God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy Read online

  The most controversial and contentious aspect of homosexuality is theological. If one doesn’t consider Scripture to be the last word in moral absolutes, then this area of the discussion is irrelevant. But for the sake of explaining to those outside the land of God, guns, grits, and gravy why this issue is not malleable for Bible-believing Christians, I will clarify.

  To believers, marriage is not merely a secular institution; if it were, it would naturally reflect the contemporary culture of any given moment. As I mentioned earlier, true adherents of Scripture recognize that homosexual marriage is not the only departure from the ideal. Divorce, adultery, and cohabitation also fall short of the biblical standard. But it’s not because God is the great cosmic killjoy in the sky who wants to clamp down on our pleasures. In God’s creation, marriage is the natural relationship that two people experience as they join together spiritually, emotionally, and physically. It is also the “picture” of the relationship Christ has with His church. (Not the building, of course, but the body of believers.) The Bible speaks of “male and female created He them.” And of the union, He said, “A man shall leave his mother and father, and a woman shall leave her home, and the two will become one flesh.” Pretty clear on that. For believers, changing the definition of marriage is no more an option than it would be for observant Jews to serve bacon-wrapped shrimp or Hindus to open a steakhouse.

  One striking irony is that while gays are fighting to get married, marriage as an institution in the rest of the population struggles. (Numerous stand-up comics do their own versions of the joke, “I think same-sex marriage should be legal! Why shouldn’t gays have the right to be every bit as miserable as the rest of us?”) Maybe when we create a culture in which marriage means anything and everything, it ends up meaning nothing. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births stood at just under 41 percent for 2012.

  In 2009, Janice Shaw Crouse penned a piece for the magazine American Thinker which stated that the incidence of cohabitation without marriage had increased 1,000 percent since 1970 and that nearly 50 percent of adults age twenty to forty had lived together without marriage. One-third of those households included children. Marriage as an institution is not so much threatened by same-sex couples as it is by heterosexuals’ increasing indifference to it.

  As for the argument that legalization of same-sex marriage would affect only gays, that has proven to be the utter nonsense most rational people knew it to be. Case in point: An engaged lesbian couple, Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman, wanted Sweet Cakes by Melissa—a bakery in Portland, Oregon, owned and operated by a Christian couple, Aaron and Melissa Klein—to make their wedding cake. The Kleins wouldn’t do it, citing their Christian views. The lesbian couple filed a complaint with the state of Oregon, and the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries determined that the Kleins had violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, a law designed to protect gays from discrimination. The Kleins faced thousands of dollars in fines and penalties, plus a harsh retaliation from gay rights activists who picketed their bakery and threatened those who did business there. The Kleins closed their retail bakery and now operate the business out of their home, still facing what the state calls “reconciliation” (translation: a requirement to give up the expression of their devout religious faith). The Kleins didn’t refuse service to the women because they were lesbians; they simply declined to make a cake for the express purpose of a same-sex wedding.

  It was far from an isolated instance.

  Jack Phillips, a Denver baker, was ordered by a judge to either provide cakes for same-sex weddings or face fines [CharismaNews.com. “Christian Cake Artist Sent to ‘Re-Education’ After Gay Marriage Flap,” July 29, 2014].

  In New Mexico, the state Supreme Court ruled that two Christian photographers who turned down photographing a same-sex wedding violated the state’s Human Rights Act, even though same-sex marriage was illegal in New Mexico at the time! [Breitbart.com. “Same-Sex Marriage, Religious Liberty Collide in Case Presented to Supreme Court,” November 8, 2013].

  In Washington State, the attorney general filed a lawsuit attacking Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts because owner Barronelle Stutzman had declined to provide flowers for a gay wedding [SeattleTimes.com. “State Sues Florist over Refusing Service for Gay Wedding,” April 9, 2013].

  So much for same-sex marriages not affecting anyone else. If these business owners had refused to let someone buy a cupcake or said no to taking a portrait solely because the customer was gay, it would clearly be a civil rights violation and obvious discrimination. But in the case of arranging flowers, making a cake, or taking photos, there is not only a business component but an artistic one. An artist should have the right to say, “I cannot express what you desire artistically because the statement it makes violates my own conscience and my free speech rights.”

  Imagine that a member of a socially liberal, mostly gay congregation owned a T-shirt shop and that someone came in to buy a custom T-shirt with the message PRAY THE GAY AWAY! Would the shop owner be taken to court for advising the customer that he should try another T-shirt shop? Should the courts force a gay business owner to print such a shirt? And would the gay community say, “Oh, yeah, we’re fine with it. He should have to make that shirt”?

  The manner in which same-sex marriage is being implemented should be of great concern even to those who support it. While the euphoria of seeing it made “legal” in numerous states tends to overwhelm a rational and thoughtful conversation about the process, we have a serious constitutional question on our hands.

  At the time of this writing, no state has passed a people’s referendum or initiative to allow marriage other than the traditional kind, one man/one woman. A very small number of states have passed laws to allow same-sex marriage, but most of the states where it was made “legal” were states in which the decision was made by judges. Here we have the judicial branch acting totally on its own, not only making the decision but prescribing and implementing the solution. Those of us who believe in a balance of powers have a problem with that.

  Our government was intentionally designed with very thoughtful checks and balances. The three branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—are equal in power. Let me say that again: They are EQUAL. Judicial is not a “super” branch. Even the Supreme Court is only the supreme or highest part of the judicial branch and is not to be seen as having supremacy over the executive and legislative branches. The highest authority of government within our system remains the people, whose consent is required to govern at all!

  When the people of a state vote to affirm traditional marriage, as has happened in thirty-two states at the time of this writing, the courts should respect that the ultimate voice has spoken. Should the Supreme Court find that the people have violated their own Constitution and created a law that exceeds the power granted to the legislative or executive branches, the most it can do is declare the law unconstitutional. I’ve been stunned that even some graduates of prestigious law schools believe that, just because they’ve gotten away with it before, courts not only can declare something unconstitutional but also exceed that authority, assuming the functions of the legislative and executive branches and prescribing the fix, all by themselves.

  Judges can rule that the legislative branch has passed laws violating the Constitution and even advise the executive branch not to enforce them, but it cannot dictate to those two independent and equal branches exactly what they are to do. That is the practice of “judicial supremacy,” and it’s the equivalent of a coup d’état! If same-sex marriage is mandated by the courts, instead of by laws passed in the duly authorized legislature and signed and carried out by the executive branch, then the courts have trampled on the Constitution.

  If that sounds just fine to you, keep in mind that if a left-leaning court can give, a right-leaning court can take away, and woe unto us if we allow politicized courts to become just another manifestation of partisan-driven government. The p
endulum will swing back and forth, and “progressives” will rue the day they relied on a power-mad judiciary to achieve for them what couldn’t or wouldn’t be enacted through prescribed channels. Dependence on a “super branch” that lords over the other two is not to be celebrated but stopped in its tracks.

  When Judge Chris Piazza, a local circuit court judge for one Arkansas county, decided that the amendment to the Arkansas Constitution affirming traditional marriage was invalid, he authorized all seventy-five counties to begin issuing marriage licenses immediately. It was outrageous enough that he had acted unilaterally and ignored a 70-percent vote of the people, but when he opened the gates not just for his circuit but for the entire state, his arrogance was stunning. Of course, he issued his opinion late on a Friday afternoon, after most courthouses and state and county offices had closed. His very calculated decision had been timed so that attorneys—even the attorney general—couldn’t file for an injunction against same-sex marriage licenses. An injunction would’ve allowed time for appeal and review by a much higher judicial authority than a single circuit court judge in Pulaski County, Arkansas.

  I will never believe we should create a form of marriage that by definition fails to meet the biblical ideal. Should there come a day in which the people of America vote to establish new versions of marriage—with their direct vote or through their elected representatives—those who oppose this change will face a choice: to either accept it, ignore it, or rebel against it. If a single judge can rebel against the people’s law, has he not encouraged others to do the same?

  8

  All Grown Up! (Country Folks Can Survive)

  IT WAS THE BOY’S FIRST experience playing baseball. He was only five, and he was invited to a birthday party for a boy from his church who was a couple of years older than he was. Being about the youngest kid there, he was already nervous and afraid. Now, he was being placed on the field to participate in a game that he had seen but didn’t understand. He was being coached through each step by his friend, the other boys, and the boys’ parents. As he stood at bat for the very first time in his life, he was told just to watch for the ball and swing the bat at it. That’s exactly what he did. Miraculously, the bat and the ball connected, and as the baseball went sailing through the infield, the other boys screamed, “Run!” He made it to first base. When the next batter hit, he was told to run again—this time to second base. The next batter got a hit and the boy was told to go to third base, which he did. He hoped he was doing things right but was still a bit unsure about the mechanics of the game. When the next boy at the plate hit the ball, he wasn’t sure exactly what to do but immediately heard screams from everywhere, “GO HOME! GO HOME!” With that, the little boy just started crying. “I can’t go home. My mother’s not here to take me home!”

  That story is true. I should know, because the little boy who thought his friends literally wanted him to go home was me. I didn’t know the terms or rules for baseball then. At age five, I was pretty sure that the only way I could have made it home would be for my mother to come pick me up and take me.

  I’m happy to report that I know a little more about baseball now and could probably find my way home on my own from just about anywhere these days. If I couldn’t figure it out, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t break down and cry. I’d just use my Google Maps app on my iPhone.

  My parents encouraged me to do my best and wouldn’t tolerate a half-hearted effort from me at anything, be it school, household chores, sports, or music. But I never faced some unholy pressure to speak six languages before I was seven, be a violin virtuoso at age five, or win every game I played. My parents certainly would have been proud of me if I had, but superachievement wasn’t a condition of their love and approval. Like most kids in Bubba-ville, I grew up with a more relaxed, low-pressure way of life.

  I’m so glad I didn’t grow up with a dictatorial “Tiger Mom” or hovering “helicopter parents.” To be sure, there are kids living in the land of God, guns, grits, and gravy—geographically speaking—whose parents raise them as if they were anointed from the moment of conception to go to an Ivy League school, but that’s not the norm. One reason people choose to live and raise their families far away from the pressure pots of New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles is to let their kids be kids.

  I’ve known and talked to parents who started trying to get their children on waiting lists for the best preschools and elementary schools even before they were born. I do understand the desire of parents to make sure their child has the best opportunities possible, but perhaps we’ve become a bit obsessed with pushing the achievement bar higher and higher and expecting it to be reached at lower and lower ages.

  Dr. Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of the best-selling book Freakonomics, has written that his research found no correlation between high-pressure early childhood education and high academic achievement later in life. In fact, he warned that forcing young children into intense learning environments and pushing them to exceed the norms for their age group can result in negative consequences—children who later in life burn out from being “all work and no play.”

  And play should be just that—play. If all play for children is mapped out, thoroughly planned, and choreographed; if “play dates” are executed with the precision of a NASA launch, it’s really not play at all. It’s duty. You know that something’s gone askew when “play” is harder work than work. It ought to be okay for children’s play to be largely self-directed and built on imagination. Creativity and resourcefulness are far greater tools for success later in life than being able to understand quantum physics before they’re out of training pants.

  In my neighborhood, most of us didn’t have the latest and greatest in TV-advertised toys, but we made up for it with our imaginations. If we watched a movie about the Knights of the Round Table, we naturally wanted to be knights. Our bicycles were our horses, old metal trash can lids were great shields, and sawed-off broomsticks or yardsticks were very adequate swords. If we played army (which we did a lot in those days not far removed from World War II and Korea), sticks could be made into pistols and rifles, and we’d build “forts” with downed tree limbs, discarded cardboard boxes, and random scraps of lumber. It’s a good thing we didn’t have enough money to buy realistic toys or refuse to play until we had hundreds of dollars’ worth of electronics in the form of an Xbox or PlayStation. Instead, we relied on being forced to create something out of nothing. Learning to make do with what we had rather than what we wished we had was a blessing. Of course, I was an adult before I realized this.

  I can’t remember the kids in my neighborhood ever saying, “We can’t play policemen because we don’t have electronic sirens and actual flashing red lights or real handcuffs and badges.” We’d stick playing cards in the spokes of our bike wheels and secure them with clothespins to give our bikes the sound of a motorcycle, we learned to scream about as loud as a siren, we made “handcuffs” out of little pieces of rope, and our pointed index fingers were the pistols. (These days, kids are routinely expelled from school for pointing their fingers like a gun, though I don’t recall anyone ever getting shot by a pointed finger in all the years that I pointed mine.)

  Lest you think kids like me were horribly deprived by the lack of more elaborate, expensive, and realistic toys, please be assured that we developed a MacGyver-like penchant for coming up with solutions to various challenges because we spent half our time in imaginative play and the other half trying to create the tools and toys we played with. Growing up as I did meant that when I faced a problem, I focused on solving it with what I had rather than by trying to obtain what I didn’t have and probably couldn’t afford anyway. Rather than leading to material depravity and a deep despair over being a victim of poverty, my experience taught me to be resourceful. “Playtime” was, for me, a never-ending lesson in finding ways to solve problems based on the creative use of materials at hand.

  When we wore out the only baseball we had and the cover came off, we d
idn’t throw it away. We just put black electrical tape on it and went right on playing. If you don’t know, that stuff is like duct tape; you can do just about anything with it! In fact, Jay Leno, in his days on The Tonight Show, used to do a segment called (sorry) “White Trash Repairs,” showing pictures of highly imaginative fixes, some of them genius, some of them terrible, all of them fall-down funny. This sort of thing is common in rural America, where even if you have the money to do a slick repair job, it might be a pretty long drive to the nearest Home Depot. I probably played with as many “black tape” baseballs as I did with cowhide-covered ones.

  As kids, we improvised a lot. When we couldn’t afford to buy nice headlights for our bikes, we’d tape a flashlight to the handlebars. If we wanted to go frog gigging and cook the frog legs over a campfire but didn’t have a “store-bought” gig, we’d tape the end of a garden tool onto a broomstick to make what we needed. There was no money for expensive artificial fishing lures, but digging up worms in our yards was easy enough, and if we couldn’t find any real fishing hooks, a safety pin would work. Since this was Arkansas and none of us anticipated ever seeing salt water in person, we “surfed” by making a skateboard from a piece of lumber, attaching wheels from roller skates to the bottom, and finally attaching a rope to a bicycle and “skiing” behind the bike in a parking lot. Cowabunga!

  Such creative solutions were good training ground for adult problem solving. A great example of this comes from my friend Nancy, a makeup artist in Little Rock who often did TV makeup for appearances I made while I was governor and later as a Fox News host doing live hits from Little Rock. She’s a lovely and terrific person who moved about forty minutes away from Little Rock to a small community so she wouldn’t have to put up with the hassles of city life. We’ve often talked about the joys of growing up in rural America where “heavy traffic” was three pickup trucks on our street in a single hour. Nancy is a hardworking lady who as far as I can recall doesn’t have a college degree, but rather got her credentials by taking the jobs that came her way and doing them so well that she is often the first-call makeup artist for movies and TV commercials filmed in Arkansas and nearby states.