Not Praying for Rain

It was just about four years ago that the Democratic National Convention was taking place here in Denver. The bulk of the convention was held at the Pepsi Center, but Barack Obama's speech was going to draw bigger audience, and so that took place at Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos.

In case you're not from Denver, or in case you haven't been following the Peyton Manning watch speculating how he'll perform after leaving the domed stadium of the Colts, Mile High is an outdoor stadium.

Four years ago, Stuart Shepard, one of the voices of Focus on the Family, hoped to seize on that fact, imploring people to pray for rain that would force Obama's speech to be canceled. But you know, he prayed for God's wrath on his political opponents in a fun way. The original video has since been taken down, but a snarkily editorialized version of it is still available on YouTube:


I wrote about Shepard's first class douchebaggery four years ago, answering his disingenuous question "would it be wrong to pray for rain?" with a resounding "YES."

Well, here we are, four years later. The Republican National Convention is taking place in Florida next week, and Tropical Storm Isaac is gathering force in the Atlantic and may be headed in that very direction.

So I just want to take this opportunity to point out the difference between the kind of "Christians" that support Focus on the Family and people like me who oppose every horrible thing they stand for. I am not praying for rain here. I'm not hoping for a natural disaster to affect a day or two of the RNC (and hey... if a few million dollars in property damage and tragic loss of life happens in the process, thems the breaks).

No, I'm hoping the storm either weakens or changes course to not make landfall. I'm doing this because it's the right thing to hope for, what any decent person would hope for. Even though folks like Stuart Shepard will remain blissfully ignorant of the irony of devoting an entire night of their convention to a "We Built This!" theme, railing against government enterprise from inside a stadium built using $86 million of public funds (see the top of page 10). Even though one of the things they're all gathering to celebrate is their opposition to me having rights equal to theirs. Even though they're going to say that with my "lifestyle," I'm mounting a corrosive assault on the country's principles.

I just wish they didn't make it so damn hard (or should that be "so damn easy"?) to be a better person than they are.