Sometimes, we are forced by circumstances to respond to things. And history defines us by how we react ...

In the 1960 Presidential Election, Vice President Richard Nixon faced off against his longtime colleague, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. A number of prominent black leaders, including Baseball legend Jackie Robinson and Atlanta Pastor Martin Luther King, Sr., were supporters of Nixon who did not trust Jack Kennedy. Their dislike of Kennedy got more intense when he decided to make Texas Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, a man with a mixed record on civil rights, his running mate. The Republicans had been making inroads with black voters, who supported FDR and Truman and were expected to do even better in 1960.

Early in the year, in late January, four black college students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina, decided that they had done enough complaining about segregation and decided to try to change it. On February 1st, they entered into a Woolworth's store, which got much of its business from black customers. They made small purchases from the integrated area where customers of all races could purchase goods. And then they sat down at the lunch counter which was reserved for white customers only. They asked to be served. They were reminded that black customers were not allowed to sit in the lunch area but were expected to order their food from the "colored" take-out counter. The young men asked why they were allowed to buy merchandise from the store but not allowed to be served. They refused to leave and also were refused service. But their actions that day erupted a wave of nonviolent protest that ultimately changed the policies of segregation in the upper south.

Within months, blacks throughout the country were beginning to protest policies that effectively treated them as second class citizens. Many white students in the north joined in by boycotting national chains that practiced segregation in its southern stores. Many of these companies were forced to change their policies. However, the city of Atlanta, a source of pride in the south, remained a significant holdout.

And so, three weeks before the Election of 1960, a group of young black college students in Atlanta staged a nonviolent sit-in protest in the prestigious downtown Rich's Department Store.They had persuaded the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had become famous in the wake of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts five years earlier, to join them. Their goal was to peacefully defy orders to abide by the store's segregationist policies in order to get arrested and to bring attention to the problem. They got their wish: Rev. King, along with 51 other individuals, were arrested. King said during his arrest "I don't feel that I did anything wrong going to Rich's and seeking to be served. We went peacefully, nonviolently, and in a deep spirit of love." He added that the previous year, his family had spent $4,500 dollars at the store but that they still weren't allowed to eat there.

Two days later, the students were released from jail on the condition that they participate in no more sit-ins for a month as the store tried to negotiate its policies. But Rev. King was not released with them. It turns out that the previous May, Rev. King and his wife Coretta had been driving a white female family friend to Emory University in Atlanta. He was pulled over by a DeKalb County police officer "on suspicion." And he had committed a serious offense: he was driving in Georgia with an Alabama driver's license. He was fined twenty five dollars and given a suspended sentence. But because he violated the terms of the suspended sentence by participating in the sit in, he was now being sentenced to four months in a hard labor camp.

After the sentencing, King was awakened from his sleep in the local lock-up. He was taken, bound, to the back of a Sheriff's car and driven, in the middle of the night, to a destination unknown. The officers would not answer his questions about where he was going. King thought he was about to meet his fate with a lynch mob, as had happened to a number of other black men in parts of the deep south. He later described the long drive and the uncertainty that accompanied as nearly unbearable. He spent time thinking about his family and how he feared he would never see them again. He and his wife Coretta had two children - a daughter who was about to turn five and a son who had turned three during his time he was incarcerated for the sit-in. His wife was six months pregnant with their third child.

King's destination that night was the Reidsville State Prison, a place with a ferocious reputation. When his wife learned that this was where he was headed, she became even more frantically stressed and strongly believed that her husband would be killed in prison and that their unborn child would never know his father. The King family reached out to both the Presidential candidates for help.

Nixon, who had a strong civil rights record and had known King personally, was trying to maintain a careful balancing act in a close election. He did not want to anger segregationists in the south, who viewed King as an avowed enemy and had a vitriolic opposition to any form of integration. He had already during the course of the campaign avoided getting too close to black voters or addressing black audiences because he had a hope to win portions of the south that at the time did not appreciate such gestures and which were being alienated from the Democratic Party partially because of the party's increasingly liberal positions on support for integration. Some of Nixon's aides and supporters, including Robinson, pleaded with him to make a statement. Any statement. Nixon refused. When asked during the crisis whether or not she had heard from the Vice President, Mrs. King responded to the reporter's question by saying "No, he's been very quiet."

Kennedy, who did not have a strong civil rights record and had been viewed with suspicion by a number of prominent blacks, but who had recently started trying to close the gap, was also reluctant to get involved. After all, the south was a Democratic stronghold and Kennedy also did not want to do anything to overly antagonize segregationists. But he did do two important things. He called Mrs. King from his hotel room and asked her if there was anything that he could do to help her. At the same time, his brother Bobby negotiated with the judge to arrange to allow King to be released on bail. Mrs. King told reporters that Kennedy was "thinking about us" and would "do all he could to help."

King was released from prison unharmed.

Kennedy staffers made sure that black voters were aware of the fact that Kennedy had helped King while Nixon did nothing. They put together a pamphlet titled "The Case of Martin Luther King" and derided the Vice President as "No Comment Nixon." This information was widely distributed in the black community in the weeks prior to the election. Those closest to the incident also seemed to have been persuaded by the relative reactions of Nixon and Kennedy. King's father renounced his support for Nixon and endorsed Kennedy. King's good friend Ralph Abernathy  wrote "Since Mr. Nixon has been silent through all of this, I am going to return his silence when I go to the voting booth." King himself later wrote in his autobiography that he regarded Nixon to be a "moral coward" and opined that Nixon would have won the support of black voters in the 1960 election if Nixon had mustered the courage to say and do something.

And in that election, it made a difference.

In the book 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon by David Pietrusza, on page 408, the author writes

Nixon captured only Virginia and Florida in the old Confederacy. He narrowly fell short in Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas (Ike had taken the latter two states four years earlier). The Solid South had remained solid. Nixon had tossed away the African American vote essentially for a chimera. Worse than a chimera. Kennedy's newly energized black vote had helped move Illinois, Michigan, and New Jersey, Missouri, and quite possibly, Texas and Pennsylvania into the Democratic column. That meant 76 electoral votes even without Texas and Pennsylvania, a whopping 132 votes with them, minimally short-circuiting an easy victory for Richard Nixon.

Black voters responded to Kennedy's gesture and Nixon's silence by turning at least four close states that otherwise would have gone for Nixon to Kennedy. This incident, and Kennedy's response to it, made the difference in the Presidential Election, as was acknowledged by both President Eisenhower and the RNC Chairman. Furthermore, the GOP's upward momentum with black voters was killed - from that point until today. Richard Nixon still managed to win 32% of black voter support - eight times the level of support that Senator McCain got a month ago and more than twice the level of support of any Republican Presidential Campaign from that point until today.

And the moral of the story is that sometimes, circumstances are thrust upon individuals unexpectedly. Richard Nixon did not ask for the King crisis and was forced to react to it. But his reaction was to try to not offend segregationists - in his case people who were unlikely to vote for him anyway. He tried to pick the safest response. And it backfired. Kennedy, who had far more to lose by angering the segregationists, made a gesture anyway. And it paid off for him handsomely.

And the lesson that politicians and the rest of us alike should bear in mind is that we always have to be prepared to stand up for what is right. Even if we run the risk of being criticized for it.

A while back, I introduced a new comedy modeled after a family of business execs who came together to beg for taxpayer money and to do ... whatever they wanted with it. Since the news came out recently about how a lot of the execs of the bailout firms bailed themselves out with big bonuses after getting the taxpayer money, I thought it was time for a spin-off. Let's visit the Bail Out Bunch at Christmastime.

A Very Bailout Christmas
(Sung to the theme of "The Brady Bunch")

Here's a story of a comedy that's not funny
About some guys who got a gift from all of us
Their firms got taxpayer bailout money
And the execs got gigantic bonuses

Here's a story of workers paying taxes
Earning fractions compared to the execs
They might as well have bought them gifts from Saks'
The big bonuses came from their small paychecks

The Bail Out Bunch
The Bail Out Bunch
We've given them a great big Christmas gift!

Been a busy day and haven't had time to blog (if you notice the pattern, I tend to unload about every three days or so when I get a few hours and ... whammo ... paragraphs start flying). But I've been inspired by the latest fall, this time of Democratic Illinois Governor Blagojevich, to create the official Politician's Hall of Shame - sort of an Oscars for the worst excuses for leaders. Think about it. Some of these guys aren't just corrupt but creatively corrupt. Corrupt in a dramatic way. Corrupt in comical ways. Corrupt in ways that went even beyond what those Hollywood guys could think up.

I'll have to admit. I don't think I'm a dumb person but I don't think I even would have thought of trying to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat. I guess I would have been thinking about ... oh .. I guess trying to help stop all the murders that have been affecting young people in the Chicago area. Trying to keep the economic crisis in the midwest from affecting my state. I guess I have no career in politics. But Blagojevich, along with an amazing number of pols from both parties, deserves to be remembered for his contributions to what the public thinks about politicians.

I've been bothered for a long time by the fact that many in the homosexual community believe that the beliefs of most Christians - the belief that their behavior is a form of sin - are motivated by hate or intolerance. I don't hate or dislike homosexual people at all - in fact, there are people whom I like very much who happen to be gay. But I do believe that homosexuality is a sin. And I don't believe that saying so constitutes "hate speech," the crime that some foreign Pastors have been charged with just for saying in public that homosexuality is a sin.

The best way to show why it's not hate speech to call someone's behavior sin when God's Word says that it's sin, we're going to use an example of a man we'll call "Tim." Tim is representative of a lot of men in this country. Tim is a straight man. And every week he goes to church and has to hear about why some of his behavior is sinful and why God wants him to change.

Question of the day: Is Tim's Pastor being hateful to him? Listen to Tim's letter and decide for yourself whether or not hate speech is involved. And then ask yourself what's the difference between Tim's situation and the situation of others who feel that they are subjected to hate just because others disagree with them and say so publicly.

Hello,

I think I'm a good person. I work hard, obey the law, go to church, and try to treat everybody well. I volunteer to help in my church and I also give financially. I think I'm a pretty good guy and I think I deserve as much respect as everybody else.

But every once in a while - a lot, actually - my Pastor reads out loud, to the whole church, this part of the Bible and other verses like it. I feel like he's talking directly to me. It makes me very uncomfortable. And I get this tone of disapproval when he says it - something I get from others as well. I sort of feel like I'm getting picked on. And I'm getting tired of it.

He keeps talking about how it's a sin for me to lust after women. I've tried to change and tried really hard to be different. But I don't think I can help it. I think this is how I am and I was born to feel the way I do. So I feel like he's saying that there's something wrong with me. He seems very harsh and judgmental when he talks about how God doesn't approve of people like me - guys who like women and maybe look at things we shouldn't and think thoughts we shouldn't. I see a lot of people in the congregation nodding their heads in their condemnation of me. I wish they'd be a little more tolerant of people like me. It's like they're afraid of young straight guys who aren't married yet. I'm not doing anything to hurt anybody. They need to learn to be a little more tolerant and less hateful and judgmental toward me.

 

All I'm saying is, I'm tired of coming to church and having people tell me I'm a bad person just because of something that I can't help about myself. That's judgmental. Why aren't they singling out other types of people - people who steal or are lazy? Why do they have to tell anybody that God has a problem with something they're doing? But, I swear, it's like every week or two, there's some comments talking about how it's a sin to be lustful and a sin to have sex outside of marriage, a sin to look at certain types of things on TV. Why can't they talk about something else and at least let me feel a little more comfortable? And then he goes and says something about how it's wrong for me to be living with my girlfriend. I feel like he just uses his pulpit to try to constantly hammer people like me. I wish I had been one of those guys who didn't constantly struggle with this stuff. But I'm not and God has got to accept me. I know He wouldn't be happy with the fact that the Pastor keeps telling me I'm a bad person by telling me that all these things that I do are wrong.

I guess I just don't think that the church should be a place where people get talked about all the time. I feel almost as if I was being persecuted just for being me. I think they need to work much harder to make sure that everybody is comfortable the way they are. I mean, if you really love me the way you say God wants us to love everybody else, why would you say things that might make me feel bad about the way I am?

 

Anyway, I hope one day I will be able to enjoy a service without people harassing me.

Sincerely,

Tim

Hey, folks! Let's have a conversation about human life. But, in order to do this, we need to talk very briefly about human death. This is certainly not one of my favorite topics and so we'll keep this part very short. But when any of us physically dies, the law says that our death must be certified or recorded. Medical professionals can actually lose their licenses if they don't promptly issue death certificates to the newly departed (dead people do vote, you know).

How is it determined that somebody is dead? Well, there are a number of ways but it is generally accepted to be when their heart stops functioning and/or when their brain stops showing activity according to an electroencephalograph (an EEG). The loss of heart and brain activity are indicators of physical death.

Enough morbid talk. Now let's talk mostly about physical life.

If the heart and brain are used to indicate whether or not physical life has ended, why wouldn't those same things be used to determine whether or not physical life has begun? And if we are required to have a death certificate which is based upon an event in which heart and brain stop working, would it be so crazy to have a certificate that is truly the opposite of the Death Certificate? I mean a document that marks the beginning of the same things that a Death Certificate marks the end of.

I already can imagine some of you shouting at what I'm writing. We already have this, TVV! It's called a Birth Certificate. And, rest assured, I have heard of Birth Certificates. I've got one myself. But a Birth Certificate is not the opposite of a Death Certificate. The biological conditions that those documents certify are not symmetric or opposite of one another. Let me explain why.

One can be declared dead when they have no pulmonary activity and/or they have no measurable brain activity. This is in part what the Death Certificate certifies. But a Birth Certificate certifies the moment of physical entry into this world. And many months before a baby enters this world by exiting his/her mother's womb, the baby already has a beating heart and measurable brain activity. A Birth Certificate does not mark the opposite end of the continuum for the things that are marked by a Death Certificate.

The human heart begins to beat 21 days after conception. Since many women discover that they are pregnant at about fourteen days after conception, this means that within about a week of a mother-to-be discovering that she is expecting, the baby already satisfies one of the conditions that won't end until one day, hopefully far into the future, when that person is issued a Death Certificate.

Human Brain Activity is detectable on an EEG at about six weeks after conception. This is the same test that is performed on adults to determine whether or not they are "brain-dead." And so this means that the baby, just one month after mom discovers she's pregnant, meets a second condition that, if applied to already born humans, would make them legally alive.

And so if we were to officially document the moment that the things that stop working when the Death Certificate is issued start working, we'd have to go back long, long before the Birth Certificate could be issued. We'd have to go back to the beginning of the pregnancy. The moment of conception is actually the true start of the human development life cycle, as every other event occurs at some predictable time offset from this root event. Nothing happens before conception and every other event in a person's life happens at some time offset from the moment they were conceived. But if we were going to officially document just the moment at which the human heart starts beating, using it as an indicator of life just as the absence of it is used as an indicator of death, we would certify that moment, one week after the positive pregnancy test, with a Life Certificate. The unborn baby's tiny beating heart will continually beat for the rest of their life.

An ultrasound picture of an unborn baby smiling.

Actually, all types of other interesting things happen prior to the Birth Certificate being granted. Unborn kids do the darnedest things. Those of you who are parents probably think you saw your child's first smile. But you didn't - unless you have an advanced ultrasound device around the house. Studies show that babies smile as early as three months before birth. They start yawning nearly three months before that. They make finger movements at 15 weeks. They can not only recognize their mother's voice but can also differentiate between melodic tones.

So, perhaps you are expecting a baby or know someone who is. If you haven't already, you might want to make a record of the news. Because almost immediately after you learned of the news, that unborn baby qualified for a Life Certificate! Please feel free to print one out for them, to remind them that that small child has already accomplished something that will stay with them a lifetime.