My denomination's house organ had just published an article I had written on the whole issue of ordaining avowed and practicing homosexuals. Entitled, "Rev Smith Comes out of the Closet (It Was Getting too Crowded in There)", I thought it a wry little piece on the dangers of re-defining traditional marriage.

In my fictional piece, the Good Reverend was an avowed polygamist who was lobbying for his life style to be accepted. After all, there was MORE precedent for polygamy in both the Hebrew and Greek Scripttures than there was for homosexual unions. Why not?

Shortly there after, I received a rather cold phone call from an old classmate of mine from seminary days. He was passing through my area and wondered if we could meet for lunch.
We met at that castle of culinary excellence, the Jersey Diner.

Chad wasted no time.

"What happened to you old friend? When did that witty and fun loving guy we all knew at seminary trun into a sour, sarcastic, conservative curmudgeon?!"

Obviously, he didn't know me well at seminary. Contrarianism AND sarcasm are my Scottish birth rites and I grew up with masters of these arts.

We went at it for through the soup course and I decided I was in the presence of a rather priggish TRUE BELIEVER, Liberal branch. Actually the liberal has become the new Fundamentalist. Logic and rational argument were not going to move his heart or mind. So, I decided on a little show-and-tell.

I took the salt and pepper shakers and placed them in the middle of the table between us. In the gap between the two I placed the catsup bottle ( Hunt's not Heinz ) equi-distant between the two.

"Chad. I am the catsup bottle right there in the middle of the right and left wings of our church. I am what I was in seminary; a moderate Calvinist...haven't changed much at all."

I then took the shaker on his left and moved it all the way over to the very edge of the booth's table.

"Notice where the left wing has gone these past 20 years...ever leftward. Now, even though I haven't changed, where has this migration deposited me?"

"Well, I guess on the extreme right wing," he replied.

" And the fairness in that would be where?"

Take that lesson over from a sectarian application to politics these last few years. During this time the Boomers have come into their radical own. You might well be the same moderate conservative you always were but now YOU are a veritable right wing, bomb throwing, swastika waving, nut job fascist...'Who me?!" Yes YOU, at least in their eyes.

And the True Believers will always see you and your conservatism, however mild, as radical and ultimately dangerous to their statist designs.

Isn't fair, I know, but it is what it is.

Can't feel sorry for the train of events, we just have to bear down and try to de-couple the thing with the TRUTH and constant REALITY CHECKS. We simply cannot allow their definitions to effect our actions in any way shape or form. Our inclination might well be to stand there in unbelieving awe at the ignorance of the left and quote the Bard, "Oh brave new world that hath such creatures in it...", but that will do us no good.

Jesus was accused early on in his public ministry of being, " ...a glutton and wine bibber...", by his foes. What did he do? Continued to be a friend of sinners. Continued to be what he knew he was.

You, go and do likewise.