduled to vote on March 19 whether it should bless same-sex marriages.

At its annual meeting last Sunday, members approved a motion for a congregational vote on the issue....

[The UCC's General Synod adoped a resolution] titled "In Support of Equal Marriage Rights for All," passed by national delegates in Atlanta last July.

It urges UCC congregations to support local, state and national legislation to grant equal marriage rights to couples regardless of gender....

First Reformed's pastor, the Rev. Richard Runge, recognizes the issue's divisiveness.

"I would prefer no vote at all ... my preference would be more dialogue and discussion and more thinking and praying about it," he said.

The UCC General Synod speaks to — not for — congregations which are free to accept or reject any or all resolutions offered at the national meeting held every two years.

After last July's gathering, Runge said he made it clear he supported the equal marriage rights stance of the general synod. For him it is a matter of justice, not morality.

"Marriage has to do with love, faith and commitment and knowing you care about someone and that special someone cares about you ... whether a man and woman or two men or two women," Runge said.

Church member Dick Weber believes Runge holds a minority viewpoint, both within First Reformed and the society at large.

Weber opposes same sex marriage.

"It is a moral issue to me," he said. "I am not criticizing homosexuals coming to church. We have always had a church open to all," Weber said.

But Weber believes his church must distance itself from the General Synod's position or risk people assuming the Manitowoc church also endorses gay marriage.

Fellow members saying it is OK for a gay couple to be at worship services, while a blessing ceremony for their relationship would be forbidden, mystifies Lisa Bergner.

She wonders how they could possibly feel welcomed. No matter how the March 19 vote goes, she vows to remain a First Reformed member.

"I will welcome everyone who walks in our door no matter the color of their skin or sexual orientation, and I believe the majority of our members will," Bergner said.

Kevin Schmidt on Sunday proposed the vote. "First Reformed Church needs to take an opinion so people know what they are believing in," he said following approval of his motion.

It's interesting -- isn't it? -- this idea that we need to believe in something as a group. First Reformed Church needs to take an opinion so people know what they are believing in. When I first read that, I thought the man meant that he needed his church to take a position so that he could know his own beliefs. But I think he means that the group as a body needs to take a position so that members know what sort of an organization they are part of and outsiders can decide what they think of the place. But it's an odd locution to say that people need to know what they are believing in.

The issue to be voted on in Wisconsin is whether a ban on gay marriage belongs in the state constitution, not whether homosexuality is a sin or whether gay marriage is a good idea. There are ever so many sins that are not burdened by provisions in the state constitution and ever so many bad personal choices that the law doesn't go out of its way to prevent individuals from making. But this congregation is reacting to the resolution adopted by the General Synod as much as the proposed vote on the amendment. Gay marriage has been forefronted as a political issue, and now this little church has decided it needs to take an official position on a subject that it seems as though it would have preferred not to address or at least, as the pastor says, to address in the mellow fashion of more dialogue and discussion and more thinking and praying.

"I went from a country where a sheik would speak and the people listened to one where the sheik talks and the people talk back."

Says Sheik Reda Shata, the imam of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge:

Day after day, he must find ways to reconcile Muslim tradition with American life. Little in his rural Egyptian upbringing or years of Islamic scholarship prepared him for the challenge of leading a mosque in America....

"America transformed me from a person of rigidity to flexibility," said Mr. Shata, speaking through an Arabic translator. "I went from a country where a sheik would speak and the people listened to one where the sheik talks and the people talk back."...

Mr. Shata settles dowries, confronts wife abusers, brokers business deals and tries to arrange marriages. He approaches each problem with an almost scientific certainty that it can be solved. "I try to be more of a doctor than a judge," said Mr. Shata. "A judge sentences. A doctor tries to remedy."...

It is a woman's right, Mr. Shata believes, to remove her hijab if she feels threatened. Muslims can take jobs serving alcohol and pork, he says, but only if other work cannot be found. Oral sex is acceptable, but only between married couples. Mortgages, he says, are necessary to move forward in America.

"Islam is supposed to make a person's life easier, not harder," Mr. Shata explained.

Much more at the link.

"All of us in the modern creationism movement today would say we stand on his shoulders."

Henry M. Morris, dead at 87:

Dr. Morris was a hydraulic engineer and taught at several universities before developing his critique of evolution and a history of Earth that spans 4.5 billion years in the 1961 work "The Genesis Flood." The book, written with the theologian John C. Whitcomb, was the first to take a scholarly approach to proving the Old Testament creation story, and it argued that Noah's flood, rather than eons of erosion, sculptured the earth.

Considered the handbook of creationism, "The Genesis Flood" is in its 44th printing, having sold 250,000 copies in English.

"It was a groundbreaking work in that he basically, in this culture, in this day and age, showed that there were scientific answers to be able to defend the Christian faith and uphold the Bible's account," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a group based in Kentucky. Mr. Ham said that picking up a copy of the book in Brisbane, Australia, while a graduate student in 1974 was a transformational moment in his own life.

"The grass-roots movement you see across America right now, with the school board battles, with the students questioning evolution in colleges, all of that is really in a big part due to the work of Dr. Henry Morris," Mr. Ham said. "All of us in the modern creationism movement today would say we stand on his shoulders."

Sounds like one hell of a book... and one hell of a flood.

Tony Blair mentions God.

Shocking!

Tony Blair says God and history will judge whether he was right to go to war in Iraq, according to the transcript of a television interview to be broadcast Saturday.

In a rare reference to his Christian religious faith, Blair told broadcaster Michael Parkinson he had struggled with his conscience over the decision.

When asked about sending troops to Iraq, he said: "That decision has to be taken and has to be lived with, and in the end there is a judgment that -- well, I think if you have faith about these things then you realize that judgment is made by other people," he said.

Asked to explain what he meant, Blair replied: "If you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

Parkinson asked Blair if he prayed to God when he decided to go to war in Iraq.

Blair replied: "Well, I don't want to get into something like that."

Pressed on the subject he answered: "Of course you struggle with your own conscience about it because people's lives are affected and it's one of these situations that I suppose very few people ever find themselves in.

"In the end you do what you think is the right thing."

That is a very minor reference to God, dragged out of him by the reporter.

The BBC analyzes the press response:

His submission to the judgement of God goes against years of warnings from advisers, says the Independent - not to mix politics and religion.

The Daily Mirror sees his TV interview with Michael Parkinson as "remarkable".

"The Judgement Day is some way off," it says, "but the judgement of the British people is critical of a bloody invasion as the death toll mounts."

The real issue here is whether we were right to go to war and, more importantly, how best to deal with the current state of things. Worrying about Blair's slight reference to religious belief shows either an aversion to religion or the usual pointless grasping for political arguments.

Should Christian "gay prevention" groups be penalized for practicing therapy without a license?

The AP reports:

In a report released Thursday in Miami Beach, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute ... said some Christian-based gay prevention and treatment groups have used the First Amendment protection of religion to avoid sanctions by state health officials seeking to enforce regulations on counselors who offer therapy without a license.

Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman said officials need to ensure that those offering such therapies are licensed -- as opposed to simply being clergy -- and that clients and their parents should be informed about the programs' long-term success rates.

''Many of these programs are crossing the line as to what is approved under freedom of expression,'' Foreman said in an interview with reporters. ''This deserves attention. It deserves to be regulated.''

Much as I dislike these conversion efforts, I don't think having the government force them to fit a psychotherapy model is a good idea. Religious counseling operates in its own way and has for an awfully long time. Portraying psychotherapy as the only correct model is oppressive and not even very scientific. Have these professional psychotherapists proven the effectiveness of their approach?

The real controversy is over whether anyone should attempt to prevent homosexuality. Obviously, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute has a strong position on that. It is also a very persuasive position, and they have plenty of power to convince others that they are right about it. In this light, it is especially sad to see this turn toward government regulation to suppress the speech the oppose.

Because Hollywood is anti-religion, because character conflicts make better film stories, or because the outlaw persona is so cool?

Why did they leave religion out of "Walk the Line"?

"That dimension of Cash's life, which was present all the way through, was absent," said theRev. C. Clifton Black, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, who criticized the film for that reason in a review for the magazine The Christian Century. "I was stunned."...

"He was a really committed Christian all his life," said Patrick Carr, who co-wrote Mr. Cash's 1997 autobiography. (The film was partly adapted from that book, but Mr. Carr was not part of the deal.) Mr. Cash even saw his drug addiction as his metaphorical years in the wilderness. "As he was going further into addiction, he knew he was traveling away from God; that's how he thought about it," Mr. Carr said. "He was feeling that he was completely separated from God, and that was the worst thing."

At the nadir of his addiction, Mr. Cash went to Nickajack Cave in Tennessee, crawled in as far as he could and essentially lay down to die. When he did, he had the sensation that "I was going to die at God's time, not mine," he wrote in his autobiography. When he walked out, he told his mother that God had prevented him from killing himself.

The cave scene isn't in the film.

Mr. Black and others have suggested that the role of religion in Mr. Cash's life was minimized because Hollywood generally shies away from such subject matter. But the issue could have just as much to do with the practical limits on making a satisfying film. "I wanted to make a movie about Johnny Cash and June Carter and the birth of rock 'n' roll," said James Mangold, who directed "Walk the Line" and wrote it with Gill Dennis. So, he explained, he tried to use Mr. Cash's love for Ms. Carter as a symbol for various forms of redemption.

"June was a figure of redemption," Mr. Mangold said, "beautiful in the way that God's light is beautiful."

Certainly, the movie presents an image of Johnny Cash that would appeal to a secular, urban audience: that of an outlaw who struggled to control his worst impulses.

Biopics choose the story to tell, and it's never the whole person. It's kind of like the way TV reality shows take the available footage on a contestant, decide which story would be most interesting to tell, and edit accordingly. A struggle that takes place inside a person's head is not very cinematic. You have to show him interacting with another person (unless you're going to depict dreams and hallucinations or just have him talking to himself or behaving expressively). And yet, I know that I avoided this biopic and others because I imagine scenes with the two actors just yelling at each other in a way that isn't going to contain any interesting ideas. You drink to much. I know, but I can't help it.

It's hard to make a movie. You can always say that another movie could have been made -- and critics often do. But with a biopic, people get the feeling that the choice of which story to tell matters in a special way, because this will be the movie about that person. So you can see why religionists feel aggrieved about the omissions in "Walk the Line."

---

I didn't see many movies this year, but I did see one that made me think it conspicuously omitted religion. Here's the old post.

"People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It."

Oddest book title of the year. Odder than "Rhino Horn Stockpile Management: Minimum Standards and Best Practices from East and Southern Africa."

That rhino horn title describes something real people are actually doing. "People Who Don't Know They're Dead," however, appears to be an insanely hostile self-help book -- that is to say, a book intended to help that will only make matters worse. Oh, no, wait. Here it is on Amazon:

In People Who Don't Know They're Dead, Gary Leon Hill tells a family story of how his Uncle Wally and Aunt Ruth, Wally's sister, came to counsel dead spirits who took up residence in bodies that didn't belong to them. And in the telling, Hill elucidates much of what we know, or think we know, about life, death, consciousness, and the meaning of the universe.

When people die by accident, in violence, or maybe they're drunk, stoned, or angry, they get freeze-framed. Even if they die naturally but have no clue what to expect, they might not notice they're dead. It's frustrating to see and not be seen. It's frustrating to not know what you're supposed to do next. It's especially frustrating to be in someone else's body and think it's your own. That's if you're dead. If you're alive and that spirit has attached itself to you, well that's a whole other set of frustrations.

Hill has woven this fascinating story with the history and theory of what happens at death, with particular emphasis on the last 40 years and the work of various groundbreaking thinkers whose work helps inform our idea of what it is to live and to die.

Well, that's just nutty, but not in the way I imagined. I was thinking of a writer who viewed his fellow human beings as the equivalent of zombies, with no real mental life worth respecting.

Oscars.

I'm so not interested in the Oscars this year, but I guess I'll watch -- with TiVo to speed things up -- to see what Jon Stewart has to say.

"He's an outsider looking in at the system, which is always problematic with a show like that because it's the ultimate insiders show," Oscar show writer Bruce Vilanch told CNN....

"You never want to do badly, but you also don't want to paralyze yourself thinking about doing badly," Stewart told CNN. "Show business, you don't get into for the health plan. You get into it for the opportunities and the fun to try different stuff."

Are you going to watch out of excitement over who will win? Check out the predictions. It seems awfully predictable. Frankly, I don't even care who wins. I'm going to watch as a very distanced observer, and I'm going to blog.

National news: student pees in wastebasket!

Is this news? Well, if it is, can we give this poor teacher a little support? She made a judgment call that the student was trying to goof off, he behaved like a jerk, and now she must lose 10 days' pay? Disgusting!

IN THE COMMENTS: My readers and I seem to be on different sides on this one.

"Ridicule is a distinct kind of expression..."

Writes Ronald Dworkin in the New York Review of Books:

... its substance cannot be repackaged in a less offensive rhetorical form without expressing something very different from what was intended. That is why cartoons and other forms of ridicule have for centuries, even when illegal, been among the most important weapons of both noble and wicked political movements.

So in a democracy no one, however powerful or impotent, can have a right not to be insulted or offended. That principle is of particular importance in a nation that strives for racial and ethnic fairness. If weak or unpopular minorities wish to be protected from economic or legal discrimination by law — if they wish laws enacted that prohibit discrimination against them in employment, for instance — then they must be willing to tolerate whatever insults or ridicule people who oppose such legislation wish to offer to their fellow voters, because only a community that permits such insult as part of public debate may legitimately adopt such laws. If we expect bigots to accept the verdict of the majority once the majority has spoken, then we must permit them to express their bigotry in the process whose verdict we ask them to accept.

Yes, of course: free speech is part of the mechanism of democracy, and ridicule is an especially important form of political speech.

At the genocide museum in Suleimaniya, Kurdistan.

Michael Totten reports:

When you enter the museum you will walk through a long and winding hallway. The walls are covered with mirror shards. Each represents one of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds murdered in the genocidal Anfal campaign. A river of twinkling lights lines the ceiling. Each represents one of the five thousand villages destroyed by Saddam Hussein....

The hardest thing to see was the cell used to hold children before they were murdered. My translator Alan read some of the messages carved into the wall.

“I was ten years old. But they changed my age to 18 for execution.”

“Dear Mom and Dad. I am going to be executed by the Baath. I will not see you again.”

BuzzMetrics.

Here's a WaPo article on the sophisticated software companies are using to track public opinion as it is expressed on the internet:

To capture the chatter, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a giant in the industry, uses software that collects hundreds of thousands of comments a day. The technology can scan for specific companies, products, brands, people -- anything searchable. It can slice data into a range of categories to quantify the number of times a subject was discussed online, the individuals who mentioned it and the communities where it appeared.

Examples of knowledge acquired by this amazing new technology? People are going to be wanting more snacks in the future, and they prefer "American Idol" to the Olympics.

Or do you find this technology ominous?

Talk Left speculates that the government is using these techniques too. Is that bad? Is ascertaining the drift of the on-line conversation be any more threatening than than taking political polls? This process of aggregating large numbers of statements to read the general opinion is quite different from monitoring an individual. But in any case, the individuals generating the statements are writing in a completely open public space. We can't say the government is invading our privacy when we are inviting the entire world to read us. Yet maybe something terrible is happening, and we blithe bloggers will live to regret it.

"American Idol" -- results.

42 million votes. It's like a presidential election! Oh, but if you could multiple vote in a presidential election, there'd be a billion votes, right?

They launch into a group sing of that horrible song "Love the One You're With." There's something abusive about pressuring young people to put their all into these lyrics, but they do. I pause to write this and see they are all doing that legs-apart crouch. Ugh! They are also all scrunching their eyes closed in faux bliss and curling their upper lips noseward in manufactured sass. Except there's Bucky, wiggling himself into an S shape. I think he's just trying to keep up.

Oh, the pain! This song was insufferably cheesy when Steven Stills tried to foist it on us in 1970. How can it even exist today?

Wow! Mandisa's dressed in a bare black top, showing off her rippling arm flesh and letting us see exactly how amazingly wide her hips are at the point where they merge with tree-trunk thighs. I'm impressed! She gives real meaning to the term pear-shaped. Yet this is the right fashion choice. You can't wear a muu-muu and read as young. Go with the jeans and the cute top and whatever it is you have under it.

They bring out last season's winner, Carrie Underwood. She sings a song called "Jesus Take the Wheel." I take it this song is already a hit, but, of course, I have never encountered it. I think there's something ineffably weird about "American Idol" promoting religious faith. They're trying to ape something that once was sincere in the American country tradition. It seems wrong to drag Jesus into that strained effort.

Brenna is the first to go. America, it turns out, is good at getting it right. Here's where TiVo comes in handy. I fast forward through her reprise of "Last Dance." The other "girl" to go is Heather Cox (not Kinnik Sky). Fast forward.

Now, the "guys." The bottom three are Sway, David Radford, and Kevin Corvais. And David -- the faux Sinatra -- goes first. America's smart, no? And the other guy to go is... Sway. Aw, that's sad!

UPDATE: If you're looking for the results for the newest show, click on the banner at the top of the page and scroll down to the most recent "American Idol -- results."

Thanks, TV Land!

On Sunday, the Washington Post ran a nice obituary for Don Knotts, which included this:

His favorite episodes [of "The Andy Griffith Show"], he said, were "The Pickle Story," where Aunt Bee makes pickles no one can eat, and "Barney and the Choir," where no one can stop him from singing.

I was moved to program the TiVo to record some old episodes to see good old Don Knotts again. Based on the schedule, the episodes of the show that TiVo picked up were "The Rehabilitation of Otis" and "The Lucky Letter" -- both on the TV Land network. But the episodes they actually ran were "The Pickle Story" and "Barney and the Choir." That's awfully nice of them!

Laura Bush "chatted with a giant, colorful lion named Bhoombah who believes he is a descendant of one of India's many former kings."

She was visiting the set of "Galli Galli Sim Sim," the Indian "Sesame Street":

At the show's set -- designed to look like a middle-class Indian neighborhood -- Mrs. Bush and Indian social activist Nafisa Ali met [a 5-year-old inquisitive girl named] Chamki at a phone booth that doubles as cybercafe. Then they stopped outside a house to greet Bhoombah, who asked in his gruff voice how the first lady was doing.

"I'm doing great," replied Mrs. Bush....

Sorry I don't have a film clip! I don't know if there are cybercafes on the American "Sesame Street," but it's certainly not set in a middle-class neighborhood.