God is dead.
Listen: I might not be speaking of your god. I'm certainly not talking about mine. The dead god of whom I speak is He of the Spanish Inquisition. The Aryan Nations. Our current president. And certainly the god of new Seattle SuperSonics co-owners Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, two members of Oklahoman Clay Bennett's purchasing group who were revealed last week to be heavyweight contributors to a national religious group dedicated to banning gay marriage.
So when I say God is dead, what I really mean is: tolerance for this sort of hammerheaded idiocy is over. This isn't about accepting another's precious political views; it's about calling a duck a duck - even if, or especially when, it walks into town quacking lies.
McClendon and Ward, two fresh-scrubbed Okies with fat wallets, have donated more than $1.1 million to the Christian conservative group Americans United to Preserve Marriage-a group led by Gary Bauer, the twit who also heads up the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.
When Jesus stood up for the whore and said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," he was probably waiting for one in the back of the head from the likes of Bauer. And when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple, it was the coin of such men as Ward and McClendon that hit the floor.
So, yes, let's move on to principal Sonic owner Clay Bennett. Typical of kneejerk-liberal Seattle, the most voluble chorus of voices that burbled to the top of this past week's controversy sang a song of ethical musical chairs: because Clay Bennett was still standing when the music died, he's innocent. Just listen to Sonics spokesman Jim Kneeland in Tuesday's Seattle P-I: "First of all, [Clay Bennett], who is the managing partner in this effort, is not involved in any way. That's a key distinction."
No, Mr. Kneeland, that's a ruse. You can launder money, but you can't whitewash the associations of those feeding from the same trough. Recall how quickly NBA commissioner David Stern made distance between his organization and former player Tim Hardaway for Hardaway's hateful, anti-gay speech? Basically, Stern canned the guy. Good man, David.
Kneeland, again: "One of the things that [McClendon and Ward] agreed to when they bought the team is that they would leave their politics at the state line." Will they also leave the profits that accrue from their ownership of our city's team at the state line? We could sure as hell use it right now. (And by the way, Mr. Kneeland, did you just admit that everyone involved in the sale was aware of the buyers' politics? Hmm....)
Now listen to state Senate Ways and Means chair Margarita Prentice, D-Renton: "I think this is probably the first time that I've known that we are demanding ideological purity when someone comes to invest in our state." She goes on to call such an idea "odious." Prentice must not have been around in the late '80s when students at the University of Washington forced the board of regents to divest in apartheid-ruled South Africa.
Seattle P-I columnist Robert Jamieson, a moderately reliable if somewhat tepid voice, was perhaps the worst offender, mixing more apples and oranges than a two-tone fruit salad (no pun intended). "What next," Jamieson asked in his March 1 lob across the rotting bow of liberal righteousness, "people who get mad at Sonics co-owner Clay Bennett because he may not recycle?" Now that is specious: Can Jamieson really believe recycling is a civil rights issue? Such a tactic is no less lazy for being totally manipulative.
The headline of Jamieson's column spoke volumes, by the way: "Arena, not gay love, at issue in Sonics vote." Who said anything about gay love? At issue is a national organization opposed to gay marriage, much the same way the KKK opposes the mixing of the races. But, you know, pointing out something so obvious is likely just more liberal Seattle hogwash to Jamieson's ears.
The P-I columnist's lamest moment comes at the exact point he probably thinks he's really stickin' it to all those softsoap liberals. Jamieson points out, with obvious relish, that former Sonics owner Barry Ackerly, "having gotten behind Ronald Reagan four times," also donated more than $100 million to such causes as the Seattle Art Museum.
"Just goes to show you can't neatly fit people into a box," Jamieson philosophizes. Well, Mussolini got the trains to run on time, too, but I'll bet if Italians had fit him into a box sooner ... ah, never mind.
Remember your Twain, Mr. Jamieson: Philanthropy is a sure sign of wickedness.
Let's forget, for the moment, the issue of whether the Sonics are going to move to Oklahoma (though, boy, if there were ever any doubts...). Do we really want a bunch of apparently bigoted men with lots and lots of money owning our professional basketball team?
Wonder how all the lesbians and daughters of lesbians who fill out the stands at Seattle Storm games feel about that.
Too bad you can't nullify a business agreement in the same way you can nullify a marriage ("Your honor, I DID NOT know I was going to the altar with a gay-basher...").
Clay Bennett is guilty by association, and he should be held accountable by the tortuous conduits of money, hard to trace but traceable nonetheless. Shall we take a cue from our president and "smoke 'em out"? Anybody who funds a terrorist is a terrorist, and the friends of our enemies are our enemies.
Those who oppose civil rights -and marriage is first and foremost a civil right (as well as a cultural uni-versal, and not primarily a religious institution) - are our enemies.
The advice of the late, great American writer William Burroughs comes to mind: when doing business with the religious, "GET IT IN WRITING!" Perhaps our legislators could have the Sonics new ownership sign some sort of memorandum of understanding, something to the effect of: for every $1 million Ward and McClendon donate to Americans United to Preserve Marriage, Clay Bennett will donate $2 million to, say, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Even Amnesty International would be cool.
Or maybe we should just let 'em all go. Laugh 'em out of town, and all the way to Oklahoma. The whole lot of 'em.
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