Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Find me a Druid -- and make it snappy.

Props to the News-Tribune’s citizen columnist Lindon Dodd on his calling out (on Sunday, no less) Rep. Mike “Hot Wheels” Sodrel for sheer legislative frivolity in the matter of “immunity” for Christian prayer in the Indiana assembly: Representative Sodrel’s bill is missing issues.

Rep. Sodrel, like most of today’s politicians, likes to use the wedge issues to play politics and secure votes. Such issues as religion and abortion easily inflame and excite the masses. Such problems will never be solved by legislation that will always be just a Band-Aid solution for a situation that requires a surgical procedure.

Much more pressing problems like the health insurance crises, Social Security solvency, global disharmony, poverty, unemployment and hunger are so much more complicated to solve and any legislation much more difficult to introduce.

Meanwhile, there’ll be a New Albany city council meeting on Thursday night.

In attendance will be persistent critics of the council president’s meeting management techniques, with the loudest of their numbingly repetitive central themes being that the order of council business no longer matches that specified by ordinance.

Well, there’s a grain of truth in it, after all.

Consider that before the meeting begins, those in attendance will be asked to rise and recite the Lord’s Prayer … and yet, this ritual is not mandated by ordinance as written:

§ 30.22 ORDER OF BUSINESS.

The following order of business shall be observed by the Common Council at its meetings:

(A) Invocation. To be given by ministers, if present of different faiths.

There’s nothing here to specify a particular prayer or denominational standard; in fact, the wording seems to imply an interfaith approach, and doesn’t even stipulate that the invocation must be Christian in nature.

Of course, it would make the most sense to eliminate the invocation altogether, but if it is to remain as solace for the superstitious, are we truly prepared to apply it equally?

I know better than to hold my breath.

No comments: