Dale Robinson waves his flag for people driving by a rally of the Dallas LGBT Community to applaud President Obama’s stance on Gay marriage and in the Oaklawn neighborhood in Dallas, Texas Wednesday, May 9, 2012. (Brad Loper – AP)

Biblically justified hatred seems to me to be a circuitous, mean-spirited and fearful interpretation of Christianity’s main text.

But hello! This is America, home of free speech, religious liberty and sexual politics. And the contentious flaps we seem to adore that come from mixing religion, sex, and politics. Americans appear increasingly uninterested in publicly and respectfully acknowledging each other as individuals who – for myriad psychological, educational, and social reasons – hold vastly different religious views about sex with vastly different ramifications. And who have the right to do just that.

The national conversation about gay rights has been particularly strident recently, fueled by a biblically-based backlash to President Obama announced support of gay marriage. God has never been more screechingly partisan.

What I would call a particularly titillating example of hate speech credited to the Word of the Lord was reportedly delivered on Mother’s Day by Pastor Charles Worley, a Maiden, N.C., Baptist preacher, who suggested that someone “build a great big large fence, 50 or a hundred mile long. Put all the lesbians in there, fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. And have that fence electrified so they can’t get out.” Pastor Worley then lobbed a clearly political statement from his tax-exempt pulpit: “I ain’t gonna vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover! You said, ‘Did you mean to say that?’ You better believe I did!”

A video of Pastor Worley’s inflammatory (and illegal?) sermon when viral. We Americans love this stuff.

There is also recent sad video evidence of how carefully hatred of homosexuals is being taught in some churches. A video, shot at theApostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Indiana, treats us to a very young boy singing “The Bible is right, somebody’s wrong. Romans 1 and 27, ain’t no homo gonna make it to heaven.”

Again, the video went viral; the response has reportedly included death threats against the pastor of the church.

These two are the conversational extremes – at least I hope they are. I took heart, recently, when a much more respectful acknowledgment of differing religious/sexual-political views took place during my public radio station’s (WMRA) talk show, Virginia Insight. The topic was “God and Politics.” The first two-thirds of the hour went along pretty much as you’d expect; liberal folks grappling with what to do when politicians advocate less-liberal, biblically-based stances.

Then, host Tom Graham put caller Ron from Augusta County on the air.

Ron: Yessir, I’d just like to comment that religion does play a very important part of who I vote for. I am a born again Christian, and values and morals are very important to me…

…TG: I don’t know if you heard it, Ron, but we heard some data earlier that there are people who have similar views on religion to yours who do not believe Barrack Obama is a Christian. Do you have a view on that?

Ron: My personal opinion would be absolutely not. And my stance on that is that he is for gay rights. And that is an abomination unto the Lord. He burnt Sodom and Gomorrah for that sin of sodomy. And if he was a true Christian, he would definitely be against that.

That was that. Ron had had his say; his biblically-justified homophobia was allowed air-time. There were no titillating, personal attacks. God was mentioned, but nobody was threatened, no voices were raised, nobody was disrespected for either their sexual orientation or their religious/political views.

The last I heard, that particular conversation had not gone viral.

The same American Constitution that separates church from state and allows no religious requirements for presidential candidates, also guarantees free speech. The tenor of that speech, however, is on us, the citizens of today. Why are we Americans so disinterested in civility when it comes to mixing God, sex and politics? Why did Pastor Worley’s video and the video of that sad little boy go viral? Have the manners and mores of reality TV taken over?

March madness, indeed.

Watching the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament, I happened to catch an advertisement for a video game called ‘Assassin’s Creed III.’

Adam Snyder, right, plays Ubisoft’s “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier” at the Athletes First Classic Players Lounge as Dennis Pitta, second from left, looks at Assassin’s Creed on Friday, March 2, 2012 in Dana Point, Calif. (Casey Rodgers – AP IMAGES FOR UBISOFT)This ad featured a very youthful sounding choir singing “America the Beautiful,” as a hooded (and very nimble guy) hacks 18th century, red coated soldiers to death.

The assassin sheds a lot of blood in 30 seconds. Too much for me to watch comfortably, even though I know it’s “just a game.” I’m simply not conditioned to find gore entertaining.

But then I am not this game’s market.

Checking out ‘Assassin’s Creed III’ out on Amazon, I found it was already selling briskly, better than its earlier iterations, even though it’s not out until October. Is this because that ad so effectively fuses patriotism and violence?

Evidently that’s precisely the reason – at least for some. On Nerd Reactor, a Web site designed as “a place for nerds to talk about what they love and a place for geek entertainment news and features,” John Spartan Nguyen writes:

Here’s a very patriotic TV spot for Assassin’s Creed III. Even though the ad looks like it’s glorifying America, Game Informer has informed us that we’ll get to kill both American and British targets. Remember, an assassin takes no side.

As an American, I did get teary eyed listening to the epic sounds of the choir singing “America the Beautiful.”

Okay, me too … if I close my eyes. The stanza of America the Beautiful that goes “America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!” gets me every time. I do like to believe that my country is worthy of God’s grace.

Hmmmm…

I did a little more research on Assassin’s Creed III. The assassin, who goes by the name of Connor (aka Ratohnhaké:ton) has already been on a four game rampage spanning nine centuries. The game’s fantastical history, as presented on the site gameinformer, begins in the 12th century with the Assassins pitted against the Templars:

Unlike the Assassins, who embrace free will and oppose such a rigid system of development for humankind, Templars believe that order is the only way for our species to realize its ultimate potential. The philosophical gulf between the two shadow organizations has led to centuries of bloodshed.

So order and free will are mutually exclusive? Is that what we’re saying, here?

Sure, the assassin takes no sides, but there is that choir singing America the Beautiful, which makes us feel he is one of us, right? Americans have long identified with gunslingers. I mean, I certainly played pow! pow! pow!with the neighborhood children when I was growing up. But somehow, this didn’t teach me to equate “free will” with unbridled violence.

Another site, gamesradar, announces that “Assassin’s Creed III images wage a one-man war.” One man war? There are too many recent examples of one-man gun violence to even single one out.

My reaction to the ad for Assassin Creed III, and its conflation of gore and patriotism, was a kind of alarmed wonder. It struck me as “Guns, God, and Glory” propaganda aimed squarely at a very large audience.

Guns, God, and Glory appears to be making inroads in society. Virginia just repealed the Commonwealth’s limit on handgun purchases to one-a-month. I don’t get it. What in the real world necessitates a person buying more than one handgun a month? Is this what the oft-invoked Founding Fathers’ intended when they wrote the Second Amendment?

I really would like to understand the appeal of Assassin’s Creed III. Then maybe I would find its ramifications less alarming.

And about that ad featuring “America the Beautiful:” Does anyone out there really think that God showers grace upon a nation that finds bloody violence entertaining?

By Martha Woodroof  |  11:24 AM ET, 03/02/2012

2012 has begun; it’s a presidential election year, and I want to ask the 78 percent if they’d be willing to help us Americans clean up our political act.

By that number, I meant the 78 percent of Americans who continue to identify themselves as Christians.

Here’s a bleak statistical look at our current political reality: As we finally crank up the presidential nominating process in Iowa, seven out of 10 Americans are already saying they can’t wait for the whole thing to be over.

But surely, in this Christian-leaning nation, there has to be something more politically powerful than the “odor of mendacity” that has been emanating so strongly from the Iowa Caucuses? So far, our presidential politics have stunk worse than a factory farm turkey house. It’s truly been a sad, sad excuse for American democracy in action. And yet it rolls on and on, seemingly as unstoppable as an advancing tsunami.

What I think we need is for 78 percent to step up and say enough! – enough already of all this nattering about whether or not Jesus controls football results! What we as Christian-leaning Americans demand is that all presidential candidates …

1. Ask themselves this one simple question: If Jesus were running for president of the United States, what kind of campaign would He run?

2. Then, that they run that kind of campaigns.

The 78 percent already know the answer to the question, and they cannot help but be aware that not a single candidate is running a campaign that Jesus would have anything to do with.

So, surely, if 78 percent are even a teeny bit serious about their faith, they’ll demand to know why all these so-called “Christian” presidential candidates are campaigning as though they’ve never heard of Jesus.

HWJRFO? – How would Jesus run for office?

Tweet that, Tim Tebow! If you really want to promote a Christian way of life.

Fifty-nine thousand-plus On Faith readers recommended Thomas L. Day’s November 11th essay “Penn State, my final loss of faith.” Thirty-three hundred-plus Tweeted it. Six-hundred ninety-one commented. An on-line chat ensued.

That, gentle friends, is going viral. About faith, no less. But faith in what?

Basically, Mr. Day (who describes himself as 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, an acquaintance of Jerry Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation), wrote to serve my Boomer generation notice that it had failed his Millennium generation.
Penn State coach Joe Paterno was dismissed by the university after allegations that he failed to pursue child abuse claims against an assistant coach. (Jim Prisching – AP)

This appears to mean that for the first thirty years of Mr. Day’s life, he believed old people were wiser than young people simply because they were older.

Back when I was a kid, I was always pushing my father to explain why things had to be the way they were. “Because that’s the way they are,” he’d say, when he was tired of being pushed. “You’re too young to understand.”

Even as I child, I could tell when adults were trying to hornswoggle me. Naturally, it was unsettling to realized that pop wasn’t the font of all wisdom. But a copout is still a copout.

So, Mr. Day, with respect, I never bought the merits of pop’s ageist argument then, and I don’t buy the merits of your ageist complaint now. It, too, is a copout. Generations don’t cop out; individuals do.

I do agree with you, however, that my generation has not done itself particularly proud.

Of course, many indignant Boomers begged to differ with Mr. Day’s apparently blanket condemnation of them, pointing out progress in Civil Rights, the “winning” of the Cold War, quantum leaps in technology, the dawn of a generalized environmental consciousness. (To the Boomer Accomplishment List, I would add the general idea that we should do for our country, rather than expecting our country should do for us; the Peace Corps; the stopping of the Vietnam War; and the energizing of Second Wave Feminism.)

So, as a Boomer, initially read through this e-fracas and thought: Mmmm. Not too bad, gang. “Talkin’ ‘bout my generation …”

Mr. Day hastened to clarify his position at the start of the online chat by writing, “I stand by my disappointment with my national leaders and the local leaders of Central Pennsylvania, but I want to make clear that I did not intend to ‘blame an entire generation.’”

So, his disappointment is with the leaders we Boomers produced, rather than with us. But wait, I thought, didn’t we Boomers choose our leaders? Aren’t we the generation that plucked Richard Nixon from the ashes to become the Phoenix who brought us Watergate and the birth of the New Cynicism? Didn’t we elect Ronald Reagan and allow him (yay, even unto his dotage) to popularize the mega-rich’s favorite parlor game: trickle-down economics. Didn’t we re-elect George W? Haven’t we produced a Supreme Court that has given free speech to corporations?

Mr. Day, it seems, does have a point.

Talkin’ ‘bout my generation, indeed.

I remember so clearly marching arm and arm with my Boomer comrades in the cause of peace and fairness and equal opportunity for all. We were (weren’t we?) motivated by ideals and principles, with our actions firmly directed by our consciences. We wanted, as I remember it, nothing more than to leave the world a better place than we found it.

Am I remembering this wrong?

If not, what happened to us? When, exactly, did we, the idealistic, joyfully rebellious generation of Bob Dylan, sell out? What made us trade in dancing in the streets for piling up the profits? When did we stop smiling on our brothers and begin to exploit them instead? And, most importantly of all, why did those of us who do know better, let those who obviously don’t know better take over this country?

To borrow from the Eagles, did we get tired or did we just get lazy?

Who knows? The sad truth appears to be that, one copout at a time; we Boomers, as a generation, opted for what we could get rather than what we could do.

Alexander de Tocqueville may or may not have said “in every democracy, the people get the government they deserve,” but it’s still a good point to consider. We Boomers, in my opinion, have the government we deserve. We knew better; but we didn’t do better.

Here’s the deal Mr. Day: Each of us, at any age, can choose to serve God or mammon. Each of us. What my generation can really teach you is that the older you get the more the God part of you (your idealism, your conscience, your belief that there is real good in this world that you need to do), will be tested by the mammon part (greed, the quick fix, the easy answer, cartoon character gods, lust for power and importance). As a generation, we Boomers do appear to have been thoroughly seduced by mammon.

So, please, stay forever young, Mr. Day. Keep the fire bright in you; whatever in you that cried out in your fine op-ed piece against my generation’s generalized copout. But, make no mistake, your generation will be asked to meet the same challenge at which my generation: To keep faith with your own God-fueled ability to recognize right from wrong, and then to do what’s right.

Sam, Anna, Martha and Ben Wyse

It baffles me why so many politicians who tout their Christian credentials are millionaires. They claim they’re willing to follow Jesus Christ straight to heaven, but they’re unwilling to follow His example here on earth and sacrifice a little luxury for the benefit of others. And — shame on them — they think all voters are as materialistic as they are.

I hosting a Friday, midday show on radio station WMRA called “The Spark,” during which I talk with creative people. Yes, I talk to artists, musicians, writers, but I also talk to people who live creatively – among them Ben Wyse and his wife, Anna; whom I’d like to offer as evidence that Americans are better persons of faith than our politicians give us credit for.

Ben and Anna, who have two young children, grew up steeped in the Mennonite faith traditions of peace, love, family, community and simplicity. Anna, a nurse, now chooses to be a stay-at-home mom. And Ben, who graduated from college with honors, has chosen to earn his family’s keep as a mobile bike repairperson, a job that Ben says “has me running all over town taking care of broken down bikes. And I do this on a bike with trailer in which I keep tools and parts.”

Ben and Anna Wyse live and raise children very frugally. I’m sure our current crop of Christian politicians – so determined to conflate patriotism with materialism – find their lifestyle choices baffling because they necessitate accepting that being a person of faith means practical things about how one lives and not just things about one’s destiny in the afterlife.

For example, one of the couple’s deeply held convictions is that peace is better than war. I think it’s safe to say, after my one conversation with him, that Ben Wyse sees our country’s dependency on foreign oil as a major energizer of war. “Back when I was a high school junior,” he says, “the first President Bush got us involved in a conflict in Iraq that’s ongoing. And that conflict is in some degree about Mideast oil, even though I think it’s far too simplistic to say that conflict was only about oil.

“I’m pushing forty now, and it’s increasingly hard for me to think about the amount of suffering our conflict with Iraq has caused in the lives of soldiers and their families and the Iraqi people. Even during the Clinton years, up to 5000 children died in Iraq every month because of sanctions. Yet when Lesley Stahl approached then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with these numbers on 60 Minutes, she responded that it was worth it.

“The rate of attempted suicide among our veterans is at critical, unprecedented levels. Those suicides, I think, tell us something about how troubling the experiences of these young men and women have been.

“So, anyway, there’s all kinds of reasons for me to want to do what I can to help change our foreign policy, but it’s very easy to feel impotent about affecting change in something that big, and simply give up trying.”

Ben Wyse had biked for fun and transportation since he was a kid growing up on a farm. “I started to see using a bicycle as transportation – and facilitating other people’s use of bicycles for transportation – as something I could actually do to work toward a world with less suffering and violence.

Their kids, Ben says, have given him and Anna motivation to live their beliefs. “It’s one thing for us to talk to our children about what we believe in and what we care about. It’s another thing for us to live what we believe in. Then maybe we don’t have to talk as much about our beliefs and they’ll just see them.”

There. That’s it. That’s why I think Christian politicians should get to know Ben and Anna Wyse; take a lesson from them. They’re people of faith who, unlike our leaders, want to live their faith. And they are perfectly willing to give up material possessions and convenience if, by doing so, they help makes things better for the rest of us.

I truly believe Ben and Anna Wyse are not alone. Americans are a great and generous people.

Where is the politician who will dare to recognize this?

Why, I want to know, are so many of us persons of conscience and faith so quiet?

Last Sunday, I took a web trip tooccupywallst.org, where I was greeted with the news that “the resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza ”

Yes, that does sound young. And inexperienced. And gratuitously counter-culture. But to me, at least, it sounds like the beginnings of just what’s needed in our country.

Reporter Gina Bellafante described Occupy Wall Street in The New York Times as “a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people…; a diffuse and leaderless convocation of activists against greed, corporate influence, gross social inequality and other nasty byproducts of wayward capitalism not easily extinguishable by street theater…” (Italics mine.)

The italics are mine.

When I read her phrase “not easily extinguishable by street theater…,” I wanted to remind Ms. Bellafante that that’s what they (you know, them, the Establishment) once said about the Vietnam War. As a veteran of that protest movement, I’m here to say that when all else appears to be in thrall to the all-mighty dollar, street theater can actually be a pretty effective extinguisher of wars and other“nasty byproducts of wayward capitalism.”

Ms. Bellafante goes on to point out that the “group was clamoring for nothing in particular to happen right away – not the implementation of the Buffett ruleor the increased regulation of the financial industry…” Occupy Wall Street, as a movement, she wants us to understand, operates in rather an “intellectual vacuum.”

Well, so what? Protestors aren’t supposed to be wonks; they are supposed to be the morality of wonks. I wasn’t an expert on America’s Southeast Asia policy in 1966, but I still knew in my gut – through my conscience, my connection with God – that it was wrong.

Then as now, those in power in America were more interested in maintaining that power than in the welfare of humanity.

Then as (so far) not now, we acted on our consciences. We didn’t mind being thought foolish, being vilified even; we knew we didn’t understand all the intricacies of foreign policy, but we also knew our government was acting in ways that were reprehensible and that someone had to call them on it publically. We asked ourselves, if not us hippy-dippy, anti-war peaceniks, then who?

We were not very dignified, but we did speak clearly enough to get our point across.

Once again, America is off the rails. The Tea Party shouts, politicians shout; we persons of faith and conscience turn away and stand mute. We let our confusion, our innate good manners, our fatigue keep strong hold of our tongues.

To me, it’s very simple. If we persons of faith and conscience don’t stand up against the greed, corruption and dysfunction that is currently driving America, then who will? If we’re not charged with being this country’s collective conscience, then who is?

Street theater, anyone?