ON MAKING THE STADIUM SAFE FOR RELIGION

Two summers ago, just past my 60th birthday while watching my beloved Yankees, I left my seat for a restroom break in well, kind of a hurry. The mega-size giant cola had kicked in. As I turned to cheer for an inning-ending double play, I was stopped by a chain being thrown in front of me and when I tried to avoid that my arm was grabbed by a security guard who informed me I had to stay and "show respect," which translated into an enforced "joining with Kate Smith to sing God Bless America." Personally, I consider it a joyous obligation to pray which is by definition praising the Lord but I'll be damned if someone's going to tell me how or when. My answer was (while a policeman approached) as follows, "First, I'm sixty and so is my bladder, second I was in the armed forces when virtually all those who now use religion to influence politics were working on their multiple deferrments, and third, another thing that blesses America is the Bill of Rights. And finally, back to my bladder." People had gathered and the policeman present forged the better peace and said "I think this man should get to go to the restroom." My final rejoiner was to (hopefully) inject humor into this subject by asking "Why would we all want to join Kate Smith? The lady's been dead for over twenty years!" Most who had witnessed this chuckled, although there were one or two glowering exceptions. To be fair, since I had witnessed more than one previous such incident I was probably a bit on the ready, especially since one time it was a gentleman of around eighty who was being "held." Fortunately that time as well the uniformed policeman intervened and calmed things down. Is "God Bless America" really that crucial to our nervous post 9/11 DNA? If so why does no other professional baseball, football, basketball or hockey team seem to deem it necessary? Since Irving Berlin wrote the song in 1938 we've had Pearl Harbor with WWII to follow, the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis among other challenges, none of which made us frightened enough to try and enforce any type of group religious homage. The brutal murderers of 9/11 may have combined their treachery and our complacency to inflict personal and property damage on America, but they could never hope to destroy the essence of America, our democracy, our Constitution or our Bill of Rights. All of these exude our treasured freedom and tolerance. What concerns me is that if enough of us get frightened enough, we can do the very harm to America ourselves that those cowardly hijackers on 9/11 could never do. To Mr. Bin Laden, that may have been the whole idea.