A couple of weird and disparate stories from this weekend.

Instead of rolling in the Scion as usual, we took the CR-V to Stockton so I could pick up the elliptical I bought at Christmas vaca. The CR-V has no iPod capabilities (the FM transmitter broke), so my wife was fiddling with radio stations. One of the stations played Digable Planets. I haven't heard Rebirth of Slick in years. Great, right?

It was the oldies station. That song came out when I was in high school!

Went to mass Sunday morning. They got to the part where they offer prayers, and it played out mostly as usual. There was a prayer to respect the right to life, which is pretty standard nowadays. A little later, the last prayer was for (and I paraphrase): that our leaders, especially President Obama, govern in a matter to respect the rights of the unborn. Lord hear our prayers.

At which point I leaned over to my wife and said, "That's it?!?"

When did it come to this? Why is the intersection of politics and religion so narrow that there is only room for one issue? At a time when I'm not really getting along with my church, this ain't exactly smoothing things over.

(I don't want to start an abortion debate. Personally, I'm not down with it, but I'm not rabid about my position. I feel like I don't want other people shoving their religions down my throat, so who am I to do the same? An abortion is a personal choice and it's between you and your God, whoever He is. The key word there being "choice". I don't think victims of rape or incest should be required to have a baby. There are a lot of people who think that makes me a lousy Christian and that I will burn in hell, but I say this is between me and MY God.)

My point, of course, is: what about the rights of the *born*? Is abortion really that much bigger a sin than war? Torture? Suppression of civil liberties? Discrimination based on ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or sexual preference? What about capital punishment? I don't understand people who are against abortion but in favor of the death penalty. What is it with you people, timing?

I guess I should just shut up now before I make anyone else angry.

Separate but equal, round two.

Whereas the election of Obama helped me feel better about my fellow Americans, the possible (likely? imminent?) passage of Proposition 8 just makes me feel sad about the sorry state of California.

Californians have a history of disappointing me (Prop 187, Prop 209, 8 years of Pete Wilson, the recall election) and, apparently, this will be no different. While the fate of Prop 8 is still up in the air while absentee ballots are counted, it would take nothing short of a miracle to close the 3.8% gap that currently exists.

It's pretty upsetting that Latino and (especially) black voters helped get this discriminatory proposition passed. I really believe the Yes campaign was so well-funded that they could just saturate the airwaves with lies and half-truths that the No campaign was unable to counter them. For example, I received a "robocall" Monday night that implied that Barack Obama was supporting Prop 8, which is not his position. It contained a soundbyte of the first part of that clip, but not the part where he said, "that's not what America is about."

I'm very uneasy about the complicity of the Catholic Church in funding the Yes on 8 campaign. The Knights of Columbus donated a million dollars to Yes on 8. A lot of attention went to the Mormons and their efforts (and with fair reason, you think they, of all people, would sympathize with non-traditional marriage arrangements), but I don't think No on 8 was hard enough on the K of C. Maybe they didn't want to alienate the Catholic voters, I don't know.

What I do know at this point is I'm done with pancake breakfasts. Knights of Columbus will not see another nickel from me, if this is how they spend it. What kept me up last night is that maybe I'm done with church too. Not done with God, mind you. Just done with the people who make decisions in Jesus's name for things I don't think He would have any part of. What happened to, "and they'll know we are Christians by our love"? I've been more than a little apathetic about the Church and its leanings for a while, and this is not helping matters.

So today, I am proud to be an American but ashamed to be a Californian and a Catholic. Again, not for the first time.