This is Viewpoints for Tuesday, October 3, 2017

New name

The newly named baseball team is Macon Bacon. There is nothing like the look of raw bacon on a uniform. I can hear the chant now, “GO HAWGS!”

Don’t repeat history

I am a white female and have never picked cotton, except when I saw some for a school project and asked the landowner if I could get some pieces, explaining the need, which was graciously granted. Now my mother did pick cotton in west Texas and New Mexico during World War II, when the men went off to war. She would sell her cotton to buy cotton fabric to make her clothes. My grandparents also picked cotton during the depression. They would sell their cotton to buy food to feed their eight children.

My great-grandparents had a farm and planted seasonal crops, picking their vegetables and cotton. My grandmother would tell me stories about, eating whatever the crop was at any given time of the year and sold the cotton to buy other food items. Meat was offered once a week when my great-grandfather would get a chicken or ham. Every bit of that meat was used including the bones to make stews and soups.

The Civil War occurred 153 years ago. The true events need to be taught in history classes as a tragic war that occurred in the United States of America. There are always bad things that happen in war. We need to understand that we do not want that to happen again.

I was born in the 1950s and had black neighbors and always had black classmates. When we studied the Civil War, which was during the late 1960s, our teacher explained why the Southern states wanted to secede from the nation. As eighth through 10th-graders, we all discussed the issues going on during the 1860s. None of my black classmates mentioned being oppressed. We studied President Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” and learned how troubled President Lincoln must have felt to keep this great nation as one. History is there for us to learn not to repeat.

A consistent message?

Rev. Andy Cook’s myopic fiction that “the Bible proclaims a consistent message that has held its value for centuries,” concerning marriage is only rivaled by the anemic parable about a church rejecting gravity that was the introduction to the column.

Some tried to lay claim to traditional marriage, often asserting it to be biblical, as a way to rebuff the forward march of justice. Biblical concepts of marriage are far from traditional and traditional concepts of marriage are far from just.

The Bible includes diverse and abusive sexual relationships that fall under a broad umbrella of marriage. See, for example, Abram and Sarai’s abuse of Hagar who was Abram’s sexual surrogate. When Ishmael was born, Sarai and Abram drove Hagar and her son into the wilderness. God intervened and issued a covenant promise to the descendants of Ishmael that paralleled the promise to Abram that he would be the father of a great nation.

The story of Jacob is one of fertility contests resulting in Jacob fathering 13 children by four different women: two wives and two concubines, all living together. The Ten Commandments identify wives as part of the property holdings of a man.

Since the 1970s and 1980s, civil laws of marriage in the U.S. have been modified. Wives and partners in the early 21st century are more secure under the law than they were a generation ago. In the context of the United States, marriage equality cannot be and should not be, constrained by religious sentiments.

Nimble mind

In Wednesday’s Viewpoints page, David Mann wrote a lovely and instructional letter touting the skill of The Telegraph’s Joe Kovac Jr. It goes without saying that Kovac is talented, but I’m so glad Mann did say it.

It brought to mind a time, not too long ago, when we could look forward to a periodic piece from David, himself. While I certainly enjoy his too-infrequent contributions on these pages, I miss his in-depth analysis of the many subjects his nimble mind and practiced pen addressed.

Litmus test?

President Donald Trump detonated and spewed his radioactive rhetoric against NFL players. Why? They’ve had the audacity to protest during the national anthem. During his Huntsville, Alabama speech he advocated NFL owners say, “Get that son of a b—off the field right now,” Trump said. “He is fired,” in a style, long on animus, long on paternalism, and short on accuracy.

I imagine the Trump patriot litmus test looks like this: stand rapt, hand on heart, and get dewy-eyed at the strains of the anthem. Trump does that, and he’s no patriot. He vilifies players. He advocates owners fire players based on his ire, and he falsifies history with his outlandish claim that protest disrespects our heritage.

Montgomery citizens fought American apartheid and dismantled segregated seating on buses. Were the Montgomery citizens anti-bus? No, anti-discrimination. The sons of liberty dumped 342 chests of British tea into the Boston harbor. Were they anti-tea. No, anti taxed without representation. NFL players aren’t anti-flag, they oppose police killing people of color at will, which Colin Kaepernick’s stated from the onset.

Many fans by default reference the players’ salaries. Should that neuter and silence them from opposing social injustice? If that’s the case, Trump, a self-proclaimed billionaire, should be fitted for his muzzle today.

Martin Luther King Jr. described the Trump style, “… It is a time of double talk when men in high places have a high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance.” Amen.

Advice

NFL advice, short and simple: To the players, if you don’t like it here in America, leave. Take your pampered, over-payed, spoiled selves and go away. Find somewhere else that will put up with you (won’t find it). To the NFL fans who think like me and others, stop going to NFL games; stop buying their advertised products. If you do go, boo them as they step on the field.

This story was originally published October 2, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Tuesday, October 3, 2017."