Steve Shives
Articles by Steve Shives
August 03, 2009
Nevermind that you never asked Jesus to die for you. Christianity teaches that he did. In order to be a Christian, you must allow his death to stand in for your own. You must allow someone else to be punished for your crimes.
July 08, 2009
Most Christians don´t hear about the history of their holy scriptures at church on Sunday. There´s a reason for that.
July 02, 2009
Reforming the bigoted culture of the military may be challenging, and might take awhile, but there´s no other choice — not just for a gay American like Dan Choi, who loves the Army and wants nothing more than to continue his exemplary career, but for all of us.
March 29, 2009
I don´t disagree with Rush Limbaugh because I´ve never really heard him. I don´t oppose his politics because I just haven´t taken the time to understand them. I´ve heard him plenty. I understand him perfectly. That´s why I oppose him.
March 09, 2009
Fortunately there are voices within the Republican Party who see the importance of standing up to Rush Limbaugh. The one getting the most attention this week is David Frum — and he´s not apologizing
December 11, 2008
Making war on an entire race, burning their cities, murdering their children and taking their young women as sex slaves is all well and good, but even God has to draw the line somewhere.
November 18, 2008
I wish there was more attention paid to Christians like Mel White, who refuse to abandon their faith to the bigots.
November 11, 2008
It was a long war, and a bloody war, and ultimately a vain war. It was called the war to end all wars, yet just twenty years after it officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Adolf Hitler´s army invaded Poland, igniting the Second World War.
November 05, 2008
One hundred-fifty years after the Civil War, eighty years after the Ku Klux Klan paraded proudly, in full regalia, down Pennsylvania Avenue, fifty years after the Supreme Court forced public schools to cease racial segregation, forty years after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., and well within the lifetimes of millions of Americans who can remember a time when the color of one´s skin determined where they could eat, drink, use the bathroom, go to school, work, whom they could marry, and whether or not they could vote, the people of the United States have elected an African American man to lead their national government.
September 04, 2008
Where do people get the idea that this is our oil?
May 29, 2008
With so many politicians and pundits trying to figure out winning strategies for their political parties, I just thought someone should speak out — however faintly — in favor of some changes that would benefit the people more than the parties and compel the government to work for the people instead of itself.
May 20, 2008
Gay friends of mine who might want to marry their partners do not have that right. The only thing keeping it from them is bigotry — often religious, always inexcusable. The only thing propping up that bigotry is people like us, too embarrassed to fight it.
April 21, 2008
Despite being one of the most intellectually dishonest films I´ve ever seen, Expelled was not quite everything I expected. One of my fears going into the film was that it would be little more than a retread of the creationist/intelligent design arguments I´m already all too familiar with. I had a naïve hope that it might have something new to offer the debate, but spent little thought on this hope, since I knew it would only break my heart. As it turns out, it brings to the discussion neither the same old arguments nor anything remotely fresh. It pulls off the impressive trick of arguing for an hour and a half in favor of intelligent design, without ever actually discussing what intelligent design is, or what it says.
April 10, 2008
My previous article stated that the majority of American homeschoolers are fundamentalist Christian. But since I posted it, I´ve heard from enough homeschooling parents who were adamant that the fundamentalists did not speak for them, who told me that they are teaching their children real science and not creationism, that I felt obligated to acknowledge them, and correct myself.
April 08, 2008
Whether a student attends public school, private school, or is homeschooled, legitimate science should be a requirement for a high school diploma.
January 31, 2008
Rudy Giuliani is out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and the race is better off without him.
January 11, 2008
Dear New Hampshire,
This isn’t directed at all of you. With most of your state’s 1.2 million residents, I have no quarrel. No, I’m talking just to the 39% of voters in the Democratic party primary election who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. You know who you are, and you have a lot of ...
January 03, 2008
The Iowa caucus is being held tonight starting at 7 P.M. local time, which means that those of us here on the east coast will have to wait until 10 or 11 to find out who a small percentage of the tiny population of an isolated midwestern state have deemed worthy to continue their presidential campai...
December 28, 2007
Rick Rottman has been doing a great job the last few months at his Bent Corner blog writing about what a crazy old coot Ron Paul is. Congressman Paul’s most recent display of televised psychosis was this past weekend on Meet the Press, when, among other things, he claimed that Abraham Lincoln start...
December 27, 2007
In October 2004, Carina Dennis published an article in the journal Nature telling the story of a couple identified pseudonymously as John and Karen. The two of them were deaf, and they wished to take advantage of genetic screening to deliberately conceive a deaf child.[1] Their desire to create a ...
December 22, 2007
Christmas is only a few days off, and I think it’s as good a time as any to speak up for a segment of humanity that is too often ignored and forgotten by the media around the holidays. I speak up for this faction of society not only because I believe it to be vastly in the majority, but also becaus...
September 26, 2007
President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to New York City this week, first to speak to students at Columbia University as part of their ongoing World Leaders Forum, then to address the United Nations General Assembly. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger drew disapproval for criticizing Ah...
September 19, 2007
When a fringe conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones or the makers of Loose Change, or a bigot like David Duke cites a newspaper article to support his contention that George W. Bush planned 9/11 to help the Jews steal Iraq’s oil, say, chances are that article was published in the American Free Press. ...
September 12, 2007
I woke up expecting to drive to Canada that day. Dana and I had made plans to attend the remainder of the Toronto Film Festival. I had asked off work for the rest of the week, and driven up to Dana’s apartment in Manheim, Pennsylvania the night before. I drove her to Lancaster around eight that m...
September 12, 2007
I was fortunate; the events of September 11, 2001 did not touch me personally. I knew no one on any of the four planes hijacked, nor in the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, nor on any of the teams of firemen, police and rescue workers who died trying to help victims in the immediate aftermath of the at...
September 03, 2007
Today is Labor Day in the U.S., a date set aside to honor the working people who make life in this great land possible. Or so it is said. I think it’s the most disingenuous holiday on the calendar (except perhaps for Veterans Day, which no one cares about because they’ve already celebrated Memoria...
August 28, 2007
Last week my girlfriend and I were walking back from the post office to her place when I found a folded flyer on the sidewalk. It was a modest black and white photocopy that read “VOTE JOHN TAYLOR BOWLES FOR U.S. PRESIDENT 2008,” and then beneath that carried the slogan “A Third Choice for a Second...
August 22, 2007
Last year I wrote an article on my blog called “An Open Letter to AIDS”[1] in which I took the Acquired Immunodeficiency Virus to task for killing so many helpless Africans when there were people right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. far more deserving of a sad and lingering death. I even put down ...
August 13, 2007
I’ve had nearly a week since Barry Bonds hit his 756th career home run to work out what I think about it. Not that I needed the time to decide how I feel about Bonds breaking the record—I’ve known how I feel about that for some time; more that I needed it to establish for myself what place in histo...
July 05, 2007
Every July 4 here in the United States, we celebrate the country’s birthday. The kids are out of school for the summer, many adults get the day off from work. We spend the afternoon at baseball games or barbecuing or going on picnics, and the evening watching fireworks. We call it Independence Day, ...
July 02, 2007
The murder-suicide of Chris Benoit, his wife and young son this past week was the latest tragedy in an industry defined by corruption, drug abuse and premature death. Forty-four years ago in Tokyo, Japan the dark side of pro wrestling claimed one of its first victims. Since I first heard the Benoi...
June 20, 2007
When Thomas Jefferson (with a little help from his friends) wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he declared that all men were created equal. That isn’t what he actually meant, of course; “all white men” was closer to the truth in Jefferson’s time. It was nearly one hundred years before ...
June 06, 2007
The Creation Museum, a state-of-the-art interactive 60,000 square-foot facility, had its grand opening May 28 in Petersburg, Kentucky, not far from Cincinnati, Ohio. The museum cost over $25,000,000 to construct, collected entirely through donations from private investors. It is the brainchild of ...
June 05, 2007
The Scripps National Spelling Bee was held in Washington, D.C. this past week. It showed spectators the usual sights: boys and girls from diverse ethnic backgrounds with cardboard signs draped across their chests standing in front of microphones; chief pronouncer Jacques Bailly carefully articulat...
May 23, 2007
Occasionally I’ll get an email from someone who’s read something of mine. The writer, offended by my advocacy for gay equality, for instance, or my ridiculing of Biblical prophecy or conspiracy theories or tax protestors, or my support for unfettered free speech, will reprimand me for my permissive...
May 19, 2007
Jerry Falwell threw me a curveball this week. I’ve spent the last six months on death-watch for D. James Kennedy, another agent of intolerance who conjures credibility by disguising himself as a man of God, who suffered a heart attack around Christmas and hasn’t been seen publicly since. The disco...
May 15, 2007
I have a bad habit of listening to conservative talk radio. Usually not Limbaugh, who hasn’t had anything interesting to say in seven or eight years; not O’Reilly, that deeply deluded narcissist; and for God’s sake not Glenn Beck — I’m not that self-loathing. In the mornings the last few weeks it’...
May 11, 2007
Recently I read an article titled “CompSpeak 2050: How Talking Computers Will Recreate an Oral Culture By Mid-21st Century.”[1] I recommend you take a look at it, because it really must be seen to be believed. The author, William Crossman, a self-described futurist, argues that within the next fif...
April 28, 2007
The most common argument from tax protesters in the United States who claim they are not bound to pay income taxes or file a tax return with the Internal Revenue Service is that there is no actual law imposing such a tax. The claim is repeated so often in Aaron Russo’s film America: Freedom to Fasc...
April 25, 2007
It’s not often that I agree with Newt Gingrich on something, so this past Tuesday afternoon was a rare occasion. I was driving back to my girlfriend’s after a class when I heard one of Gingrich’s “Winning the Future” segments on the radio. He reported that teachers in the U.K. had begun to drop th...
April 23, 2007
I have nothing against conspiracy theories or those who promote them, in spirit. There are things about the attitude I rather admire—the questioning of the obvious, the determination to peer behind the curtain and see what’s really going on. My admiration is tempered somewhat by the fact that near...
April 18, 2007
Now that I’ve had a few days to think it over, I’ve concluded there are no new lessons to be learned from the shootings at Virginia Tech Monday morning, when student Cho Seung-Hui committed the deadliest gun massacre in the history of the United States, murdering 32 people and then killing himself. ...
April 17, 2007
Since the 15th was on a Sunday and Monday was an obscure holiday in Washington, D.C. called Emancipation Day, which celebrates the day in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln ordered all slaves in town to be freed and paid the former slave owners 300 bucks a head for their trouble, April 17 is Tax Day 2007. I...
April 16, 2007
With all the talk the past week of the courage and grace displayed by the Rutgers University women’s basketball team after being insulted by a morning radio host, I think it’s worth remembering the anniversary of the arrival on the national scene of a man who exhibited genuine courage in the face of...
April 11, 2007
The two demographic groups I feel the most sorry for when it comes to politics are blacks and Christians. African Americans and Christians have no worthy representatives to speak for them, only conmen and extremists. On the Christian side this sad reality is personified by men like James Dobson an...
April 09, 2007
This past Wednesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, also aired on television live on MSNBC, Don Imus referred to the predominantly black Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “some nappy-headed hos.” The comment, said during an exchange with producer Bernard McGuirk and intended as...
April 04, 2007
The ones who have something to lose I understand. The men and women who make their money in oil or automobiles or timber deny that global warming exists, or at least dispute humanity’s complicity, because widespread action to combat destructive climate changes would hit them right in the bank accou...
April 03, 2007
I don’t go to many funerals. I find them depressing and counterproductive. The only one I’ve ever attended was my grandfather’s three years ago, and I didn’t have much choice on that. It was a quiet, dignified, family-only affair, and therefore didn’t boast many of the stereotypical features of f...
March 31, 2007
My name is Steve and I’m a pro wrestling fan.
(Hi, Steve.)
With WrestleMania 23—the twentieth anniversary of WrestleMania III, the first one to be any good at all—coming up this weekend, it’s as good a time as any to drone on and on about my favorite matches to an indifferent, largely nonexist...
March 29, 2007
There is no more illuminating example of our broken and inadequate penal system than Megan’s Law. Federally enacted in 1996, it requires all 50 states to register, make public and keep track of the residences, occupations and any other data deemed pertinent, of citizens convicted of sex crimes. Mo...
March 26, 2007
Voices from the left and the right ends of the political spectrum have recently spoken up in favor of restricting free speech, the second right guaranteed the people by the Bill of Rights. Most of these calls are well-intentioned, but they are all misguided and deeply un-American.
Demonstrators ...
March 23, 2007
For its first seven seasons, from 1971 to 1978, All in the Family was as good as television gets. Expertly written and acted, able to be hilarious and poignant almost simultaneously, it retains its ability to amuse, move and shock us nearly thirty years since it aired its final episode. There was ...
March 21, 2007
With the war in Iraq entering its fifth year, with many more likely to come, it’s as good a time as ever to take a step back and evaluate where we’ve been, where we are, and where we can go from here (for the sake of brevity and solidarity I, like everyone else who writes about a war they don’t have...
March 19, 2007
Recorded history stretches back nearly 6,000 years, so any given day is the anniversary of something important. March 19, 2007 is the four year anniversary of the commencement of the present war in Iraq. This we all know, and far better writers than I will no doubt have something to say on the sub...
March 17, 2007
Several days ago Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace told the Chicago Tribune that he believed homosexuality was immoral. The remarks justifiably launched the left half of the blogosphere into a fit, and led to demands that General Pace apologize for his bigoted remark, and even a few calls th...
March 14, 2007
In the past month the gay rights movement won a minor victory behind the efforts of an unexpected hero, and was dealt a public blow by one of its longest-standing opponents.
The victory came in the Wyoming state legislature the last week of February, when 27 year-old Republican Representative Dan...
March 12, 2007
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now $2.55, the highest in six months according to a nationwide survey of gas stations.[1] The analyst quoted in the cited CNN story blames a dip in supply caused by an unusual amount of refinery maintenance for the rising prices.
...
March 11, 2007
My grandfather served in the Navy during the Korean War. My father followed in his footsteps after graduating high school, and was on a ship near Beirut in the early 1980s. He came home without a scratch, but for years had nightmares about his friends who weren’t so lucky. Will, a guy who graduat...
March 09, 2007
Captain America is dead. Check out the New York Daily News if you don’t believe me—they had the “exclusive” two days ago. He exited a courthouse and was unceremoniously felled by a sniper’s rifle. The Super-Soldier, the great Nazi smasher of World War II, the former leader of the Avengers, dead.
...
March 05, 2007
As we all know by now, during a speech given on March 2 at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., Ann Coulter said this:
"I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if ...
March 03, 2007
A few years ago I read a short story by Charles Bukowski entitled “The Gut-Wringing Machine.” It was a cynical and sharp bit of social satire, about two men whose job it was to run people through this medieval hand-cranked contraption that stripped the will and independence out of them like water f...
February 27, 2007
The paper here in Hagerstown, The Herald Mail, keeps tabs on the bills our representatives bring to the state legislature. One of those representatives is LeRoy Myers, our very own delegate from Washington County. A few days ago in its Bills of Local Interest feature, the paper printed this summar...
February 26, 2007
I see an alarming number of people shambling around in public with their attention glued to some piece of personal electronics. Everywhere I go, I see people with cell phones pressed to the sides of their heads, or iPod earplugs stuffed up their ears. I have no problem with cell phones or iPods – ...
February 25, 2007
Dear Barack,
I'm 26 years old and I never voted for anyone in an election for anything until this past November. I don't think politicians can be trusted. I don't think they care about my interests. I don't believe them when they say they're looking out for the little guy - on the odd occasion...