Religion is not the only means for determining morality. Religious folks don’t always understand that people without religious affiliation are still capable of being moral people. The reverse is obviously true as well. Religious people are capable of a complete absence of morality and frequently demonstrate lapses from ethical behavior. In fact, it is essential to have a secular moral code so people of all religions (or no religion) living in the same society can survive each other. The law isn’t always right, but it is a starting point. It doesn’t really matter if it’s based on the “10 Commandments” or English Common Law. It matters that we have a code of conduct that prevents us from killing each other. Just short of killing each other, where should we draw the line?
Prostitution just doesn’t have to be illegal. It’s all in the definition. Is selling your soul a little bit every day to work in a cubicle while telling your lazy boss that she is a genius to protect your job prostitution? How about having sex with your date only after an expensive dinner? And then, of course, what about trying to barter sexual favors for sports tickets? (A 6/24/2010 online story link is posted below.) It’s time for “All Things Religious” to weigh in on this topic because of the newly launched blog by my friend who was convicted of attempted prostitution.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/96991164.html?cmpid=15585797
I’m not going to comment, or base my friendship with her, on what she did or how she has reacted since. I do want to comment on the rest of us. I don’t think any of this would have been newsworthy if the tickets had been to the opera. Sports enjoys a religious status that many people take for granted. How many times have you seen people crying over a lost game? How about street rioting from a team’s win or loss? I have been researching the content of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Stories with religious content in the Sunday paper average less than five percent, which is roughly less than a quarter of one page for the front two news sections. By comparison, the Sunday sports section is usually 15 pages. Yet, there are more people in religious services every Sunday than attend all sporting events taking place in an entire week. (I have a citation on this. Comment below if you want to know more.)
The CNN article by John Blake (link below) asks better questions and has more examples than I have time for here. This culture’s reverence of sports and the unholy mixing of religious proselytizing with sports attempts to elevate the temporal to the metaphysical but in fact demotes the divine to the trivial.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/05/25/God.sports/index.html?iref=allsearch
The only thing more potent than sports and religion is sex and sports. That it is even possible to establish a blog on the topic is absurd – though I predict it will be well read. Because we have the technology for Facebook and the opportunity for free blogs, doesn’t mean we have to talk about every Henry Miller moment that crosses our subconscious. (For the record, I like reading Henry Miller.) My erudite response to the sex and baseball blog is: YUCK!
