Living Here

This is a funny town. Thanks to organizations like Focus on the Family, another California transplant, this area is a hotbed of Christian evangelism. It's also a military town, with NORAD, the Air Force Academy, and the Army's Fort Carson located here. For some reason there are a lot of retired Navy people here, too.

This is the most Conservative county in all of Colorado and the local newspaper is owned and run by real Libertarians. I thought their organization died off over thirty years ago, but like a bad Mormon offshoot, here they are writing opinions on a daily basis in the Gazette. Having lived by the ocean nearly all of my life, I'm used to a mellow approach to ideas and events, and I feel I have a fairly balanced mix of liberal and conservative ideals. I believe in re-examining those ideals on a regular basis and am quite willing to toss one if it no longer works. Having to force my beliefs to fit into a narrow world view, or get them rote from some organization seems wrong to me. I think that the older we get, the more fearful we are of change because the world around us seems to be changing at too fast a rate. So, we cling to our beliefs, clutch them to our chests as if they were gospel, and look silly and constipated to the younger generations...

When I drive around all of the new housing developments I notice how they are organized. It used to be that playgrounds and parks were a common denominator, here they are built around churches. My mother had a rule of thumb when evaluating where to live: the more churches a community has the more corruption you will find...

We see that here and it often makes national news because the pastors like to dabble in politics. It's not just priests who have molested children for years, but Anglicans who want to break from the main church because it supports homosexual rights. Oh, and they want to keep the historical church building along with their pastor, who was accused of embezzling church funds for the enrichment of his family.

And then we have the New Life Church, with seating for 10,000 parishioners. It was started by the infamous Ted Haggard, who, along with so many of his Catholic counterparts, just have to suck some dick every now and then. And take methamphetamines to blur the distinction of guilt. He was packed off to Arizona to rehabilitate himself, and the mega tax free money making machine was taken over by pastors from Texas, one Brady Boyd being their savior.

Unfortunately, violence and death stalked the church, with a crazed kid who was a former member of the church, killed two girls in the parking lot and himself was killed by a volunteer security guard who was packing. This spurred many people to apply for open weapon carrying permits, and some college guys to petition their college to let them on campus with their pistols. To protect and serve of course.

Guns and God do not mix well. Perhaps the best thing is to shut down New Life, disperse the faithful into other communities. If we allow everyone to carry guns ( ahh, the old cowboy mythology still at work in our imaginations ), then we should first change the laws regarding homicide...

-cw