Or as another prophet put it: “. . . justice [is] roll[ing] on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.”

In other words:

May God bless you and keep you this holiday season.

However, what really shocked me about the story was not Christine’s hypocrisy (or even her delightfully tacky ladybug costume), but the fact that pretty much everyone on the left — everyone from the National Organization for Women, to her opponent Chris Coons — stood up for her.

As NOW put it, “sexist, misogynist attacks against women have no place in the electoral process, regardless of a particular candidate’s political ideology.”

Sorry, NOW (and Chris), but as Barney Frank memorably put it: “there’s a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy.”

Simply put, Christine O’Donnell has spent an entire career advocating policy positions against same-sex relationships, pornography, and even masturbation.  When someone claims that the government should have the right to decide what I (and 94.3% of men and 84.6% of women my age) do in the privacy of my bedroom, I absolutely have the right to know if they’re acting in good faith.  Doesn’t matter if they’re male, female, or Pat.  This has nothing to do with sexism, or privacy.

And Christine clearly isn’t acting in good faith.  More importantly, she’s the one who opened the door.

Really.

Baylor and Texas.  Really.

That might end up being the most important game of TCU’s season.  If Baylor (No. 25, 6-2) beats Texas, our 45-10 win against Baylor earlier in the season looks even better, and we should be able to jump Boise St. in the BCS standings, where we’re currently behind .8846 to .8833.

Why not just settle it on the field?  So what do you think, Mark Emmert?  Really?

But seriously, my (many and brilliant) First Amendment scholar friends: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  What am I missing here?

My response: “Believe it?  No.  That’s too easy — I have faith.”

Anyway, it’s getting late.  I haven’t been writing enough here for several reasons (not least of which is that my experience in seminary has taught me that my thought processes are far less profound than I previously suspected).  So, I feel like it’s cheating to return with such a trivial thought.  But, you know what they say, baby steps.

I’ll leave you, for now, with something (and someone) truly profound:

A lot of us at Brite Divinity School have been moved by Dan’s project, and we are also cognizant of the fact that part of the “better” is not just social love and acceptance, but spiritual love and acceptance.  To help meet this need, several Brite students and faculty (myself included) have recorded our own messages of hope for the It Gets Better Project:

As Harvey Milk so famously said, “you’ve got to give them hope.”

Please spread the word, and vote for your favorite video by sending an email with the video link as the subject line (just the link) to: IGBP@savagelove.net.

God bless you and keep you.  All of you

But one moment in particular stuck with me.  I was seated on the border between the TCU and OSU sections, and there was a lot of ribbing back and forth between the two factions – some of it good-natured, some less so.  And when an OSU fan proposed to his girlfriend on the Jumbotron, a couple of the TCU contingent behind me started booing.

Almost immediately, the rest of our section let the boo birds know that their efforts weren’t appreciated.  After all, love is sacred.  And that made me think – what if that hadn’t been a straight couple?  It was a sobering moment in an otherwise delightful evening.

As a straight man, I can walk into a stadium full of my enemies,** secure in the knowledge that my love will be celebrated and defended.  I thank God for that privilege and pray that it will soon be extended to all His children.

*Yes, yes, objectification, heteropatriarchal hegemony, etc. etc.  They’re still amazing.

**As anyone familiar with Southern football culture is aware, this usage is not a particularly large overstatement.

A composer of incomparable beauty, an arranger of incomparable skill, and two hands of incomparable sensitivity and strength:

Thank you, Hélène (and Johann and Ferruccio).