The Imaginary Debate (my op-ed in the Advocate)

The Imaginary Debate

Actor and blogger Chad Lindsey asks, if the secular and devout can comfortably share space at a drive-in theater in Michigan, why can’t the political right share lower Manhattan?

By Chad Lindsey

COMMENTARY: My parents taught me to share. They also taught me to work for a living and to mind my own business. I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of Americans are taught some version of these basics, but I’m beginning to think that most of us are losing sight of them as we reach adulthood in this, the Century of Emboldened Stupidity.

Summer 1989: On any given gray and humid early Sunday morning, my best friend Kent would aim his car toward the gravel entrance of the old drive-in theater. As the sky in the east just began to bleed with the colors of a ripe nectarine, he and I would pass through the empty ticket booths and wind along the driveway into the broad lot facing the tall dirty-white plywood screen, looming above the quickly warming scene.

Notes on the Williamsburg bike lane scandal and ARRESTS?!

A quick update on the scandal I posted about EARLIER from gothamist:

"According to tipsters, the neighborhood's volunteer community watch group responded to reports at around 4 am that two men were using spraypaint to recreate a section of the bike lane, which the Department of Transportation controversially removed from a 14-block stretch of Bedford Avenue last week. Police arrived at the corner of Bedford Avenue and Rutledge Street and arrested two suspects, sources said. That story lines up pretty well with this posting by Twitter user WMSBG, which went online about two hours ago: "Police arrested this night two goiyem for re-painting the bike lane on Bedford ave with the help of Shomrim."

This small act by the city has sparked such a lively and occasionally informed debate about shared urban living, that you kinda can't look away.  Shomrim are the community-appointed security detail that the Hasidic community has created to patrol their neighborhood. They have a much debated efficacy and history in the area, as the long and entertaining "comments" section after the gothamist POST reveals. . . a sample of the community outrage HERE.

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Here we go again. You listening, choir?

HERE's yet another attempt to explain the bigotry and ignorance that is passing for religious freedom . . . I don't know if it's the best article ever written on the topic, but it's clear and bears repeating.

"Here's what's going on here: Religious opponents of gay marriage don't have a good understanding of why a modern state should recognize civil marriage in the first place; they view marriage primarily as a religious tradition that has made their lives satisfying and secure and so they are most comfortable justifying it in terms of what's been -- this is one of the roles of a religious narrative. If they thought honestly and rigorously about the civil, rather than just religious, reasons why the state recognizes marriage today, they'd see that gay unions fit into those reasons in the modern world."

How many times must we lay this out? We can't wait for the lowest common denominator thinkers to catch up. That's why we have elected leaders. Or was.