Staff Editorial: It’s Time for Equal Rights

Published April 4th, 2013

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Editor’s Note: The following represents the opinion of the editorial board of The Signal. It is not necessarily the official view of Ouachita Baptist University. In it, we are not advocating homosexuality; we do not dispute that it is a sin. However, under the United States Constitution, we do believe that same-sex couples deserve the same financial and legal standing as male-female couples. As a reminder, our Letter to the Editor policy is listed at the bottom of this page. Please be respectful.

For the past week, Americans of all backgrounds have been watching the Supreme Court as it considers whether California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex unions in that state, is in line with the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Many Americans believe same-sex unions are wrong, and therefore should not be legal. Others see this as discriminatory; marriage, no matter to whom, is a fundamental right for everyone. According to TIME, 53 percent of Americans favor same-sex unions today; that is compared to just 27 percent in favor in 1996.

Those arguing in favor of same-sex unions say Prop. 8 violates the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses under Section I of the 14th Amendment, which states:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Many Christians say allowing same-sex unions compromise and threaten some of our most well-established moral standards and values.

We are Christians at The Signal. We believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. However, we realize that it is not our place to condemn those who believe otherwise, or to promote judicial restrictions that discriminate against anybody who is a citizen of the United States and who is guaranteed equal rights under our Constitution.

Marriage is in its basic form a contract between two people. It gives spouses control of each other’s resources and responsibility for each other’s debts. It establishes powers of attorney and guardianship over children. Marital status is relevant in more than 1,100 federal laws from taxes to healthcare, according to Fox News.

Marriage brings along with it tax breaks, surviving spouse benefits and the ability to buy health insurance through your spouse’s employer. Because the federal government does not currently recognize same-sex unions, these couples are not afforded benefits such as these. The New York Times estimated that this costs same-sex couples as much as half a million dollars over a lifetime.

For example, when Edie Windsor’s wife (they were married in Canada) died, she had to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes, simply because her marriage didn’t count under federal law. Fox News said, “There is no dispute that if Windsor had been married to a man, her estate tax bill would have been zero.”

Marriage itself is a unique mix of church and state. For many of us, a marriage is a religious ceremony performed by members of the clergy. However, marriage licenses are still required and the officiant must be licensed for the union to be recognized by the government. We are not asking for religious institutions to be forced to provide or recognize same-sex unions, because the majority of religions believe homosexuality is wrong. However, the government — as a non-religious entity that is supposed to extend the same opportunities to all of its citizens — should recognize same-sex unions as having the same legal standing as traditional marriages.

A common fear among many who want to protect the family unit and not allow same-sex unions is that, among other things, a same-sex couple’s lifestyle will infect and plague every facet of society and will tear apart the fabric of a “normal” family. This would cause our society to spin into one that thrives on immorality and sin.

However, we have just as much power to make a difference in our society as anyone else does. We as Christians are called to spread the Gospel; would the downspin of our society not reflect a failure on our part to evangelize?

If we honestly believe that homosexuality is wrong, then it is our duty to teach others why we believe it is wrong in a rational and loving manner. However, far too often, it seems our “teaching” turns into hate of an entire person just because of one lifestyle choice: Chick-fil-A Support Day ― need we say more? What may have started as a legitimate way to show support for traditional family values quickly escalated to a hate-filled war against the homosexual community by Christians that was covered by every news outlet under the sun. This was nothing other than homophobia on display for all to see.

Perhaps if we were more loving towards homosexuals, they would be more open to our beliefs and more apt to listen to our Gospel. A good first step would be acknowledging their right as American citizens to be in a legally-recognized union with one another.

For Christians to say marriage should exist only by our definition, and to not let anyone outside our beliefs enjoy it, is unfair. We aren’t giving people the same freedom that we enjoy: the freedom to make our own choices, no matter how sinful. It’s time for equality.

Allowing marriage equality does not compromise our evangelical convictions, nor will it change the way we choose to live our lives. In fact, it shows that we Christians have evolved to a point in our faith where we believe that our convictions aren’t threatened by the choices of others or the sin of society. It will cause us to hold more tightly to our convictions and will make us that much stronger in our beliefs as we spread the Gospel. So instead, we should live by what we believe to be righteous and allow other people the freedom to do the same, even if they believe differently.

Unfortunately, it seems all too common that what society deems as “progress” is really nothing more than another step away from the values and moral standards that have bound this nation together for the better part of two centuries and that Christians have lived by for 2000 years. But we must remember that it is not so much the need to uphold these standards that drives us to live righteously, nor is it the threat of what might come if we allow these standards to be broken.

What we are truly threatened by, is really nothing more than a lapse in memory. In the heat of all this, we forget to live with a spirit of forgiveness and acceptance. We must remember that if we force a person to make the “morally right” decision then that decision loses all of its moral value, whether we put a gun to their head or use the government. We must give people the freedom to make decisions for themselves, just as God gave us the same freedom, and allow them to learn from those decisions.

We must have faith in God and in our fellow Americans that whatever choices people decide to make, that we can find good in whatever comes from those choices and that we never stop doing good.  And that whatever choices are made, we remember to love, as Christ loved, and forgive as God forgave us and to forever reach out with an open hand and the willingness to call someone “friend.”

Cigar smoking is a bridge between cultures, backgrounds

By Samuel Cushman

Around two years ago, I found myself sitting on the back porch of a very lovely, and large, home. It overlooked a back yard with green, manicured grass and beyond the backyard, there was a lake. The water was placid and a pleasant hue of blue. The sun was falling in the west, and in a few hours it would have set beyond the tree-covered hills in the horizon. It was a balmy summer evening that brought to mind thoughts of sweet tea, church potlucks, summer fish fries and southern cookouts. I was feeling good. I had just eaten a great meal, it wasn’t too hot and to top it all off, I had a cigar in my hand.

I brought the cigar to my mouth. The leaf it was wrapped in was oily and a deep, smooth brown – a testament to its sun-grown past. The cigar had been aging for a long time, over twenty years, if memory serves. I inhaled a rich, complex set of flavors that made my taste buds sing of coffee and cocoa but also of something more exotic, something that echoed with the musical earthiness of Cuban soil. Even to this day it was without a doubt the best cigar I’ve ever had. And since then I’ve smoked everything from Cohibas to Rocky Patels and Casa Magnas to Opus X, the jewel of the Arturo Fuente franchise and nothing yet compares to the sweet and earthy flavors of that cigar.

A curious thought fleeted through my head. The cigar I held in my hands had been aged for at least 20 years. When it was made, I wouldn’t have been born for another two years at the very least. And now that it had been cut, lit and smoked halfway through it seemed almost a waste. I looked at it more closely. This time I examined the veins in the brown leaf and the embossed red and gold wrapper that read “Cuban Parejo.” I felt a sense of loss similar to what one feels when breaking the seal on a time capsule, or eating a wonderful dinner that one spent hours cooking or like finishing the final book in great series.

For two decades that cigar would have been sitting in a humidor, oblivious to the events of the world, waiting for the moment when it would be picked up by its owner, handed to me, cut, lit up and smoked. Almost needless to say, I resolved myself to commit every detail of that evening to memory.

The man who gave me the cigar, and who owned the house – we couldn’t have been more different. I was only a few months into being 18 years old and he was in his fifties. I was about to go off to Ouachita to study mass communications and he was a seasoned doctor of medicine. I was a middle class white kid who had been raised in the states and him? Well, he was born in Cuba, the son of two (formerly) very wealthy parents who personally knew Fidel Castro but were forced to come to the U.S. as refugees when things got rough over there.

Heck, this was the first time I met him and he gave me one of the most treasured pieces of his cigar collection. And I wouldn’t have met the guy were it not for my close friend. He was just at their home, cleaning their carpets one day for a summer job he was working. He happened to notice his huge cigar collection, and being a cigar smoker himself, mentioned it to the guy’s wife and she invited him over to smoke with her husband. He brought me along about the second or third time he went to visit.

But this guy didn’t even know me, and I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting him that one time, almost two years ago. I was a complete stranger, almost completely different. But for all our differences there was something that we did have in common, he, my buddy, and I. We were cigar smokers. Aficionado’s, if you will. And it is these experiences that we live for: discovery, meeting fascinating people who share the same passion that we do and exploring a centuries old fraternal bond that every connoisseur of fine cigars shares with one another.

We cigar aficionado’s are a certain breed of men. Despite our differences, we are men of class. We are refined and have tastes tempered for the highest quality; cigar aficionados don’t settle for anything less than the best. We are adventurers; we savor new challenges and the reward that comes with new discoveries. We won’t just smoke a cigar because it’s there or because we crave the nicotine that any petty cigarette smoker craves. When we smoke a cigar, it becomes something more than mere casual indulgence. It becomes a celebration. For each cigar contains so much history, tradition and attention to detail that the men who smoke them are not just smoking a roll of tobacco manufactured in a Havana sweatshop. You see, when we smoke a cigar, we are participating in something far greater. We are participating in a centuries old, fraternal celebration of artisanship and the deep pleasures of life.

Cigar smoking, as trivial, as it might seem at first, serves as a bridge between cultures. It offers the opportunity, as I said earlier, to explore a bond that transcends those same cultures and backgrounds.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve gone into my favorite tobacconist up in Bentonville. It’s called Romeo’s Uptown Pipes and Cigars. There is always someone, a complete stranger, in there that I‘ll spark a conversation with. And we’ll talk about all kinds of things. Usually they’re much older than I am so they have a lot more to share. But there’s always something fascinating that I get to take with me and I never leave disappointed. And that makes all the difference and it makes your cigar that much better.

If you ever become interested in smoking cigars, just go into your local tobacconist shop and I’m sure there will be someone in there who is worth talking to. Even if you never see them again, if you just chat with them while you smoke -– and just talk about life or about anything, really – you will take the pleasure of that experience with you forever.

Video Game Review: Minecraft

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This is a scale model of the Arc de Triomphe that I built. Photo by Sam Cushman

Minecraft is one of the greatest games ever created, especially if you like to build and create. It’s just like Legos for the computer except you are actually inside the world as a person. The world of Minecraft is a place where everything is made of blocks, each one cubic meter in size, and the only limit to what you can create with them is your imagination. You can go wherever you want to, climb mountains and hills, swim across massive oceans, explore underground caverns and build anything you put your mind to.

Minecraft is a game written in Java code (so the graphics are pretty basic, but that doesn’t really matter for gameplay) and created by a guy called Notch (a.k.a. Markus Persson). The world is made up of blocks of all kinds of materials that range from stone to glass, sand to obsidian, wood to brick, and water to lava.

In the game the goal is to mine and craft (hence the name Minecraft) materials to build with. You craft tools such as shovels and a picks and with them you can dig into the ground and mine your materials. Minecraft also has farming, fishing, and animal husbandry features. You can farm sugar cane, with which you can get paper to make books, and books can be used to make decorative bookshelves for the house or shelter you live in. Sugar can also be used to bake cakes and cookies. You can also farm wheat, from which you can make flour, which of course is used to bake bread. As far as animal husbandry goes, Minecraft has sheep, pigs, and cows which will give you wool, pork, and beef respectively. The pigs and cows can be harvested for leather as well which is another type of crafting material.

Minecraft also features monsters such as Zombies, Endermen, Skeletons, and Spiders each of which come out at night and can harm your character (so it’s a good idea to build your shelter as soon as possible). Zombies are pretty self explanatory, they moan and groan and attack you on sight. The skeletons carry bows and fire arrows at you from a distance. Spiders are like the Zombies but can climb objects to attack you. The Endermen are tall, dark creatures with tentacle-like arms. And if any of you people are familiar with the creepypasta character known as Slenderman, you will easily recognize the Endermen as a tribute to the Slenderman. Another more notorious monster is the Creeper, which comes out during the day to harass you. The Creepers will sneak up behind you and hiss, and then quickly run off, and if you aggravate them, they’ll blow themselves up and ruin anything you might be building. With all these monsters, it’s important that you make yourself a sword and forge yourself some armor to protect yourself with and to fight them all off.

As far as what you can build on Minecraft, the sky is the limit, literally as you can only build a couple of blocks past the clouds. But you can always find really neat projects on the internet and on YouTube, one of which was a 1:1 scale model of the Starship Enterprise for all you Trekkies out there. Another project might be building your roller-coaster, and yes you can ride them because Minecraft has rails and minecarts. Each server hosts their own amazing creations and different types of features and plug-ins. For fans of Zelda and Lord of the Rings, there have been servers made to be exact recreations of Hyrule and Middle Earth, with both the Temple of Time and the entire city of Minas Tirith featured on them. I’ve also seen entire recreations of Hogwarts castle from Harry Potter. I play on a server made by my brother-in-law. The server’s name is Watercraft. On it we have really neat plug-ins such as our own micro-economy, where players can trade goods they mine or craft and they can also sell and buy them for money. As far as our creations go, we have several epic castles, a massive pyramid that’s so big it takes a while to load correctly on your screen, a plethora of villages created by our wonderful and dedicated players, and several sky-scrapers. We also have a mall and a much smaller marketplace. I’m in the middle of making a southern plantation style home. I’ve always loved southern neo-classical architecture and Minecraft allows me to build my own plantation, and  I can even raise and harvest crops because of the farming feature. For all you Skyrim fans out there, a group of players just recently finished building a model of the Dawnstar Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, it’s really epic, too, and the list goes on and on. Like I said, on Minecraft your imagination is the only limit to what you can create.

For those wishing to play, they can purchase the game for a onetime payment of $26.95, a small price to pay given all that you can do with the game. It can be purchased at http://www.minecraft.net and people can register and start playing right away. You can play on any server you choose but I encourage you to hop around and find one that you really like with other great players that you’ll soon become good friends with. If any of you guys want to check out the server I play on, just download the game and when the window pops up, click on multiplayer, go to “add server” and type in “watercraft.dyndns.org” and click “join server.” Feel free to also check out our forum at http://www.watercraft.webatu.com. If you don’t feel up to online multiplayer, the game also features single player where you can have the entire world to yourself, but anything you create won’t be seen by other people, which is one of the perks of playing online.

Minecraft is by far one of the greatest games I have ever played and in it I can freely exercise my creativity to build anything that I put my mind to. I have had so much fun playing and the people I play with just make it all even better. So far Minecraft has almost 22 million registered users and I encourage all of you to add yourselves to that rapidly growing number.

 

Flip Side: Death Penalty Debate (Sept. 2012)

See Original Article Here

FOR:

As people, one of the most important things we can do is ask questions about the world we live in and weigh the arguments regarding people’s belief systems — even if you believe the same way they do. Asking these questions and playing devil’s advocate is a great way to become more cemented in your beliefs. And knowing that you can adequately defend your beliefs will bring you a great sense of satisfaction when you are challenged. As it happens, doing this kind of thing is one of my favorite activities and I would like to counter last week’s column regarding capital punishment. I would also like to say that I am largely anti-capital punishment primarily for reasons based upon my faith and this article is purely for recreational purposes. I also acknowledge many realities concerning the topic.

The first thing last week’s column pointed out was the amount of money that Mississippi taxpayers spend on housing death row inmates as opposed to normal inmates. The amount was $102.27 per day for death row and $41.61 per day for other inmates. At first this is indeed a shocking statistic if Mississippi is representative of the U.S. — it seems we spend over two times as much money keeping people in death row than we do other inmates. The column suggests that we use life imprisonment as an alternative. But we fail to realize one thing: people on death row are there for a shorter time than people with a life sentence.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average time between sentencing and execution for death row inmates is 15 years (rounding up from 178 months) as of 2010. They also report that there is a sharp peak in the age distribution of murderers between the ages of 18 and 30. From this we can infer that the average cost of putting someone on death row for Mississippi taxpayers will be will be $560,000 per inmate if we round up. The Central Intelligence Agency reported in 2010 that the average human life expectancy in the United States is 78.2 years (both male and female, but it’s important to note that prison inmates are disproportionately male).  In order to calculate the cost of an inmate we take 78.2 and subtract their age, then multiply that number by days in a year and take the product multiplied by cost per day. If we accept the alternative of life imprisonment and calculate the then Mississippi taxpayers will be paying at the least on average $732,000 per 30-year-old convicted inmate (rounding down) over the course of their life in prison and at the most on average $914,000 per 18-year-old convicted inmate (rounding down again) over the course of their life in prison.

The column last week mentioned that people wonder why it’s so expensive to live in the U.S and mentioned the death penalty as a cause. Perhaps capital punishment is a part of that problem but we can now say for certain that, at least in Mississippi, housing permanently imprisoned inmates is a far bigger one.

The column also asked how we can be certain that the person being executed isn’t innocent, as humans are prone to deceit and mistakes. It also mentions the case in North Carolina of how Jonathon Hoffman was wrongly convicted on a charge of first degree murder and robbery that he committed with his cousin. It mentions how Hoffman’s cousin wrongfully testified against him in open court and how Hoffman was wrongfully convicted of those charges. But Hoffman and his cousin weren’t actually innocent of committing the crime — a jewelry store was still robbed and a man, Danny Cook, still murdered. But Hoffman was released on a mistrial because his cousin accepted money and immunity from an attorney to testify against Hoffman without the judge’s and jury’s knowledge. Hoffman’s cousin eventually recanted his testimony and received his just desserts for his deception.

Hoffman was released from death row and prison because of a mistrial for a crime that he, at least in part, actually committed. He now walks free.

There is a huge difference that the law recognizes between those “legally” innocent and those actually innocent. Yes, there is a difference between “I had no connection to the murder” cases and “I did it but I got off because of legal error” cases. Many death penalty opponents tend to combine these two conflicting groups to increase their “innocents” number.

The column last week mentions Amnesty International in citing the number of people released from death row in the U.S since 1973 (130 inmates). Amnesty International, an anti-death penalty group, draws this statistic from The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), another anti-death penalty group, who conducted the study, thereby negating objective confidence in the results. Richard Dieter, head of the DPIC, has confirmed, again, what their “innocent” means:

“. . . according to death penalty opponents, who say they make no distinction between legal and factual innocence because there is no difference between the two under the law and because there is no objective way to make such a determination. They’re innocent in the eyes of the law,’ Dieter said. ’That’s the only objective standard we have.’

The number of people convicted who were actually innocent and had no connection to the crime when compared to the other group is virtually non-existent.

The very fact that more and more people are being released from death row is proof that the number of wrongfully convicted (not innocent) people on death row is becoming smaller and smaller and the proportion of properly convicted inmates is growing larger. If the trend continues, then soon the number of wrongfully convicted people will also be virtually non-existent.

The column also weighs things in a religious perspective, asking if we are God and what rights do we have to decide who lives and dies. We obviously aren’t God and to believe as such would be the height of arrogance. But we do have a responsibility to society and its people to deliver justice to those  who make that decision under incriminating circumstances. Humans are made in the image of God and capital punishment instills within people a respect for that image. Human life is sacred; to destroy human life is to attack the image of God. Such a terrible offense can only be rectified by offering the life of the murderer back to God.

Many death penalty opponents play up the angle that human life is sacred but without such a standard that calls for capital punishment, human life would be cheapened and humane causes such as civil rights, gender rights and children’s rights would suffer.

Many death penalty opponents also tend to play up the recipients of capital punishment as victims of the justice system’s failures and victims of the targets of vengeance from the families of the people they killed.

I agree that the justice system has flaws that need to be fixed, and there are many people and more than a handful of activist groups who are trying to make that happen. And I make no concession to the belief that vengeance is a human institution that should be freely exercised but I am not so naïve to believe that justice cannot serve as an adequate substitute for people. Justice began with revenge and still revenge is the only justice some people will ever receive.