The news Hoods Robbins are on one mission and is to take everything that you and everything thay you are ever going to have in life.

So if you got food they take it! If you got food stamps they take that. If you got tap water, bottled water, bath water or spring water they take it. If you got bread they take it; bread crumbs or bread dust, they take that! If you got a watermelon or a Popsicle or cake or pie they take it.  If you got a job or a God they take it. If you are part of a union they take that. If you got a pension they take it; a house, a cabin, a hut or a tent, they take that; health care, medicare, tupperware, supperware they take it, an education, sick pay or a vacation they take it. If you got a car they take it, ride the bus they take that. 

Anything that you have of value they take it. If you got a smile or can stand tall with your back straight and head high with dignity they take it. If you got dentures, sutures or bleachers they take it. Whatever you have that gives you joy they take it. Their entire mission is to take whatever you’ve got where ever you got it and make you suffer for having it.

If you got a mind, body, spirit and soul they take it; sanity, freedom, justice, equality, they take that. They don’t want you to have nothing of value for which you can call yourself a tried true blue American, for you done got just a little too edumicated; a little too happy, a bit too snappy; a little too uppity; a little too besides yourself to be tolerated. If you got too much shine in your shinola they take it; too much green on your greens they take that; too much shift in your shimmy they take it; too much glow in your grits they take that.

The New Hoods Robbins are the new sheriffs in town so whatever you got be it air or hair, be it a chair or a lair or public prayer, be it a TV or voter i.d.; be it cookies or cream, hopes or dreams, a fine car or caviar, they take it.

You see the new Hoods Robbins want to take everything you got so they can control your destiny. Their motto is rob the poor and make them poorer; rob the meager to make them eager; rob the indigent to make them dependegent. Whatever their lot take all they got. These are the new Hoods Robbins.

They stand in public assemblies with poker faces knowing they got a full house that specializes in the royal flush. They bow and curtsy before us with sweet sounding words that get you to buy into your own demise with reprise. They stand in cold grey suits, showering red and blue words that warm and chill you, thrill and drill you at the same time. It is ev-i-dent that they loathe the Pres-i-dent, and will say things to get you to do things even it means you assisting them in your own political and fiscal behind whipping.

These cats want it all. Yes they do. They want the whole kit and kaboodle; the whole skid doodle and skedaddle. They want everything and want to give back no-thing to the American people. They want the needle, the thread and whole hole. 

They have taken away our dinosaurs and our Cuban Cigars, our free fall learning in our free lance curricula; they have taken away our happy faces and our trips to the moon from our NASA places. They have taken away our grocery clerks and replaced them with machines that can’t even put warm change into our cold hands, man;, snatched away our full service gas stations where we no longer are entertained by human windshield wipers who could wipe water in straight lines while looking into our crazy eyes, and they have put milk on the shelves where our motor oil used to be!

Meet the New Hoods Robbins.  They have put a new “G” on greed, taken the “N” out of need and replaced it with the letters “BL.” Meet the New Hoods Robbins. Their motto is “Everything you got we want even if we don’t really need it. “What’s mine is mine, I’ll keep it. What’s yours is mine, I’ll take it!” We are the new Hoods who from now on will be “robbin” the poor and middle class of everything they have.

Check us out. We live in Sherwood, Lockwood and Briarwood and the Woodhappy Estates. We will be coming from a Big House near you to take away your Dog House for two. So keep your eyes and ears open cause we will be coming for everything you got real soon. Be sure to meet us and greet us when we come your way. 

The New Hoods Robbins. We want to take it all from everyday Americans so the “can” will be taken from the “Ameri”! Got to take  the “can” from “Ameri-can,” so that poor and middle class Americans will in the words of John Lee Hooker, ”Be memory gone by. ”

We’re the new Hoods Robbins. That’s our mission! That’s our purpose!

Watch for us in a neighborhood near you cause we will be coming for everything you’ve got this November election!

While as a trained Christian ethicist, I understand their feelings on this subject, many of them are missing the whole point of President Obama’s decision.

Instead of allowing emotions or religion to render judgment on who should receive equal rights in this country, we should stop, take some deep breaths and put the entire matter into proper perspective.

Many Christians who have strong anti gay and lesbian views, forget that there are other people in this country who do not share their religious beliefs. Many of them also forget that we are not living in a theocracy but a democracy which means that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States becomes the primary foundation undergirding his decision to provide equal protection under the law and vouchsafe the rights of all citizens.

Theologically speaking, we also forget that God calls us to love persons as ourselves and to provide the moral equivalent of  love in the personal realm with justice in the social realm.

Rights entitlements should not be excluded on race, eye or hair color, height, weight, sexual orientation, gender, religion, theology, cosmology, political philosophy, family or country of origin, ethnicity, or any other basis. The issue here is the equality Americans deserve as citizens of our Constitutional Republic. The fact that they are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Baha’i, Atheists, Agnostics, Women, Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender or other people should have nothing to do with whether they receive equal rights under the law .  Therefore to use religious, moral, political, or other arguments to deny their civil and human rights is a basic violation of the Constitution of the United States and sanctions discrimination against them.

The President of the United States as Chief Executive Officer and Commander in Chief is under moral and legal obligation to make decisions that will uphold the Constitution. This is the point and until we get this point we miss the point entirely. By deciding in favor of marriage equality, the President is using the Constitution as his ultimate guide for determining fair and equal treatment of citizens in this country.

In contrast to politicians who treat the Constitution as just another piece of paper, President Obama is taking his constitutional obligations very seriously by applying it across all segments categories of the American public.

A recurring problem today is that we too conveniently ”cherry pick” who we want to have rights this country. We filter and choose what items of the Constitution we will or will not abide. Part of our current political quandaries are due in part to politicians who have ”shredded” the Constitution, conveniently walked over and disregarded it and use it as a cudgel or pinata to punish people who don’t share their political or religious views.

What is needed in this country is a Constitutional Revival where every citizen knows, understands and abides by it and politicians do not simply read it aloud on the floor of Congress as a pretentious show of support, but live it each day and use it as a proper guide to ensure that every single citizen has equal protection under the law, equal rights under the law and complete justice under the law.

Both the text and context of President Obama’s decision are Constitutional, not religious, political, social, racial, relational or even sexual per se. If we finally use the Constitution as our guide as we are supposed to in this country, we can eradicate many of the woes and ills, the wounds and alienation still plaguing many citizens of this nation who feel that they will never be free and will always remain second and third class citizens because their rights have been continually abbreviated.

President Obama may have made a decision with which Christians disagree religiously or politically, but must be commended for daring to  act constititutionally to grant full rights and equality to yet another oppressed minority.

We should thank God that we have a President willing to put his “political hide” on the line to make the decisions that are constitutionally correct so that all citizens including members of the LGBT community can finally enjoy the justice, freedom and equality that we so fervently promise and advocate as hallmarks of American Representative Democracy.

My response to this man was careful and measured. He became very animated in a talk punctuated by volcanic eruptions of emotion while spewing out profanities that wildly demeaned and degraded all LGBT people.

After he calmed down, he asked, ” You are a Reverend. What do you think about marriage rights and equality for those people?”

I said to him essentially what President Obama recently stated and that is “LGBT people should be granted the same rights and freedoms that heterosexual married couples are given in this society. They should be permitted those rights not solely on what the Bible or any other religious document says but on what the Constitution of the United States says about their rights as American citizens.

In a Christian Theocracy the Bible is our “Constitution.” In American Democracy the Constitution is our “Bible.”

The Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence become the “Holy” Triumurate, the “Holy” Grail of American representative democracy. And while “the Bible should teach the flag how to wave” in the words of Michael Eric Dyson, these tracts provide a vision; a template and road map on how people should be ultimately treated as citizens in this society.”

Furthermore, I asked “Should religious beliefs ultimately determine who should be granted civil rights as citizens of this Republic? Why should any philosophy, religion or creed be used as a deterrent to prevent people from receiving and enjoying equal rights in this society? This is why we have the Constitution as the final arbiter and determinant of our rights as American citizens and this includes members of the LGBT community.

In many respects, the Consititution is more open and tolerant of equality for it trancends the particularities and complexities of various religious belief systems and that is why we have it as a primary guide on how to treat other human beings in this”American experiment in democracy.”

So I asked him,”Should LGBT people not have the same rights as other Americans because of the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality?

“No they shouldn’t!” Why should they be married at all?” he said passionately.

I then asked,”Why should gay or lesbian couples who live monogamously or otherwise as partners in relationships for many years suddenly face a complete loss of everything because they decide to separate or one partner dies or because their right to marital equality is refused? Is this right?  Why should such persons be denied their true humanity to be as they are and live in love like all other persons who are truly and fully human?

Moreover marriage is both a civil and religious matter. In the Catholic Church marriage is a sacrament. In the Protestant Church it is not a sacament but still holds sacred value in eyes of the faith community. Ultimately while it is a contract-covenant between two people, it also signifies the union of values, resources and everything that the couple has worked for and bring to that relationship in building a life together.

Why should homosexual couples who live as citizens, fall in love, pay their taxes, fight our wars, dig our ditches, build our bridges, forge our steel, write our poems, build our buildings, write prescriptions for their sick patients and argue their clients cases in court, serve as fire fighters, policemen and policewomen, preachers, evangelists, bishops, teachers and athletes be  denied the same civil opportunities, inheritances and privileges that heterosexual couples receive?

A sad story that I recently heard was the gay man whose partner of thirty five years died and as the surviving person he could claim no property or belongings left him by his partner because their union was not recognized by the state. The result? He lost everything they had worked for and ended up homeless and later died on the streets. Is that justice?

I also said to him that similar arguments have been used historically to deny black people their full civil and human rights primarily due to the color of their skin. History reveals that the Bible was used to deny black rights because they were considered less than human, and the often quoted scripture, “Slaves obey your masters,”was repeatedly proclaimed by Christian slavemasters to biblically justify slavery. 

Conversely, the entire Book of Exodus and its emancipation narratives and traditions were completely ignored except the words, “Let My People Go,”which was repeatedly heard by slaves, inspired their quest for justice and made them more determined than ever to be free.  

If it is wrong to refuse black people their full rights as American citizens on the basis of race, it is wrong to deny LGBT people their full rights as American citizens on the basis of sexual or gender orientation.

Some of my clergy colleagues believe that the two issues have nothing to do with each other, but I strongly disagree.  The same principles apply in different ways; one on the basis of race and the other on the premise of sexual orientation. Either way we look at it, the larger issue is how we exclude people from equal citizenship rights because of their persons and who they are. The negation is argumentum ad hominem; a dispute against the man or woman because of their race, sexual orientation, lifestyles, beliefs or other reasons. We deny them full citizenship and equality because we disagree with who they are and how they choose or were born or chosen to live their lives.  It essentially means denying people their basic rights and equalities for personal, religious, political or other reasons, which inverts the basic precepts, pretexts and principles of the American Constitution.

Again, many Christians have difficulty understanding that while the Bible may provide a moral, religious or theological assessment of the issue of homosexuality and cite prohibitions against it, the ultimate litmus or criteria of how people should be treated as citizens in American society should be the Constitution. And although the Constitution has been used in the past to deny persons their full rights for personal reasons, it still remains the one primary document upon which we base our uniqueness and sovereignty as a nation and govern our civic behavior. Even non citizens are guaranteed certain constitutional rights when they arrive at these shores notwithstanding, race, religion, ethnicity or country of origin. 

Furthermore, I find it highly ironic that LGBT people who want to be married in monogamous relationships with their partners whom they love dearly and choose to take the “moral high ground” in this regard are denied the opportunity on civic and religious grounds. No constitutional proscriptions will force them into hetereo-sexual relationships. Many are not made or cut that way,if you will, despite what others believe and many of the arguments and rationale offered to justify their continued oppression just don’t stand up to truth or pass the test of time. Many of the discussions about whether LGBT people should have their basic rights are rooted in fear, ignorance and homophobia.

I would even venture to say further that Jesus himself never spoke directly on this issue but we might take some of his civil and religious actions as a guide for our behavior in such matters. Jesus the Pre-Easter Jew was aware of the Torah’s views on homosexuality, and as Christians we have Paul’s views and the Post-Easter Jesus community’s interpretations on the subject which largely condemns it. 

But Jesus himself appeared much more inclusive and tolerant of those people who were outsiders, outcasts, stigmatized by society and  marginalized than some would have us believe. If we were to take the liberty of making a comparison, members of the LGBT community have been demonized and cast to the fringes of society almost as lepers.  When Jesus touched the lepers who were basically “untouchable” and healed them, they were bold acts of caring and cleansing for people who were largely deemed unworthy of such treatment and concern. Jesus demonstrated the belief that lepers were also worthy of God’s love and that persons of similarly infirm conditions need not be permanently displaced or thrown away or excluded from the love of God because of society’s jaundiced views of them.

Many people today have ostracized members of the LGBT community and denounced them unclean. According to scholar Marcus Borg, Jesus sitting with sinners and outsiders; those considered unclean in society was a recurring problem that got him into difficulty with religious scholars, and at that time demonstrated his willingness to risk something of personal value to make a statement about the importance of including in the family of God even those marginalized, undervalued persons who had been dismissed as impure and summarily cast aside.

Social status or station was not an inhibitor to God’s desire to be in “covenant” even with those persons. Permanent exile from God’s love in Jesus mind was not an option especially for those considered “unclean or put out from society due to those physical, social and religious ills that were believed to be inherited familially or emanating outright from”depraved moral conditions.” My point is that even from a religious point of view, members of the LGBT community would certainly have a place at Jesus table and would have a special place at it.

Numerous Christians may feel that LGBT persons should not be accorded their full rights because they are not viewed as completely human or normal persons or because they are defined primarily in terms of their sexuality and the Bible condemns homosexuality as sin.

But even if we take this view as a rationale and pretext for denying LGBT people their basic rights does this now mean that fornicators, adulterers and other people who engage in so called sexual sins and are lumped into the same category as homosexuals should now be denied their basic rights as American citizens or have their current rights revoked? Huh? What? Notwithstanding the Christian tendency to label them as sinners does not the love of God help to overcome this? Does not God’s love for them as caring and loving persons set the stage for them to complete and fulfill themselves as more caring and loving persons in society?

Jesus understood that the social mishandling and mislabeling of persons by the larger society were feeble attempts to describe their condition, ultimately define their true worth as persons and justify society’s mistreatment of them.  The fact that a person is of a particular race or sexual orientation only partially describes and defines who they are both in the eyes of God and society. The love of God first understands and affirms them as they are and loves them into who and what they will ultimately become as loving persons. No matter what demeaning labels and stigmas the larger society places upon them, the love of God eclipses all social attempts to categorically define them as less than human or unclean or deem them completely unworthy of the wholeness, wellness and love they deserve as children of God.

Furthemore, I happen to be African American which is a partial description of who I am in the eyes of society. However this racial category is a depiction of my ethnicity but not a complete definition of who I am as a person of worth and potential, as a child of God whose value and power exceeds any social categories to which I am relegated or labeled or forced into by the larger society or I claim as an important part of my personal identity.

Likewise, members of the LGBT community, while primarily described and viewed in terms of their sexuality, are infinitely more than this description. While sexuality is an important part of  who they are, it is not only who they are. Their value as persons of worth go way beyond those social labels and categories in which we have defined, described and unjustly delegitimized them.

Thus the demeaning social labels that we place on people never obviate their status as persons that God truly loves. Such love is partially transmitted through the realization of basic civil and human rights in society and the love of God personally so that full and complete personhood and citizenship are realized.

Complete personhood is a kingdom concept that cannot be fully actualized without God’s love. Complete citizenship is an “American” social concept that cannot be fully realized without God’s justice.  

There is so much more to people than what other people see of them and so much more to what they will ultimately become both in the eyes of God and in the eyes of society once full rights and equalities are realized.  To become untrammeled recipients of divine and human love are hallmarks indispensable for all living persons to ultimately become complete loving persons.

The problem is that for many years this has been an explosive issue crossing many religious, cultural and gender lines. People feel very strongly about what they believe and are very adamant in holding on to their various religious beliefs.

I am not certain if what I said to this gentleman changed his position on LGBT civil rights because he walked furiously away during our discussion. I did not judge or condemn his views nor do I repudiate other Christians who believe what they believe on this subject. 

My viewpoints are more in line with mercy than majesty. My feeling is that I don’t have to imperially impose my views on the world and then condemn others who do not  accept my views. My confidence in Christ allows me to accept others as they and love them for who they are and keep loving them as they become what they will yet be. My God is big, loving and caring enough to have folks at his table who are both accepted and repudiated by the world. This is the ultimate message and if we don’t get this then we miss the lesson entirely.

 I simply attempted to get this man to see the larger picture and what was truly at stake. In fact, I am almost sure that by the things that he said in parting and the way that he responded to me propelled him to cast me out from the Kingdom as a heretic and heathen. I am  also certain that some members of my congregation of the Christian right or my other clergy colleagues who read this article may call into question my judgment on this subject and may as a result decide to condemn me or leave our community because of these views. I would regret this if they did.  

On the other hand, I also firmly believe that these positions are not a misreading of the Synoptic Gospel texts and the ministry of the Pre- Easter or Post Easter Jesus, for that matter. They are beliefs deeply rooted in how people should be ultimately treated as citizens in our democracy. As American citizens, LGBT persons are entitled to the same rights, privileges, blessings and opportunities as all other Americans, so nail me to the cross, or cast me out with those others, but  here I stand and this is what I believe. 

This is all that I will say on this subject right now and kudos to President Barack Obama for stepping out on faith and having the moral courage to help LGBT people realize their equal rights as human persons who are in need of God’s grace and love and who are ever in need of social justice and equality as the beloved of God and citizens of this great nation.  

We will never be completely free until each and all of us are free to embody the quintessential qualities of love; a love that allows us and others to live fully and grow humanly as children of God; a love that allows us to complete ourselves in relationship with God and in loving relationships with others; a love that allows us to extend love,  justice, compassion and inclusion to those who have been shut out from that love for personal, religious or political reasons. 

Gods loves us all and let there be no exceptions to that love as we continue to build God’s kingodm and seek to create a more equal, just and loving society here on earth.

Amen. Amen. Amen! 

A politician once said that he wanted to keep getting checks to increase his balances.

Another said that he wanted to keep checking his balances to keep up with his checks.

Whether some politicians keep getting their checks to maintain their balances or keep checking their balances to maintain their checks, our political system is terribly out of balance and needs to be checked wouldn’t you say? Check it out!

This is a problem with our system and until we get money out of politics it will be more of the same stuff. I am being polite here. 

“He who pays the fiddlers always calls the tunes” and too many of our representatives are fiddlin with corporate money and letting them call all the tunes. Simply put they have been bought off and sold out by large corporations. Many of them have been paid to look the other way and just don’t have a clue about the real needs of the American people and the future of American democracy.  Any time you allow large corporations and their lobbyists write the political policy legislation that gives them the whole commode, the stall and all the tissue paper, while the little guy can’t even get into the room to do his business, the idea of checks and balances is pure poppycock. Forgive the crude analogy.

Their motto is live for today for tomorrow we will all be on Mars. Live for today for tomorrow we will all be living on Space Station Whodat. Live for today for tomorrow we will all be in the Caymen Islands. Just live right now and get all you can get while the gettting gets good and the “got” gets gone.

The mantra of some of these folks is get all the money you can, whenever you can, from as many people you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, as long as ever you can, while hurting as many people you can, as long as you can sit on your can until the tiny people can finallly remove you from office.

Their motto is let the whole of American Democracy go into the poor house while we stay in the big house. 

Let the whole thing fall down as long as there is nothing left for them. “Them” meaning us, the little people.

Who’s checking the balances and who’s balancing the checks? Why do we keep robbing Peter to pay Paul and can’t find Peter? Who’checking the people who are writing the checks and who’s balancing the checks that are “writing” the people.

Who’s checking the folks who should be giving us a balanced democracy where some of the little people win some of time and a few of the big people don’t win all of the time?

If we keep going in this direction there will be little or nothing left to check or balance.  Democracy will be gone. All the money will be gone. The big people will have all checked out to Pluto and the little people will be left with what’s left on earth, which will be neither a balance or a check or a pot or a window.

Wow. It’s late and I’m tired. Whoa! I been writing so long I forgot to check my balances and balance my checks today. I need to check my account.

We all know that money talks don’t we? Yeah! It usually says, “Goodbye!”

“Honey, have you seen my checkbook?”

Something similar happened when I went to Meijers a short distance from my home several weeks ago. While in the produce section looking for organic grapes, I heard someone shout to me from across the room. “Hey Reverend,” she said excitedly. “Could you come over here for a minute? I need your help.”

Walking over to her, and seeing this mother of the church, she said, “You look different without your robe on.”

“That’s what people say,” I said.

“Could you help me a minute? She said.

“What can I do for you?” I said

“I need you to look at this cantaloupe for me and these honey dews. Now look at them real good.”

I immediately cast my sights down to the cantaloupes and Honey Dew melons on the table.

“Tell me what you see,” she said.

“What do you mean mother? Do want me to look at them to see if they are ripe or do you want me to look at them to see how many flaws they have? What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to look real good at them and see if you can tell whether or not they are ripe. You have a way of seeing things Reverend. After you look real good at them I want you to touch or lay hands on them to tell if they are really ripe. I used to could do this Reverend but my arthur-itis is real bad and I have lost my touch. The last time I came here I brought home fruit that was not yet ripe. I bought the fruit too early and I can’t afford to do this no more. I can’t afford to drive all the way home and then all the way back to return unripe melons.  I have lost my touch. I used to could look at a melon and tell right away whether it was ripe. I used to could touch or thump a melon and get it right every time, “ she said. “But I have lost my touch.”

Sympathizing with Mother Mullins, I asked her which ones she wanted me touch or lay hands on. 

“These four right here,” she said plaintively. “And then after that there are four Honey Dews over there I want you to look at,” she said pointing to the table next to the cantaloupes.

Looking around the produce section to see who was watching me, I saw a few other parishioners out of the corner of my eye who were looking in our direction. I prayed that they would not come over to where we were because this was somewhat embarrassing. I did not want to be at Meijers that day. I was only there because my wife insisted that I go get fruit at the “only store that has lastingly fresh produce.” I try to stay out of places near my home just to not complicate my visits to these places when I see parishioners.

The next thing I knew two of the three people from the church were right there in the cantalopue section.

“Oh hi Reverend Stewart,” we did not recognize you.”

“Hi, sister Smith and sister Jones,  I am over here trying to help Mother Mullins pick out fresh Cantaloupes and Honey Dews,” I said sheepishly.

“God bless you,” they said with a chuckle, and after saying hello to Mother Mullins and giving her a Holy hug they moved on with their shopping.

Breathing a sigh of relief, bowing my head and removing my hat,  I touched and then laid both hands on the cantaloupes and closed my eyes. Gradually my hands began to quake and my legs began to shake. I felt the spirit overtake me as I ran my fingers over the ridges and lumps and began praying over the melons. Mother Mullins put her hand on my shoulder as I was praying.

“Father, I am asking for a spirit of discernment. You know which melons are ripe and which are not. Father you knew these melons before they were seeds. You blessed the hands of the truck drivers who brought them here. You enabled them to grow into full grown fruit. Lord, we know that everything ripens at its time and becomes fruit at its hour so please help us to know which fruit is ripe today. Help us Lord. We know that everything is not as it appears. Some things look ripe but are rotten. Other things look rotten but are ripe. Help us Lord, today in this produce section. You know Mother Mullins. You know her heart. Help her to walk out of here with ripe fruit, the best fruit in here! Let the cantaloupes that I touch today be good fruit. Let the Honey Dews do the Honey Do. Give us fresh produce today! Give us a fresh harvest today. Give us a good crop today! Give us Holy Ghost help today! Help these fruits in the name of Jesus be all that they can be so that we can be all that you want us to be!”

My prayer was hitting high gear now. I could feel the spirit moving in Meiers. I could feel the ground swelling under the floor as Mother Mullins was shouting, “Yes Lord! Yes Lord! Yes Lord!” in the produce section. The spirit was moving higher and higher among the apples, oranges and watermelons.

“Lord help us to know when these melons were planted and when they were harvested, whether they got enough sunlight and rain, whether they contain pesticides, insecticides, herbicides that can create homicides. Give us a spirit of discernment today.  Help us to know today. Let thine will be done and let these fruit be ripe so that Mother Mullins can take them home and have a good meal!” I said, almost shouting now.

After abandoning my prayer because of sweat running into my eyes, Mother Mullins was dancing and shouting in the aisle and there were other customers over by the bananas lifting up their hands in the air praising God and stomping their feet with reckless abandon.

At that moment the store manager walked over to me and asked if I was ok because we had caused a commotion.

“Yes, we are ok,” I said. We were praying over the fruit. I know that Meijers has the best fruit in town but my parishioner, a faithful mother of the church, wanted me to pray over these fruit so the Lord could tell us which ones is ripe.

Looking at me in a curious and suspicious way, as though I was off my rocker,  he said, “Well they really are ripe. Really, really ripe. ”They came in yesterday.”

At that moment I heard another voice shouting to me from across the room.

“Hey Reverend. Come over here. I need your help. Would you please pray over these kiwis?”

There is no way in creation that such words whether implied or inferred should ever be uttered toward any of our leaders at any time, but the way in which the Ted Nugent situation was handled reminds us of the continuing double standards that still exist in America. Some people can say something and get nailed right away. Other people can say the same or similar things and listeners dismiss or look the other way.

However, some words can be easily taken out of context so I must be very careful of what I write here.

It is true that we all have had our embarrassing verbal missteps where we say things that we did not expect to say, where we get caught up in the moment like the time in my early days when I accidentally called my listening audience, “Mother Hubbards.” Compared to the other uses of words with the prefix “Mother” that faux pas was harmless but still had lingering repercussions.

For a whole year after that experience people who recognized me as the man who gave the speech kept saying, “Weren’t you the preacher who called us Mother Hubbards?” and then would launch into side splitting, knee slapping, mouth foaming, spit spewing laughter. It was embarrassing and I never forgot that slip of the tongue. What I was trying to do in my speech was craft a term of endearment for my audience but it all came out the wrong way and it made me a laughing stock among some religious circles in Chicago. Fortunately for me, the event brought some comic relief to a tense situation but it took a while to live the whole thing down.

I learned a lesson from that experience and Ted Nugent’s situation was different. He said something that probably was taken far more seriously not merely because of what he said but how those words could have potentially evoked a broad range of deductions from his listeners including inferences of his own political martyrdom.

Sometimes people say things that they should not say. We all have had a bout of foot in mouth disease. When I called my audience “Mother Hubbards,” my words incited people to laughter. When Nugent said, and I am paraphrasing here, that this time next year if Obama is re-elected he would either be dead or in jail, his words were far more serious.

The problem here is also the glacial response to the whole matter by some of the media and the Secret Service who visited Nugent some days later. While some talking heads later tried to justify the tone and import of Nugent’s words, I was perplexed at the tardy response of the Secret Service to his statement or maybe that his how they customarily respond to statements of this type.

Nearly worse was Mitt Romney’s refusal to denounce Nugents words and politically distance himself from the man. Perhaps Romney did not think the words were serious enough to cause him any political liability either but some time earlier Romney had asked for Nugent’s endorsement.  I gave Romney kudo’s several weeks ago when he quickly rebutted a young man who tried to draw him into a verbal skirmish on interracial marriage. Why not the same quick silver response to the Nugent statements?

I also praised John McCain when he flatly refused to allow his Presidential contest with Obama to descend into the politics of racial denigration and Romney could have added value to his stock by doing something similar but chose not to.

Slips or non slips of the tongue that can be taken to evoke harm to our leaders should never be treated lightly. There should never be an excuse for any person to launch into rap rants that stir up those primal urges that can potentially turn into feeding frenzies by fringe fanatics or used as dog whistles to do people harm.

Words have meanings and power and sometimes people take our words to justify their own lethal behavior. That is why every person who has a public following like Nugent should be doubly mindful and especialy careful of what he says in public.

In response to such talk, we should have consistent standards of accountability and shorten the response time to all persons who say such things without eliminating our basic freedom of speech. Each person should be held to task for the words he or she uses especially when those words can be taken as license to harm leaders and others not sharing their political views. We should all be mindful not only of what we say and how we say it but the impact those words can potentially have on listeners. We must also be aware of how words help to create and sustain a climate of permissiveness that can easily sanction violence as an acceptable way to politically problem solve in our country. We have seen this too much in our land and we don’t want to see it ever again.

Words not only have a life of their own but can easily take a life of their own when not measured prudently or used wisely. So let us be mindful of what we say by measuring our words and by saying exactly what we intend them to say and thereby lessening the chance of having our words misinterpreted,  misrepresented or taken completely out of context by those who listen.

For the life of me I cannot comprehend why people would want to grab everything from the everyday working Americans and give it to people who don’t need it. Why are politicians doing this? Why are they declaring war on those who have not? This is a deep betrayal of one of the most important maxims of all times which says,

“Take care of home first; take care of your family first; take care of your country first; take care of your soldiers first, take care of your people first before you start taking care of everybody else and giving the entire shop away.

This selfishness that I now see is not only shocking but is morally reprehensible and only fuels the fires of pain that many people now feel. When our men and women put on uniforms and go and fight for their country putting life, limb and liberty on the line, and if they are fortunate enough to return home to these beloved shores, we ought to take care of them by providing them with the comprehensive assistance they need to take care of themselves and their families.

When working people have spent all their lives making profits for their employers and even at times risking life and health by trying to provide for their families, we ought to take care of them by making sure that they have the various means of support such as social security, Medicare and other amenities that will help sustain them into their later years.

When the poor, disabled, widows, orphans and other people struggle each day to make it in our land and then suddenly have those resources taken away from them by greedy and selfish politicians who only want more power and more money to be put into their campaign coffers under the pretext of satisfying their political sponsors, it makes you wonder if they understand the importance of taking care of our own.

I am very serious here. For the life of me I do not understand politicians, and some of them are Christians, who want to pull life support from people who are already dying a slow death, whose lives barely exist on single threads because they have no future and have no hope or very little food on their tables or other means of support. What happens to a country when some of its leaders lose their souls? What happens to a nation that overlooks its elderly, allows people to be unfairly thrown out of their homes, and keeps stamping out the last vestiges of hope and dignity from them?

Moreover, no matter how many speeches have been given, how many prayers have been prayed, how many worship services have been attended, how many meetings have been met, how many summits have been summoned, how many laws have been passed, how many policies have been made, how many checks have been written for political campaigns, how many creeds have been crafted, how many stories have been told about how great and gifted and wealthy this nation is, if we do not take care of our own; if we do not take care for those who are just trying to take care of themselves in our own country then we have already lost this battle.

Nothing suffices for charity at home. Nothing supplants compassion for one’s own countrymen! Nothing suffuses joy more than when the grim of every solemn grief is dispelled, when honest caring hard working Americans receive a hand up out of the quagmires of despair from people who care about them and help them at their lowest points and at their hours of greatest need and their leaders have not lost compassion or respect for them or blame them as victims by dismissing their wounds and suffering as self inflicted.  Nothing!

When I watch how people come to this country and help themselves and their own group; when I watch how such people ship their dollars and their resources back to their first countries, which thankfully is their version of charity sent home, which is good for their people and can be good for Americans when we have the same feelings for our own citizens, and then watch how everyday Americans are struggling and suffering and often whittled down to nothing, often belittled and overlooked by their own leaders with the last iota of dignity snatched from them as they are called “lazy” or “dumb,” or undeserving of charity,  and when I watch how everybody else can come to America, and get the competitive advantage economically and educationally, and are always given the benefit of the doubt and the people who came here first to build this country to make it prosperous; people who have been loyal to America and have given America virtually everything that America has and those very same people are overlooked because their suffering and plight have gone out of style or cannot be politically or economically exploited, or because they are feared and devalued because of race, gender, ethnicity or age, or because they are stigmatized and besmirched by such words as “entitlements,” then we all should be sorry because we have not recognized that charity begins at home.

Charity begins at home and we need to learn in this country how to take care of Americans first! Stop giving the shop away to everybody else who cares nothing about us! Stop allowing countries to take advantage of our trade policies where they get everything and we get very little or nothing in return, all just to make a few people richer while the majority of the people become poorer! Stop overlooking and belittling the people who have labored with all their might to build this country; people who have given every ounce of strength, integrity and dignity so that this country might live and grow and prosper for all of the American people.

Yes! Charity begins at home my friends and until America gets this message and lives by the mantra of helping her own people first and not putting them last then we will never master the lesson of what makes a nation great and strong and viable for the future.

When we take care of our own we take care of our country. When we take care of our women, children, youths and men, we take care of our country. When we help our own students get an education and workers get jobs, we take care of our country. When we help other Americans in need by giving them food stamps, and other forms of charity without making them feel worse than they already feel, we take care of our country and we all win as a nation.

When will we see this? When will people who call themselves Americans start taking care of our own citizens so that people no longer walk the streets homeless or go to jail just to have a roof over their heads and food on their pallets and we no longer have people hungry and sick and hopeless and numb with pain? When?

Yes! Charity begins at home. We need to get this nation moving again and start practicing these values without malice or bias and stop playing the politics of favoritism where some people get most of everything and the other people might get what’s left.

Charity at home is a first step in developing a stronger America. Thank God President Obama and some politicians see this and are committed to helping those truly in need. 

Charity at home will enable this country to repair its breaches, raise its hopes as a nation, restore the confidence of its people, renew the American spirit, and lay a foundation of creativity, innovation, empathy and compassion for all of her citizens to help this nation grow stronger, brighter and more prosperous! Let that charity begin at home and let it begin with each of us. Let it begin with some of our politicians and elected representatives and our religious and business leaders. Let charity begin in our hearts for those who really need it. Stop taking the bank and bread from average Americans and let’s start restoring our pride in being Americans! Help the people who have helped America.

The American people are tired of the politics of eminent confiscation where corporations buy off politicians and craft political legislation and policies that subtract rights and resources from average Americans. Finally, people are realizing the perils of such activities and their adverse impact on the entire country. When jobs are shipped overseas, Americans have no money to buy products or pay state, local or federal taxes. When taxes cannot be paid to local municipalities, services provided by those entities either wane or cease entirely. All America suffers and it begins with the corporate mindset that sometimes places greed over human need or outsources jobs overseas just to keep up with corporate competitors.

Furthermore, the recent attempts at voter suppression and union busting are stark examples of policies emanating from ALEC, and the politicization of Supreme Court justices may be further evidence of how corporate power has compromised or affected the judicial judgment of some persons sitting on the nation’s highest court.

The recent decisions by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Wendy’s; Intuit, Kraft, and Pepsi to withdraw financial support from ALEC are also steps in the right direction. It is my belief that corporations can still achieve their financial purposes without stealing away our democracy and crushing asunder the needs of average citizens. The truth is that we all lose when American democracy works only for the privileged few. Both Corporations and individual citizens lose when the engines of prosperity that have historically blessed all Americans falter and fail to keep moving all America ahead at full throttle.

Without oversimplifying here, perhaps we are finally witnessing an awakening of corporate conscience, which are signs of deeper moral awakenings elicited by our saturation in the current culture of greed and our continued cloying by perversions of justice emblematic of American power politics on the national and state levels. 

The average citizen knows when things are not right, when he or she has been displaced and mistreated, when a system that has been originally designed for his benefit is constantly rigged in favor of those who already rule.

ALEC is another example of an organization that desires to abbreviate the rights, advantages and opportunities of average, everyday folks through prefabricated legislation that gives corporations everything while leaving average citizens virtually with nothing.

The time has come for a moral reawakening in America when corporations realize that although they now have  extended their global reach by assuming multinational status, they must not forsake the mother country that gave them their first chances at success. It would be sad and terrible thing if we continued our current course and did not awaken from this slumber of apathy and avarice that is splintering apart our beloved country.

Thank God there are signs of a new awakening in America where people of conscience are finally saying enough of putting our own people on the bottom tier of the ladder. Enough of this” politics of abandonment” where we put everybody else first and keep putting Americans last. Enough of this quest to take the present and future away from our children and grandchildren! Enough of this “winner take everthing that we have and everything that we are ever going to have,” politics. 

My prayer is that this new great awakening will not be short lived but will continue until a more prosperous, generous  benevolent and compassionate America can finally be realized for all the people of this great and beloved land.

Partisan politics has created much of the political gridlock and stalemate in our nation and while both parties must take some responsibility for this, Republicans are chiefly to blame for holding the country hostage and supporting economic and social policies that reward the rich and undermine the poor and middle class of America. The Paul Ryan budget is a case in point. Those members of both parties who continually put the corporate agenda above the people’s agenda are also responsible for the current political lopsidedness that plagues so much of current American politics.

It is no secret that many Republicans have repeatedly stonewalled legislation that helps average Americans to become well and whole and seem to spend a great spot of their time ensuring that Obama is not re-elected than making sure that all Americans are rightfully protected.  So rather than compromise or govern by consensus with Democrats in ways that will help all Americans, many of them opt to keep taking more from the poor and giving it to the rich. 

Enter this man Fletcher! Here is a bloke who stands on his conscience and refuses to no longer play the political game of beating down those other mates who have helped keep the old ship America running. 

Finally, someone has stood up for what is right rather than play ”bounty politics” where most of the goods, wealth and resources are held and kept in the hands of the few . Such politics say that it is right to keep confiscating what little “ lunch”  the little people still have and give it to those who have more “lunch”  than they can munch in their lifetimes.

Dear friends, the real ”mutiny” in America is the manner in which  American values have been trounced, trampled and thrown overboard, and how the American people have been denied some of their basic rights, the means of subsistence and refused the unbridled pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

By golly, this man Fletcher’s ship has sailed in a new direction. Enough then of Bounty politics, the petty cruelties, the “let the poor eat Styrofoam” musings, the unwarranted “floggings” of the commoners; those motley beleaguered crew members working themselves at the halyards to keep the ship afloat.

“Enough of the partisan political cruelties, the shop shone shearing of the lowly sheep, giving the artful tarts and amenities only to first cabin mates!  

The crew have worked hard for the grand ship America, they deserve much better and more, and from every class and station they have hurried to America’s shores.

They’ve come working they have, and their fingers to the bone, eyes glistening with the light of tomorrow though food they’ve barely had none!   

Like a breath of fresh air in the brisk, crisp winds of the high and open seas, finally a politician has declared that he is tired of our political dis-ease.

Finally as the best of American values are being sorely cast adrift , someone has stood up to decry the politics of eminent confiscation that continually cause our rifts.

While Republicans think Fletcher has mutinied by defecting from their party only for personal gain, it is they who have commandeered the ship from the people and driven it afoul again.”

Friends, countrymen and countrywomen, we need people who want to serve their country, irrespective of party; people willing to put their consciences on the line and stand for what is right for all Americans as Fletcher has done here and by serving his country in Iraq.

It was breath of fresh air listening to this man Fletcher and his reasons for becoming an Independent. I don’t know all of his politics serving as a Republican Assemblyman in California, but I know that it took incredible moxie and moral courage to do what he did. We need more blokes with moral courage who will do what is right for all Americans. While it sometimes means “going along to get along,” says John Kennedy in Profiles in Courage, it also means sometimes not always going along just to get along but standing for truth, justice and the American way even if standing alone.

We need more men and women who will become public servants and who will make decisions in the best interests of our country.

What we need in America today is a respect for party but more importantly a respect for all people so that all of America’s  ”crew” and the old ship of state and our representative democracy can finally get safely home with all her crew in tact.

” I say there old chaps and “chapettes”! All hands on deck! Sound the trumpets for this man Fletcher. He is a breath of fresh air and something to behold!”

The fear and loathing that incite such acts of violence existed long before slavery, became a shameful practice of that peculiar institution, extends to our present times and is so deeply ingrained in the social and psychological DNA of some Americans that it may take years if ever to eliminate.

This is indeed a sad time in our nation and whatever events led to the demise of Trayvon Martin, we know that his story of death by violence happens all too often in our land.

We have heard it on the nightly news of young black youths killing each other in genocidal splurges of anger, revenge and retribution. We have seen it in the history of racial attacks of whites against blacks through lynching and other destructive and incendiary acts of mob violence. Rodney King and Reginald Denny come to mind, public victims of racially motivated violence. We have too often witnessed it as the only celebrated tool for conflict resolution between adversaries in the media and in American popular culture and have poignantly observed ad nauseum violence against women, gay, lesbian and transgender people.

Moreover, the proliferation of violence in recent political discourse keeps rising to new heights with its inflammatory “hate speech”especially against President Obama and in the caricatures of Obama wearing an Adolf Hitler mustache. It exists in the war against the middle class and the working poor and is evidenced in the escalation of structural violence through poverty, hunger, unemployment and the lack of education and health care.  It is a story of which we are all too painfully familiar and is made possible in part by the ethos of violence deeply etched in the “wood grains”of our history.

George Zimmerman may have pulled the trigger that killed Trayvon Martin, but the climate of such violence has been historically fostered by a culture of fear and permissiveness that creates hatred and suspicion of black men in general and stigmatizes them as persons to be nearly always, feared, shunned, suspected, and if perceived as a threat, killed.

Long before the Stand Your Ground laws came into existence, the social pathologies of some aspects of American culture and society have made pulling the trigger on people that we fear or dislike acceptable. Such behavior has always raised the outrage and ire of caring citizens who value all human life and are sickened by any form of violence against innocent people, whatever their color or gender especially children and youths.

We all concur that the killings must stop. We all understand that the prejudices, ignorance and fear that cause Americans to destroy each other in fitful rages of violence do not come from the hands of God but are socially acquired and culturally conditioned.

No human being is born hating another human being. No person comes into this world with the bigotries and intolerance that drive men to kill and maim their fellow man. Those feelings and beliefs are taught to them or handed down to them or instilled within them over time. They are bred through the matrix of human experiences which stoke the fires of fear, drench us with feelings of dread and instigate those racial and cultural suspicions that keep us at perpetual war with each other.

When will we as Americans recognize the real enemy and stop the politics of resentment that undermine our nation and splinter us still into divided camps?

The tragedy of Trayvon Martin is that a young life has been terminated by someone reputed to be another gun toting vigilante, a neighborhood watchman of the night, who has now added Trayvon’s name to the death ledgers of those innocent youths who have perished by gun violence, creating more endless litanies of lament that have mired his parents and other parents whose children have also died prematurely by violence, in an endless trail of blood, pain and tears.

Every American should be moved to positively change the minds, hearts and souls of people who harbor such animus;  to change the culture and society which miscarries and denies justice and gives tacit consent to senseless and multiple acts of violence against people because they are different or other or because historically they have been our scapegoats of scorn .

We must finally fashion a society that banishes all ignorance, overrides all fear and challenges us to transcend those dogmas and mantras of prejudice and hatred that keep us perilously divided and prevent us from truly knowing one another.

We must all commit to building a world where our children can live freely so they can have and raise their own children and live to old age without fear of being gunned down or violated in any form because an unspoken bounty has been placed on their heads.

It also means creating a world where the victims and their families can finally find rest because their killers have been brought to justice and the families of the victimizers can also find rest from their deep pain and sorrow.

The tragedy is that if we do not address the root causes of the violence that continually engulf us, and begin instilling within our children at a young age a respect for all persons, such destructive acts will continue to haunt this nation for the rest of our days and more youths like Trayvon Martin will sadly meet their untimely ends from people like George Zimmerman.