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Tag: mitch albom
Pastor’s False Charge Sets Struggle Against Real Injustice Back

Pastor’s False Charge Sets Struggle Against Real Injustice Back

Last month, a pastor named Jordan Brown, who is openly gay, went into a Whole Foods Market in Austin, Texas, and purchased a cake. He ordered the words “Love Wins” to be written in icing. On the car ride home, he claimed, he noticed an anti-gay slur written on the cake as well.

He called the store, received an apology and was told whoever did that would be fired. He was asked to — and did — send photos of the cake, still sealed in the box.

Brown then received a call saying the store didn’t believe any of its employees had done that.

Brown made a video, showing the cake and making the accusation. He also filed a lawsuit, seeking damages. The lawsuit claimed Brown was in tears after the incident, and it is “impossible to calculate the emotional distress that these events have caused.”

His lawyer also told the media that Brown was concerned that if he didn’t raise a fuss, someone else might go through “a similarly excruciating experience.”

Then, last week, more than a month after his purchase, Brown admitted the whole thing was a hoax.

He was right about one thing. No one should have to go through such an excruciating experience.

Especially when a pastor is perpetuating it.

This story struck me on a few personal levels. First, the phrase “Love Wins” has often been associated with a book I wrote called “Tuesdays With Morrie,” where my old professor, who was dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease, said that life is a “tension of opposites,” kind of like a wrestling match. When I asked which side wins, he said, “Love wins. Love always wins.”

I don’t know if that’s where Brown got it. But anytime I hear those words, I perk up. To see them in the middle of a mess like this was unnerving.

Secondly, just by chance, I happen to know Walter Robb, the co-CEO of Whole Foods Market. I’ve known him to be an absolute standup person for communities and people’s basic rights. He has made diversity and inclusiveness a loudly stated part of Whole Foods’ core values — something grocery store chains don’t often do. In fact, the Whole Foods employee Brown accused of writing the gay slur was a member of the LGBT community — one reason the story immediately seemed fishy.

Which brings us to Brown, 31, who, stunningly, despite knowing he was lying, referred repeatedly to his faith in his lawsuit. He claimed that he’d grown up in a family of pastors, began preaching when he was 14, and founded his own congregation two years ago, the Church of Open Doors, a non-denominational Christian-based church, which delivers a message of “personal empowerment.”

I’m not a pastor. But I don’t think personal empowerment means lying, suing and making false accusations.

Doesn’t the Ten Commandments cover that?

If someone truly had written that slur on the cake, it would be declared reprehensible. Many did just that, as soon as the story broke, assuming it was true.

We must now do even more with Brown. What he did was worse. For whatever twisted reason, he created phony hatred where there wasn’t any, then sought to benefit from it. He besmirched a good organization, and made a terrible false accusation against an innocent person — a member of the community Brown pretended to defend.

Brown issued an apology with his confession last week, saying, “I was wrong to pursue this matter and use the media to perpetuate this story.”

Of course, he did this through a statement, not a news conference like the one he called to shed false tears. What was his motivation? Money? That’s shameless. Attention? That’s sad. Building support for the gay community by inventing discrimination against it? That’s sick.

Brown set back every future case against intolerance, allowing critics to ask if it’s real or fabricated. We’d do well to not jump the gun going forward, instead doing what Whole Foods did: investigate, get the facts, and then let them speak for themselves. Whole Foods, admiringly, dropped a countersuit against Brown, essentially declaring the matter over.

Meanwhile, Brown should do more than apologize to his small church. He should resign from it. If he was willing to let his phony accusation cost someone a job, his contrition ought to include the same. Besides, who on earth would listen to a pastor who claims “Love wins” while trying so hard to defeat it?

Photo: A box of cupcakes are seen topped with icons of same-sex couples at City Hall in San Francisco, June 29, 2013. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Altering Gun Laws Isn’t An Absolute Answer, But It’s Change Within Our Control

Altering Gun Laws Isn’t An Absolute Answer, But It’s Change Within Our Control

What made a young couple walk into a health facility and start shooting people? It wasn’t our gun laws. It wasn’t the easy ability to purchase a weapon in this country.

If such things made people killers, all Americans would be killers. In that narrow way, gun advocates who bristle at any change after the San Bernardino killings are right.

No one makes you pull a trigger.

But if you stop the argument there, you’re being naive — as naive as saying no one makes you abuse drugs, no one forces you to drink and drive, no one tells you to give your money to phony investment advisors. Yet we have laws regarding all those things.

Laws, smartly written, address the dangers facing a society. The item in question should be less important than the threat.

But our biggest gun law was written 224 years ago, and it remains mostly about that — guns, and the ownership of them. It’s not about bad behavior, murderous thoughts or anything else that guns frequently exacerbate. We have been arguing over this law, the Second Amendment, for centuries.

But we don’t touch it. Because it’s part of our Constitution. Because it’s cherished by many. And because, supporters argue, it’s not the law that makes people put on vests, drop their baby at a relative’s house, then go on a mass murder spree and die.

That’s a sick mind.

And you can’t legislate against a sick mind.

Recently, the New York Times ran its first front page editorial in nearly 100 years. It called for the end of the “gun epidemic.” Before that, the New York Daily News, in criticizing lawmakers who offered prayers for victims but no new legislation, ran the headline “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS.”

Naturally, both papers were buried in insults, dismissed as “typical liberals,” and argued against with an avalanche of selected facts and figures that make the case for doing nothing — or for arming more Americans, not fewer. President Obama, calling for tougher gun laws, was shouted down by a well-practiced chorus of critics, who cynically noted, “How’s it working for Paris?”

But being loud and being right are two different things. It’s always easier to scream against change than to create it. Especially since what change would be 100 percent effective? If we banned every gun in the country, some criminals would still get their hands on them, or use bombs instead, etc.

But is that a reason to watch the next whacked out fundamentalist go freely into a U.S. gun shop, legally purchase guns designed for quick, multiple killings, then use them on fellow citizens to go out in a blaze of infamy?

Because you know it will happen again.

I don’t have a fast answer for this. Nor do I have the energy or stomach to argue with hate-spewing people who are so mesmerized by gun possession they won’t budge an inch. It’s pointless.

But I do take issue with those who refuse to accept that mass killings with assault weapons fall under the same category as a hunter wanting to go after ducks. Yes, we have had guns in this country since its inception, but we have not had other things: a media that sensationalizes violence on a global scale, a population that feels alienated, video entertainment that numbs you to murder and a Internet that can connect all these elements with warped minds that see death as a badge of honor.

I’m pretty sure if America in 1791 had IEDs, jihads and YouTube, our Second Amendment wouldn’t read the way it does. But we cling to words written 224 years ago in a world that changes by the blink. This fact remains: people without a previous criminal history can make their first bad deed a doozy with legally purchased American guns, and killing them once they do only speeds up what many of them hope for: a sensationalized death. This is not limited to Islamic fundamentalists. Mass shootings in Colorado Springs (three dead), Oregon (nine dead) and Charleston, S.C. (nine dead) — all in the last six months — had nothing to do with Islam.

We can leave gun laws untouched, but something else will eventually give: maybe surveillance on every home and business; metal detectors on every door frame; random interrogations, sweeping immigration reform, airborne snipers, rounding up of particular religions. All things that will make America look a lot less like America than if its people were a little less armed.

Our choice. But sick, murderous minds are here to stay. How easy we make it for them is the only thing we can control.

(C) 2015 BY THE DETROIT FREE PRESS DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Photo: Handguns are seen for sale in a display case at Metro Shooting Supplies in Bridgeton, Missouri, November 13, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young

One Arabic Sentence Closes Schools, And Ignorance Wins

One Arabic Sentence Closes Schools, And Ignorance Wins

There are many good reasons to cancel school. Snow. A hurricane. No heat. A busted water pipe.

But until last week, I had never heard of canceling schools because of what they were teaching.

I have now.

An entire school system in Virginia was shut down Friday — 10,000 students, all kept at home — after a teacher gave an Arabic calligraphy assignment. The assignment, to copy a line as written, was from a standard textbook in a standard class, world geography, with the subject being world religions.

Unfortunately, the line used was the Muslim statement of faith, which translates to “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

The kids were asked to try writing it.

They went home and told their parents.

Look out.

Emails flew. Phones rang off the hook. Anger simmered and boiled over. The textbook identified the shahada as the Islamic statement of faith, but according to reports, it was never translated to the students, nor was it taught as dogma. It was basically an art project, to see how difficult calligraphy is to reproduce. Chances are most kids had no idea what they were scribbling.

Nonetheless, parents said their kids were being brainwashed. Some called for the teacher’s firing. (Don’t they always call for a teacher’s firing?) Some, the local sheriff told the media, wanted the teacher’s head “on a stake.”

With all the angry smoke rising, law enforcement suggested — and the school board agreed — that every single school in the county be closed Friday.

And all learning screeched to a halt.

Now, there are several legitimate questions in this story. First, is there no other example of Arabic calligraphy? Didn’t anyone involved — teacher, principal, textbook editor — realize a statement of faith is too volatile for a glorified penmanship lesson?

But having asked those questions, here’s another: Do we really need to shut an entire school district over this? Have we so quickly paralyzed ourselves with fear? Are we that spooked by the mere letters of the Muslim faith? And who were the police most concerned about — Muslims, or those who hate them?

“I will not have my children sit under a woman who indoctrinates them with the Islam religion,” a mother told a Virginia TV station.

I understand the anger. It was a foolish exercise. But I’m pretty sure the teacher, whose name is Cheryl LaPorte, was trying less to indoctrinate than to accelerate, hoping to work her way through the Standards of Learning tests that are required by her job.

Now that the district has removed that sentence from the class, she can use a different line to teach the calligraphy lesson. Problem solved.

But not over.

There is a reason book burning is so unnerving. So is shutting a school. Fear stymies education. It paralyzes the mind.

Ironically, the limiting of education — and the exclusion of girls from learning at all — is a key criticism we level against fundamentalist religions — including Islam. We’ve never minded doing Christmas shows in public schools that feature Jewish, Hindu or Muslim students.

Yet here we are, closing down an entire school system — with no actual threats being made — because of a copied Arabic sentence?

I imagine the most hysterical parents would prefer their kids never learn anything about the Muslim faith, never hear the word “Allah,” perhaps never be made aware that 1.6 billion people in the world — nearly 25 percent of the global population — practice that religion.

But ignoring Islam is a clear path toward demonizing it. And if you think that’s how you win a war on terror, think again: Polarizing faiths is the surest way to make certain they attack each other.

The Islamic State would like nothing better than if we made every Muslim feel unwelcome here. People go where they feel wanted. If we remove the freedom of religion principles that make this country great, we might as well set up an express train between the U.S. and Islamic fundamentalists.

There will always be problems. There will always be issues. And, by the way, terror attacks were not invented this year, this decade or even this century.

But learning — open learning — is essential to a free society. It is the bread of a peaceful culture.

Knowledge is power. Ignorance sparks fear. Shutting down schools just means the latter is winning.

(C) 2015 BY THE DETROIT FREE PRESS DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Photo: Ahmed Bin-Baz via Flickr

Respecting Vets Means More Than Clapping

Respecting Vets Means More Than Clapping

When a soldier goes off to fight, we say, “We’re praying for you.” When a soldier passes in uniform we gush, “Thank you for your service.” When a soldier is brought out on a football field, we whoop and cheer loudly.

But when a soldier dealing with post-combat issues needs a place to go, and that place needs to be built, and that building is in our backyard, suddenly, we’re not so welcoming.

For years, the Michigan Veterans Foundation had a facility in the Cass Corridor area of Detroit. The center provided meals, guidance, treatment and a welcome embrace for veterans dealing with everything from post-traumatic stress to homelessness. No one objected because, let’s face it, the Cass Corridor was hardly valued real estate. Truth is, that’s why many of our social services outlets were located there.

Recently, that has changed. A new hockey arena and a new Wayne State University business school made the Veterans Foundation site — and others nearby — desirable. An offer was made and, rather than fight the tide, the foundation accepted. It sold the building.

And began searching for a new home.

And, suddenly, the cheering stopped.

“Opposition was expressed,” explained Tyrone Chatman, executive director of the Michigan Veterans Foundation, when speaking about the site in Detroit’s Woodbridge District that the veterans group purchased, with plans of building a new center. “They thought it wasn’t a good fit.”

The property currently is an empty lot. And buildings nearby are mostly empty. You would think some activity — any activity — would be welcome.

But numerous residents objected, writing letters to the Detroit Planning Commission and speaking out during community meetings. They were often careful to say how much they supported veterans — don’t we always? — but then said the site was used for walking dogs or jogging and, besides, maybe a more fitting business could go there. You know, the kind that might increase property values.

Chatman, a Vietnam vet, took this hard. He remembered how returning soldiers in his day were spat upon by their countrymen. He thought we were past that.

“It kind of bothers us that it’s OK for men and women to give themselves to this great nation and fight our wars,” Chatman said, “but it’s not OK for us to live near you?”

Sadly, that’s the case. And it’s not the first time it has happened. When those same soldiers we enthusiastically send to fight our wars return with physical or mental issues, we’d privately prefer that they stay out of view.

Which renders us hypocrites.

I have known Chatman and the Michigan veterans group for a while. S.A.Y. Detroit, a charity I helped create, built a state-of-the art kitchen in the Cass Corridor facility. When I visit, the place is spotless. The clients are respectful. Military decorum is followed. You can tell many veterans still cling to their service as a buoy in troubled waters.

There are no wandering vagrants, no leering or dirty language. Nothing that would diminish a neighborhood. The building itself is neat, clean and attractive. The new building’s design is even more impressive, a single-story pentagon with a courtyard in its center.

“We thought the community would be delighted to support it,” Chatman said.

Instead, many objected to its look, while more likely being concerned about its clientele. The center, with a kitchen, gym, guidance center and just over 100 beds, hopes to serve about 1,600 veterans each year.

“It’s not always pretty, when you see men and women that are confined to wheelchairs, canes, walkers, amputees,” Chatman said. “It just seems to me there ought to be a debt of gratitude saying, ‘Hey, guys, you’re our nation’s defenders. You’ve earned the right to live wherever you want.'” Fortunately, by a city meeting Thursday, such an attitude had taken over. According to Chatman, a female veteran spoke movingly of how she was helped. It helped. The plans were tentatively approved, and vocal opposition was minor.

“The vote was to move forward,” Chatman said. “It’s a new day.”

It shouldn’t have to be. The day we send a soldier off to fight should be the same kind of day when he or she returns. If we don’t shun them when we want their sacrifice, we can’t shun them when they need our help.

I’m glad the Woodbridge District has overcome its objections. We’ll be better when there are no objections in the first place.

(C) 2015 BY THE DETROIT FREE PRESS DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Photo: The U.S. Army via Flickr