Chuck Scarborough has been broadcasting the evening news on NBC in New York City for at least 12 or 15 years. During that time, his sidekick has been a spirited black woman named Sue Simmons. Scarborough’s demeanor comes off as something between sober and dour. When Christmas week arrived this year, Scarborough was to read a promotion for another NBC program. Apparently it was named “Away in a Manger” but a pesky “a” snuck into Scarborough’s script. And so it was that Scarborough announced that the program would be called “Away in a Manager.” He mistook manager for manger on two occasions before he stopped himself and more or less said “What the hell is going on here?” Sue Simmons was beside herself with laughter. Scarborough was not amused and I suspect that some typist or proof reader may find himself in the unemployment line for his mistake.
Another mistake took place in California in the recent elections this fall which has much more significance than Scarborough’s misreading of his script. In the recently completed election in California, there was a so-called Proposition 8 which in effect would bar gay marriages. I believe that it defined marriage as only between a man and a woman, which of course would bar marriages between people of the same sex.
The campaign was financed heavily by evangelical churches and by the Mormons. Rick Warren, who is to deliver the invocation at Obama’s swearing-in ceremony for the Presidency, is an evangelical and he led the fight along with the Mormon Church, which also contributed heavily toward the financial end of the bargain.
With all of the world’s woes hanging like an albatross around our necks, it remains a mystery why same-sex marriages have such a fatal attraction for evangelicals and the Mormon Church, to say nothing of other sects. But when the votes were counted, there were enough tallies to amend the California constitution to add a bar on marriages between people of the same gender. Rick Warren and the Mormons cast this as a great crusade that they will take to other jurisdictions in forthcoming elections.
Now before going forward, I think it is important that you should know that your essayist has always been a straight man. As far as I can recall, no homosexual thoughts have ever crossed my mind. On the other hand, since I was 13 years of age or thereabouts, I was aware of people who were inclined toward the homosexual life. In those times, it was often referred to as being “queer.”
In my enjoyment of life in New York, for example, I was aware that I was being entertained by homosexual people and that many of them were preparing my restaurant food. To put it succinctly, I have always held the view that the homosexual life is different from mine, but that is no reason to bar it. In former years, there were those who were dedicated to the imposition of slavery on their fellow men. But if I lived in those times, I would have seen no reason to join in their effort to stamp on the necks of people who had a different coloration of their skin than mine.
A good many of the evangelicals, or perhaps all of them, as well as the Mormons will contend that man is created in God’s image. For purposes of argument, let us assume that such is the case. If that is true, it must be assumed that God, or some other creator, created homosexual people, because I do not remember the Scriptures that God created everyone except queer people. Are we to conclude that God or some other divine creature made a colossal mistake when he created homosexual men and women? For people of faith, I believe that they will adopt such an attitude with great peril to their own belief system.
But my point goes more specifically to the evangelicals. During the first 13 years of my life, my parents forced me to attend services at a variety of evangelical churches. I hated every minute of it. The last such church I attended was called The Free Will Baptist Church, where organs and pianos were barred from accompanying the hymns. The reason for this ban was that those instruments did not exist when Jesus was alive. When I pointed out to the authorities such as the Sunday school teacher that my father’s Studebaker automobile which brought us to Sunday services at the church, did not exist in the time of Jesus as well, my expression was met with a stony stare.
As you can tell by this time, I assume, I do not hold evangelicals in high regard. Let me go one step further with evangelicals. It is a common fact that some of them grow tobacco. The evangelicals exist in warm climates such as Virginia and the Carolinas where tobacco is grown. When push comes to shove, the medical facts are that tobacco causes all sorts of cancers and other human ailments.
From sometime in 1938 until March of 1956, your old essayist was a heavy smoker. During those years, it was commonplace for him to be felled by chest colds at least two or three times per year. The fact is that there were occasions when I smoked as much as three packs per day. During my hitch in the American Army, the PXs sold cigarettes at five cents per pack which encouraged their use. But in March of 1956, I concluded that I was not going to live for long if I continued smoking. So I quit. Cold turkey.
Two events marked this cessation of smoking. Rita Snedicker, my boss’s secretary, confidently predicted that my quitting would be of short duration. It has gone on now for more than 52 years. The second great event is that shortly after my cessation of smoking, my wife announced that there was a baby on the way. Prior to that occasion, there had been no pregnancies and perhaps that was a miracle of some sort.
But my point is very simple. Evangelicals are hip-deep in the production of tobacco. Ask any Virginian or North Carolinian. Furthermore, ask any medical counselor about whether there is any virtue in smoking cigarettes. If you have the courage to ask such a question, I am sure that the medical counselor will question your sanity. The fact is that tobacco causes all sorts of illnesses including cancer.
But given all these facts, have you seen Rick Warren, the superb pastor of the Saddleback church in California or any of the Mormon leaders attempting to attach a constitutional amendment to any state constitution barring the use of tobacco? The fact is that the church leaders have never attempted to bar an agent that is widely known as an agent of death. Instead they have concentrated their efforts on banning same-sex marriages. Now the question that I have to pose here is whether anyone has ever heard of a fatality resulting from a marriage between people of the same gender. The fact is that gay people get married because they love each other. Heterosexual people do the same thing. Gay people who marry are in the position of prolonging life, not shortening it.
So may I say here that the evangelicals and the Mormons and the other people of faith who voted for Proposition 8 have their priorities significantly screwed up. If they want a constitutional ban, they might start with tobacco rather than same-sex marriages which never killed anyone.
Now as to Chuck Scarborough’s reading of the script that contained the error between manger and manager. A cynic such as myself might say to the person who typed that script that he should go for the cycle, as they say in baseball. As long as he or she is being fired, he might give Scarborough a script that reads:

Away in a manager
No crab for his heap.

As everyone knows, mistakes happen and surely during the season of Christmas they ought to be forgiven, even by a sobersides such as Chuck Scarborough.
E. E. CARR
December 25, 2008
Essay 355
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Kevin’s commentary: Merry Christmas, everybody! I’ve never understood the dual fixations of abortions and gay marriage, both of which are almost by definition unable to affect anyone but the people who are getting them. If you don’t like gay marriages, don’t get gay married. If you don’t like abortions, don’t have one. Except that in the latter case, tons of people who are nominally “pro-life” end up getting abortions themselves when they decide that their circumstances are particularly extenuating. For instance, something like 90% of fetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. There’s no way that about half of those aren’t coming from conservative people who would probably say that they were ‘Pro-life’ when questioned.
Basically the idea that the government should be legislating our sex lives is insane, and even those advocating for it are deeply hypocritical when their own interests are concerned.