Hate is in neither holy book

I am not going to ascribe to all Baptists the biblical stylings of Wiley Drake.

He's the preacher from California, a former vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who told Fox News he prays for Barack Obama to die.

Drake has an ironclad explanation should the Secret Service show up at his door. He says it's not Wiley Drake talking, but God talking through Wiley Drake. Whatever.

I think no less of Christians because this one says it is God's will that the popularly elected leader of the free world buy the farm at 47.

Neither will I assail Christianity because the Old Testament reeks of militarism and vengeance. That would be unfair.

So, why, when America has 7 million peaceable, hardworking Muslims in its midst, do we continue to hear Americans say this about them:

"Their faith dictates that we nonbelievers of Islam must be violently put to death." So said an anonymous post on our Web site last week after Obama spoke in conciliatory tones to the Muslim world in Egypt. This person simply was parroting what he'd heard others ascribe to Muslims in general. When their hands are called on it, some will qualify with "militant Muslims" or "radical Muslims." That's supposed to get them off the hook, leaving an intended slur of millions intact.

After hearing this claim for the quadrillionth time, that followers of Islam are commanded to kill non-Muslims, I did what a parrot would never consider doing. I inquired. Not of Google. Not of Fox News. I inquired at the mosque.

In Waco, that's the place adjoining Al's Auto Repair — Al being Al Siddiq, president of the Islamic Center of Waco.

The anonymous poster probably would insist that I seek out a militant Muslim, not Siddiq, who is about car repair and peace. Good point. Siddiq is so interested in brotherhood that he also is president of the Greater Waco Interfaith Conference. (Originally it was the Conference of Christians and Jews. Several years ago it was renamed to be made more inclusive.)

Siddiq said the line in the Quran calling to "fight and slay the pagans" hearkens back to rhetoric when followers of Mohammed were warring with idol-worshipping Arabs — yes, Arabs — in a far-off century.

It has nothing to do with today, unless exploited by someone tetched in the head theologically, like, say, a Wiley Drake.

Speaking of far-off words, Siddiq said that if non-Christians read Deuteronomy the way some Christians interpret a single line in the story of Islam, they would flee this country.

"Kill any friends or family that worship a god that is different than your own." Deuteronomy 13:6-10.

Are the voices of Islam and those of Christianity on a collision course? Not if one reads their sacred books, Siddiq said. In fact, he points out that the Quran mentions Jesus more often than it does Mohammed. It preaches about eternal salvation for the doers of good works.

Siddiq said he'd never heard about virgins and various eternal rewards for Islamic warriors until some of them, in suicidal blasts, left their blackened marks on the landscape.

He said religion is not driving the violence associated with radical Islam. What drives it is despair, economic hopelessness and the plights of marginalized people.

Though he's a devout Muslim, when Siddiq uses "we," he's not referring to Islam. He's referring to his country, a nation for which he served in uniform.

He's as patriotic as any American, but he knows why many in the Third World distrust the West. It's because of a history of invading, colonizing and exploiting people and resources.

Siddiq would not live anywhere else, however, or salute another flag. And the last thing he wants is conflict. He wants to live his life based on the tenets of his faith.

If the essence of Christianity is the Golden Rule, Siddiq said the essence of Islam is, "Serve mankind." Some conflict.

John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.

Seeds of hope for gays, lesbians

I'd love to know back in the '60s when that delicious sense of inevitability set in — that sense that, though struggles would remain, right was winning and Jim Crow was toast.

It might have been like last week with these revelations: Both Dick Cheney and Ted Olson came out for same-sex marriage.

That was just a few days after lawmakers in New York (pending Senate approval) and New Hampshire (needs House approval) voted to become the sixth and seventh states to legalize same-sex marriage.

Yes, those votes came just about the same time California's Supreme Court upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. So, you might say, aren't we just talking a political stalemate?

One could have said as much in the early '60s when some states were fighting desegregation with all their might.

They were losing.

When Ted Olson not only steps to the microphone for same-sex marriage but goes to court for it, it's a sign of victory on the horizon. Yes, human rights for human beings who happen to be homosexual.

It was man-bites-schnauzer news the other day when Olson joined the legal fight against California's prohibition.

Olson was solicitor general under George W. Bush. Before that he argued the case in court for Bush's tainted 2000 victory.

In joining the class-action suit, Olson shared the dais with David Boies, his legal rival who made Al Gore's case in the 2000 drama.

Olson's reason for taking this stand? "Creating a second class of citizens is discrimination, plain and simple."

Second-class: in how such issues as joint property and health coverage are handled. Second-class: regarding tax incentives for people to marry.

We don't need one of the nation's foremost Republican lawyers to call it discrimination, but it sure gets your attention.

As for Cheney, he already had shown himself "soft" on these human rights. We all know why. His daughter is a lesbian with a same-sex partner. Last week he went from soft to solid when he said, "People ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."

Cheney has succumbed to something, call it an inconvenience, that some of his ideological brethren seek to avoid: eye contact. Once you know gay people, and know that what distinguishes them can't be spread through the air or by hand contact and that it isn't an illness anyway, you realize that their 21st Century Jim Crow treatment is both wrong and wrongheaded.

Opponents of gay marriage skillfully have posed this matter as an assault on marriage. How so? This is pro-marriage. This is pro-monogamy. It's the age of AIDS. Isn't monogamy a life-of-death matter?You can defend same-sex marriage on public health grounds alone.

Clearly it remains a political loser in many states. So was race-mixing, depending on one's latitude and wrong-itude in the '60s.

But it's one thing for the California Supreme Court to rule that voters said what they meant in banning gay marriage. It's another to argue that a popularly supported ban doesn't violate equal protection of the law, Olson and Boies seek to prove it does before the U.S. Supreme Court.

When — not if — justice triumphs over this form of discrimination, Texas will have played an inadvertent role.

Olson pointed out that the Supreme Court's 2003 ruling overturning Texas' sodomy law provides a king-sized lily pad for hopping across the pond of popularly mandated discrimination to the solid ground of equality.

This time, when Ted Olson says it, I believe it.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald. E-mail: jpyoung@grandecom.net

Yee haw -- Texas is last, and dropping

Upon Senate passage of the state biennial budget, the well-attired David Dewhurst was busting his buttons.

The lieutenant governor praised a state budget "that meets the needs of our growing state."

State Sen. Elliott Shapleigh, D-El Paso, had a different take: With this budget, the gorgeous state of Texas once again is jostling for the crown in the Miss False Economy Pageant, likely again to spend less per capita on human services than any other state.

"What's the cost of being last?" Shapleigh asked.

What Shapleigh didn't point out was that wherever Texas ranks, it is certain to fall further in the biennium ahead because it has clothed itself in policies that have put tax cuts ahead of obligations like schools, highways and preventive health care.

Gov. Rick Perry, who looks good in any suit, hitched up his designer tie and bragged that Texas was alone among states in cutting taxes during a recession.

He spoke of a $172 million measure that increased the numbers of businesses exempt from the state business tax.

It's as if the state won't be needing that money down the road. But, of course, it will. Right now? Thanks to $12.1 billion in federal stimulus dollars, this budget holds the rate of spending increase to under 2 percent, below inflation and population growth.

Guilty pleasure: federal dollars

What will happen when those federal dollars go away is likely to make even the most hardhearted conservatives wince.

Remember, the state faced a $9 billion shortfall before Barack Obama rescued it.

Denouncing him all the way, our Republican leaders then set out to patch holes in the rotting life raft that we in Texas call state services.

Shades of 2003: That year Republicans, newly in control of the Legislature, went on a budget-cutting, privatization fest. But when it came down to certifying the budget as balanced, it was only a last-second infusion of $1.6 billion in federal aid that allowed lawmakers to say they had done their jobs under the law and balanced their budget.

Since then, our intrepid scofflaws have done much to make sure that Texas has a fiscal hole that one day will cave and collapse upon those who most rely on state services.

This was preordained with the bill that in 2005 misleadingly was framed as "school finance reform" but was really all about property tax cuts Texas couldn't justify.

Because lawmakers committed themselves to a one-third property-tax cut over four years, and because the business tax they created was not sufficient from the start to replace the lost revenue, they created a structural deficit that would have come into play this session if not for the big bucks from Washington.

Now watchdog groups from the left and right are projecting that in two years, Texas could face a shortfall of $13 billion to $15 billion and no escape hatch except to butcher state programs for the frail, infirm and mentally disabled.

Schools and highways? Maybe we can just do without. Can't private enterprise educate our children? Don't big-butted pickup trucks and off-road SUVs obviate the need for roads in the 21st century?

When those federal dollars go away, we will see what shreds are left of the fine threads our governor and lieutenant governor model today.

In the meantime, consider some brags.

Texas is last in the nation in per capita spending.

It has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the nation. It is last in the percentage of residents with high school diplomas. It does, however, lead the nation in executions.

Perry and Dewhurst believe that cutting taxes that are already 49th lowest nationally per capita is how we address our needs.

Chides Shapleigh, "Those who value tax cuts over children . . . have put Texas at risk in her ability to compete and succeed."

That's what being last means. Last and dropping.

John Young appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.