The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right

While walking back from lunch today, I saw a group of preachers in the
semicircular plaza in front of the student union. One had a big banner
telling people to repent their sins and come to Jesus Christ, and the
main ranter was wearing a sandwich board that said pretty much the
same thing in front. On the back, it had a list of people who should
beware the wrath of God, the merciful, the most compassionate. I’m
going to trust
Amanda Gibbs’s
transcript, because it sounds about right:

WARNING

Fornicators, drunkards, sodomists, pot smokers, gangster rappers, immodest women, darwinists, gamblers, feminists, socialists, abortionists, pornographers, homosexuals, jihadists, dirty dancers, hypocrites

JUDGMENT IS COMING!!!!!

I walked around the back to read the whole thing. Broke out laughing.
Saw a bunch of smiles appear among the people in the front row.

It took me back to my own student days, when
Tom Short
would stand in front of the library and rant fundamentalist Christian
inanity for hours.

It gladdened this shriveled old cynical heart to see the reaction of
the students watching today’s spectacle. It ranged from outrage to
mild amusement to wild amusement. One woman ran out to get a piece of
chalk and draw pagan signs on the ground around Ranty Sandwich Board
Guy.

So it looks to me as if the young’uns are being pushed away from
right-wing crazy religion, and toward either moderate religion or no
religion.

I struck up a brief conversation with one of the students in
attendance, in which he told me that he too had been raised Russian
Orthodox, and had been pressed into service as an altar boy a few
times. So we laughed, shook hands, and swapped stories of abusing the
communion wine.

Yeah, I think they’ll be fine.