A grand gesture of reconciliation

"Now that it's been documented that a clear majority of New Yorkers prefer the site of the Islamic center to be moved,"a letter in today's New York Times reads, "it's time for its planners to seriously consider alternative locations. Such an act would not be seen as weakness, but a grand gesture that they are truly interested in promoting harmony among religious faiths and ethnic groups."Remember when Martin Luther King gave that speech to the Negroes of Birmingham, about how they should seriously consider seeking out alternative lunch counters in their own neighborhoods to eat at, given the documented objections to their presence that a clear majority of white Woolworth's customers had expressed? It was a grand gesture of reconciliation--the harmonies it promoted resounded like the opening strains of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.When I was in elementary school, a bully used to spit on me and my Jewish friends and call us Kikes and Christ killers. I wrote to the ADL and Abe Foxman himself replied. He said we should think beyond our rights and do what was right. So one day a bunch of us walked right up to the bully and apologized. "We did kill Jesus," we admitted. "We Googled your sacred book and it said so."After that, I felt like such a load had been lifted off my shoulders that I went out and set the local Korean grocery store on fire. Sure, they were "good" Koreans (whatever that's supposed to mean--North, South, they still talk Korean, don't they?)--but my Dad was at Pork Chop Hill and he lost a lot of buddies there. He'll never forgive the Koreans and I won't either. The store manager screamed and yelled and threatened to call the cops, but once I explained my position, he bowed his head graciously and offered to move his business to a location that would be less inflammatory to the sensitivities of Korean War veterans and their families. It was a grand gesture and it went far to promote harmony among the ethnic groups and religious faiths in our small community.Except the Mormons. We ran them out of town after we read the Jesus is Savior website. "Mormonism is a Satanic religion, straight out of the pits of Hell," it says. "It is a sex cult, that brainwashes is victims into believing that it is proper and right for wives and daughters to give themselves sexually to the leaders on the Mormon Church. Deny it as some Mormons may, the writings of their FOUNDERS are irrefutable evidence of this woeful evil."When I saw Glenn Beck on television last week talking about how America needed to turn back to God, all I could think about were those poor Arkansans that his fellow Mormons murdered in Mountain Meadows, so many of them children, and those child brides they're always raping, half of them their cousins and nieces. I got so upset seeing him gloating up there on the stairs of the Lincoln Monument, acting for all the world like it was a Victory Monument for the LDS, that I wrote a letter to the editor. I'm not prejudiced or anything. It's just that I have female cousins and nieces myself, so you can imagine how sensitive my sensibilities are.