The Book Of Amendments is quite possibly the most popular book in the bible.  Of course, it’s not in the bible in the literal sense.  The Book contains sayings that perhaps people think are in scripture, or they act as if there is some scriptural basis for what they say.  Now, I know that there is an admonition in the Book Of Revelation against changing or adding to scripture, but that that doesn’t stop people from adding bits of folk wisdom or twists and contortions in interpreting the Word of God.  In so doing, we ascribe to God our own biases; after all, we create God in our own image.  If I got to edit the bible, I think I’d get rid of that piece-of-shit Book Of Revelation.  “But Rufus, that’s apostasy!” you protest.  Yeah, sure.  But I can live with that.  Who’s to say that some Pope in the Dark Ages knew what the hell he was doing when he decided to include it?  That decision seems subjective and arbitrary to me.  Lord knows he was human.  Anyway, what’s a little heresy between friends?

Mainly, many believers believe that there are uniformly embraced official Christian positions on social issues of the day that are anything but uniformly embraced.  Prominently, issues regarding sexual behavior come to mind.  Sorry, but Christians are not unified on much besides that Jesus is divine.  If that.

I would like contributions to this book.  Please send submissions to my site-related email account, rufus@gl4c.com.  If you want attribution, I am more than happy to oblige.  In fact, I would prefer to do so (unless I really did think of it first).  But if you wish to remain anonymous, I will still indicate when items are submitted rather than products of my own ‘intellectual processes.’  Perhaps if it gets voluminous enough, I’ll edit it into Chapter and Verse form.

So without further ado, The Book Of Amendments:

• Prayer changes things.  —  I used to drive past a sign along a freeway that said this, and my thought was, “Like what, for example?”  Now, before I launch into an anti-prayer tirade, I’ll say that I do intend sometime to write more extensively on the subject, and that my stance has softened.  I’m less cynical than I once was.

Indeed, there are several passages regarding prayer in the bible; how to pray, when to pray, etc., but I remain a prayer skeptic.  I do not believe in an intervening God that answers prayers based on criteria found in scripture (or not, as the case may be).  I don’t, for example, think that God is up there counting, “One, two, three… Yep!  There’s the threshold.  That prayer is getting answered!”  Oh, how I wish it worked that way, but it doesn’t.  It just doesn’t, dammit!

Neither do I believe in an aloof God that doesn’t listen or care.  I believe that God does care.  But for reasons that are beyond our comprehension, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, and some things happen that have no relationship to our lives at all.  I do understand that some things that destroy and kill are vital to life.  We would not have land without seismic activity.  No one prays for earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, fires, floods, etc., but they all serve their purposes in nature.

But if God counted the Prayer Warriors (whatever the hell that means) and bestowed Shazzam! Power to His faithful followers, my daughter would be alive today.  Her brain cancer would have been cured or she never would have gotten it in the first place.  Or I would have gotten it in her stead.  (That was my prayer; give it to me, not her.)  However, her health deteriorated incrementally over a period of five years until she finally lapsed into a coma and died.  It was not for a shortage of prayer on her behalf.  Many, many people prayed for her.  Nor was there a dearth of sincerity of the prayers.  She was beloved.  She was atypically young for her type of cancer.  Neither did she lack for medical interventions:  Two surgeries, proton radiation, several kinds of chemotherapy – oral and infused — physical therapy, and several other medications.  So we did our part, too, whatever our resources allowed.

Prayer changes things?  All right, well then, we did that.

• God never gives you more than you can handle.  —  Seriously?  Hey, my daughter had brain cancer and died.  So she ‘handled’ her affliction by enduring five years of deterioration and dying.  Okay, so maybe there’s the technicality that God did not give the cancer to her.  In that case, the saying is totally worthless.  If you’re going to let God off the hook for horrible problems that come into your life, then maybe they are too much for you to handle.  Which way do you want to have it?  You can’t have both.

And how did her parents (and her brother) ‘handle’ her illness and death, you ask?  Not too well, in my estimation.  More than two years later, our grief is still strong and our ability to function has been affected.

How do people ‘handle’ homelessness?  Terminal diseases?  Debilitating mental illness?  Violence?  Disaster?  God never gives you more than you can handle?  This trite saying isn’t very well thought through.

• The Lord helps those who help themselves. —   It seems to me that scripture advises that God wants us to help others.  Jesus is especially emphatic on this point.  I’m scanning through my mental files and memory bank to seek an example of when God suggests ‘help yourself’ is the way to go.  I’m drawing a blank.

The Firesign Theatre offered a variation on the theme:  “The Lord helps those who take a big helping for themselves.”  Of course this is also scripturally unsound, but that’s the point.

•  It’s ‘Adam and Eve,’ not ‘Adam and Steve.’  —  Ha-ha!  Isn’t that clever!  That’s the first line of defense against those who think that homosexual queer fairies of the gay persuasion should have equal protection under the law.  Who could even think that same-sex couples are anything like people who are married to one person of the opposite sex at a time?

Yes, there are passages in the bible that condemn homosexual acts.  The Apostle Paul (nee Saul) in the New Testament was so judgmental that I suspect he was closeted gay.  You know, like former Senator Larry Craig (R-ID).  Other passages are found in the codes of Leviticus, where we are also admonished not to shave the sides of our faces or the tops of our heads, work on the Sabbath, get tattoos, touch a woman during her menstrual period, and a host of other transgressions we seldom take seriously today.  For some, we must slaughter a goat or sheep without flaw at the east end of the altar at dusk to atone.  For others, such as homosexual acts or working on the Sabbath, a stoning is in order.  Up for that?

All the passages in the Bible that do mention homosexuality are specific to male homosexuality.  You’d be hard pressed to find any condemnation of lesbianism.  Look all you want.  You’ll only find it in the Book Of Amendments, if there… I mean here.  My hypothesis is that God has a special place in His heart for lesbians.  He just loves that lady-on-lady lovin’!  And it’s apparently healthy, too.  Remember when the bible-thumpers were shouting that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was God’s punishment for homosexuality?  Well, lesbians were and are the lowest-risk group for sexually-transmitted diseases in the population.  So lesbians are God’s special people.  It stands to reason.

Curiously, you won’t find Jesus making any mention of homosexuality.  Not a word.  But you just know – don’t you? – that Jesus is a family-values kind of guy.  Okay, so he traveled and hung around with a bunch of guys, but if He walked among us today, I’d bet He’d have one wife (at a time) and kids and a sensible SUV, and he’d condemn gays to Hell right and left.

But wait a gol-darned, ding-danged, rootin’-tootin’ minute!  God does so love Steve.  God created Steve and all the other non-heteros.    Steve is part of God’s creation.  Steve is a Child of God!

If God hates homosexuals, why did He create so many of them over the course of human existence?  Homosexuality has been documented throughout the history of civilization.  It exists in communities where it is accepted.  It exists in places where it is punishable by death.  It exists wherever there are people.  And if homosexuality is unnatural, why does it exist in other species in nature as well?  Homosexual behavior has been observed among other primates, other mammal species, birds, reptiles, insects….  And don’t get me started on the perverse sexual behaviors of mollusks and barnacles.  Barnacles change genders daily!  Back and forth, back and forth… freaky!

Hey, Steve!  God loves you.  Never mind the sign from the bigot.  Give my regards to Adam.

…..

So there are my proposed amendments so far.  Not to the actual bible, of course, but rather examples of people’s… let’s say, enhanced interpretations.  And as I mentioned before, feel free to propose your own amendments.  (rufus@gl4c.com).  Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the amendment process here is much simpler.  Instead of requiring passage in both chambers of Congress and ratification by 75% of the states, I am the sole arbiter.  That’s not to say I’m God – after all, God would not solicit contributions from others. …  But come to think of it, perhaps he should!  “For starters, get rid of that Book Of Revelation End-Of-Days nonsense that frightens believers and inspires crackpottery.  That was probably meaningful only to the persecuted Christ-followers in the era of the Roman Empire.  And purge the irrelevant bullshit from Leviticus and Deuteronomy while you’re at it.”

But I digress.

Fifty?  Forty?  All right, no one really believes that.  ‘Life begins at fifty’ is just a corny bromide said to make people feel better about aging.  But in choosing a word to complete the above title, I have eliminated ‘conception’ as a contender.

There are many people who strongly believe that life begins at conception, but they believe it without backing from scripture.  A fine-tooth-comb examination of scripture will not reveal personhood status for a fetus.  There is a passage in the Old Testament that prescribes what to do when someone causes a woman to miscarry.  The consequence for that is financial compensation to… get ready for it… the woman’s husband.  Sad to say it does not take the position, as I do, that a fetus is part of the woman’s body.  Sorry, ladies (and gentlemen), I’m on your side on this issue, but the bible does not have our backs.  So solely using scripture as our guide, a fetus is not a sovereign person in and of himself or herself, nor is it part of its host’s body.  Rather, a fetus is a man’s property.

I might, just might, be willing to regard the ‘Life begins at conception’ position as somewhat less ludicrous than I currently do if our institutions did so.  But none do.  Not one.  Lives of people are measured from when they were born, not when they were conceived, when the sperm cell fertilized the egg cell and became a zygote.  Maybe that’s because pinpointing that moment is just too damn hard.  And really, who wants to think about it?  Who wants to think of our parents having sex?  Yuck!  Or that split second in the Petri dish at the fertility clinic?  All our milestones are dated from our date of birth.  (In some cultures, the day our age advances one year is the start of a new year regardless of the actual date of birth.)  All sorts of adult privileges and responsibilities are bestowed to a person on his or her eighteenth birthday.  Legal drinking age is attained on one’s 21^st birthday.  There is no consideration of when you were conceived.  It matters not at all whether your gestation was longer or shorter than average, whether you emerged from the womb before or after the due date.  The date from which we measure to determine your age is the day you draw your first breath.

Late term abortions are controversial for a reason, and I agree that they should be rare.  That is, I do not think it’s a good idea to rule them out if the life of the mother is threatened, or if the soon-to-be-born baby’s life would be painful and brief due to a lethal prenatal condition, but there are profound legal and moral implications if the pregnancy is otherwise normal.  Then we get into the nebulous concept of ‘viability.’  I could be mistaken, but I don’t think that there is a consensus view of precisely when viability occurs.  There is a definition, of course.  It’s when an emergent baby is able to breathe on its own.  But I don’t think doctors and technicians can determine that just from a sonogram or other diagnostic tool.  So when does a fetus become viable short of its actual birth?  Maybe……now!  How ‘bout now?   NOW?!!

Anyway, with the issue of viability in the picture, there is some credibility to the idea that life begins sometime before birth despite using dates of birth for official purposes.

But conception?  As I stated above, there is not one institution that recognizes life beginning at conception.  None.  Zero.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  Nyet.  Nein.  So before I start to campaign for equal rights for Fetal Americans, the notion of personhood for fetuses has to make a lick of sense.  So far it has not approached that threshold.

I offer as anecdotal evidence examples from my own experience.  Between the live births of our son and daughter, my wife suffered a miscarriage, or as they call it in medical circles, a spontaneous abortion.  I didn’t make that up; that’s what they call it.  And I will tell you truly that it was a sad time for us.  We had begun to dare to ponder and dream about our pending child and plan for her or his future.  And then the dream died.  A sonogram revealed that the fetus was not growing.  It was, in fact, dead.  My wife then endured a procedure called a D & C (which the medical people jokingly called ‘dust ‘n’ clean,’ which didn’t really bring levity to the ordeal), which happens to also be a common procedure for surgical abortions.  (Side note:  Absent elective abortions, D & C procedures clearly have a legitimate medical purpose, so doctors are going to be trained to perform them, anyway.)

Around that same time, one of my sisters suffered a stillbirth.  Needless to say, I would think, the grief she and her husband experienced was profound.  The outpouring of sympathy directed at my sister and brother-in-law far, far outweighed the sympathy directed at my wife and me over the miscarriage.  And rightly so.  Our losses were not equal.  Far from it.  A miscarriage, while a sad event, is not nearly the same thing as the death of an actual person.

I don’t want to minimize the impact of miscarriages.  I realize that there are couples that desperately want to have a baby but endure serial, multiple miscarriages.  I cannot deny the trauma and tragedy of that.  Those are sad, sad cases and my heart goes out to them.  But overall, miscarriages are very common.  Spontaneous abortions way, way outnumber the surgical kind.  Many happen without the host mother even being aware that conception occurred in the first place.  By that measurement, you could say that God is the biggest abortionist of all!  Or, if you are a non-believer, nature would be that abortionist.

So let’s compare how our institutions regard fetuses.  In the medical field, certificates of live birth are issued for babies.  With stillbirths, there is a death certificate, just as they issue for people who actually did draw breath at some point.  With a miscarriage, not so much.  No certificate of any kind.  The woman who endures the miscarriage is the only patient.  For society, the stillborn has an obituary in the newspaper, complete with its name (even if that name is ‘Baby Smith’ or ‘Infant Jones’:  My stillborn nephew did have a given name.) and a list of surviving relatives.  With a miscarriage, not so much.  In the church, stillborns have funerals.  For miscarriages, not so much.

So for those of you scoring at home, here are the stats:

Death certificate  —  Stillborn – yes, miscarriage – no.

Obituary  —              Stillborn – yes, miscarriage – no.

Funeral  —               Stillborn – yes, miscarriage – no.

Medical community, society, and church regard a stillborn as a person, but there is no such distinction for a miscarried fetus.  So there is a case to be made that life begins sometime before birth, but conception is definitely not that point.

Life begins at….  Until further notice, I’m going with ‘birth.’  Don’t hold your breath for further notice.

No, I’m not referring to my previously stated aim of posting something new every week or two.  But I have an excuse!  Wanna hear it?  Didn’t think so.

Re:  Romney

If you’re like me, you get frustrated with the media sometimes.  Maybe our reasons are different, but I’ll bet that you can relate to that statement if I put it that broadly.

My gripe is about reporters who don’t ask the obvious questions.  When, for example, Mitt Romney declares that he is not a politician, it should not be left for his opponents on the debate stage to ask what the hell he could possibly mean by that.  What kind of not-a-politician runs for and holds elective office over so many years?  If not that, how would he define what a politician is?

That is not to say that Romney would give a straight answer if asked such a straight question.  In getting to know more about him during this election campaign season, I can certainly understand why so many Republicans are reluctant to warm up to him.  Dislike him or hate him, it’s really difficult to get a grip on where he stands on an issue.  Never mind his numerous well-documented flip-flops; Romney has shown himself to be averse to taking positions in the first place.

For example, Romney has frequently criticized President Obama’s leadership.  That’s obviously not a bold stance for someone of the opposition party to take, so it behooves him to expand on the theme.  Romney is against how Obama handled the situation in Libya.  Naturally.  A logical follow-up question, then, would be, “Okay, smart-ass, if you were leader, what would you have done differently?”

Why is that a hard question to ask?  How is that a hard question to think of on the spot?  One of my basic criticisms of politicians and other weasels in general — and conservatives specifically — is the assumption of agreement, that they can let their assertions lie there unchallenged.  So Romney gets away with essentially saying, “Of course I would have handled it better because of who I am and who he is, no further explanation necessary.”  But no, it is the duty of reporters to press for explanations.  How are we to be well informed if they don’t inform?

In a televised debate before the New Hampshire primary, Romney was asked if he would favor banning the most popular form of birth control.  He acted as if he was befuddled that such a question would be asked.  “What do you mean by such a question?  Why would I take a position on that?  No state is trying to ban birth control!  Why would you ask me that?”, he said.  But the question was not as out-of-the-blue as Romney pretended it was.  First, Romney’s newly minted top debate foe, former Senator Rick Santorum, had previously made remarks that the use of birth control is a problem for society.  Where Romney ties into the issue, he would need to recall way, way back to November 2011.  Two months before that evening’s debate, the state of Mississippi had a ballot measure that would have defined life as beginning at conception.  As a consequence, hormone-based birth control pills, which thwart (or terminate) pregnancy by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in a uterine wall, would effectively destroy ‘life.’  Thusly, using birth control pills would be criminalized.  Before that vote took place, Romney was a guest on the TV show “Huckabee,” and the host, Mike Huckabee, asked him if he would support a constitutional amendment defining life as beginning at conception.  Contrary to his previously stated position, Romney answered, “Absolutely!”

So Romney believes, at least for this election cycle, that life begins at conception.  Given that, connecting the dots of recent developments, it’s not far-fetched to say that he believes (for now, anyway) that birth control pills should be illegal.  But he doesn’t want to come out and say that.  Well, I can’t exactly blame him for that since it is a ridiculous and wildly unpopular position to take.  And in his defense, the ballot measure was soundly defeated, even in Mississippi.  Perhaps he felt that the crushing defeat of the measure rendered the question moot.

But the questioner, ABC’s George Stephanopolous, blew it.  He had all the dots for connection, but it was his duty not to assume that all the viewers did as well.  He let Romney get away with playing dumb.  However, his duty was to press Romney to explain his position in light of the Mississippi measure and in light of Romney’s own response to Huckabee’s question.  Stephanopolous had an opportunity to inform the viewers and he neglected to do so.

Re:  Santorum

Remember former Senator John Ensign (R-NV)?  Perhaps you do because the most memorable thing about him has to do with sex.  I intend to write more about him later, but rest assured my angle here is to pin a charge of hypocrisy on his fellow former Senator (R-PA), current presidential candidate Rick Santorum.  Before I get back to Ensign, I just want to say that Santorum’s speech after the Iowa Caucuses was great.  It struck a populist tone and told a compelling personal story.  Mitt Romney outwaited Santorum, each determined to go last and snatch the perception of victory while the actual outcome was still being tabulated, but Romney’s ‘victory’ speech (by order, not by content) paled in comparison to Santorum’s.  During the subsequent week in New Hampshire, it sure didn’t take Santorum long to turn back into himself:  intolerant, sanctimonious, belligerent.

So to bring you up to speed on John Ensign, his enduring blot on the political landscape was his prolonged affair with his political treasurer, Cynthia Hampton, whose husband Doug was Ensign’s administrative assistant.  She reportedly tried to end the affair sooner, but was trapped on account of both her husband and her being dependent on Senator Ensign for employment.  (Spoiler alert:  Ensign fired them both, anyway.)  There was also $ 96,000 paid to the Hamptons by Ensign’s parents as a ‘generous gift to family friends,’ but certainly not as hush money.  Who said anything about hush money?  Why would you think such a thing?

Distraught and desperate for his wife’s affair with the Senator to end, Doug Hampton contacted Ensign’s friend, former Senator Santorum, and told him that he was going to go public with the story in order to force Ensign into breaking off the affair.

Now you may claim that this is entirely speculative on my part, but I believe that if Ensign had been a Democrat rather than Santorum’s friend and fellow Republican, Santorum would have reacted differently.  He would have told Ensign that he found his conduct to be disgusting and reprehensible, and that he should resign from office immediately.  That is Santorum’s pattern; to be shocked at the immoral behavior of others.  What did he do instead?  He called his pal Ensign and tipped him off that the affair was about to be exposed, and he might want to get out ahead of the story.

So why isn’t Rick Santorum, a candidate for president, being questioned about his conduct?  Does his character not matter?  He’s certainly not shy about holding others accountable… Democrats, anyway.

Come on, reporters!  Do your job!  Ask the questions that beg for answers:

“Senator Santorum:  Why did you not encourage Senator Ensign to resign from office?”

“Senator Santorum:  As a family-values guy, please comment on your friend Senator Ensign’s destroying the marriage of his friends, the Hamptons.”  (To date, I believe that the Ensigns are still together despite John’s infidelity.)

“Senator Santorum:  Why did you rat out Doug Hampton?”

All I’m asking is that he, and all candidates, Republicans and Democrats, be held accountable for their words, their actions, and especially their words vis-à-vis their actions.  What’s so hard about that?