“Mary, hi. It’s Carrie. Yes, we’re all fine, though I haven’t talked to Robert there in Chapel Hill for a few days. Listen, I want to arrange the final details for Katherine’s visit with you this summer. But first I have to tell you about what happened this morning. The three of us went to church together!”
“Carrie, that’s wonderful. Where did you go?” Mary asked.
“A large church downtown, not too far from the White House. Michael recommended it. It’s called Church of the Good Shepherd. The pastor is a really good speaker, named Robert Ludwig. You won’t believe what happened.”
“Try me.”
“Well, besides all the Secret Service consternation at the last-minute schedule change, and the press corps who followed us, the main thing is that Reverend Ludwig was preaching today on, of all things, a new book he’s just read, called The Foundations of America, A Study in Christian Faith. I mean, can you believe that? What a coincidence!”
“Carrie, after you’ve been praying and listening to God for a while, you’ll find these sort of ‘coincidences’ seem to happen all the time. Just remember that nothing happens by chance.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that. But, anyway, we just sat down like ‘normal’ folks and listened and worshiped. The sermon was wonderful. The author of this book, Gary Thornton, I think, has done years of research, and he’s proven that the Founding Fathers quoted the Bible four times more often than any other source in their writings. I didn’t know that most of the original state constitutions and university charters gave as their purpose the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he said that the framers of the Constitution followed Franklin’s advice and prayed daily for God’s presence in their meetings. I mean, he gave example after example. He had even prepared a handout—can you believe that?—with specific references for all of these examples.”
“Carrie, that does sound incredible. But God works in incredible ways.”
“Yes, but the strangest part of all was at the end, when he just blew apart the myth of how the church and the state are supposed to be separated. Do you know it doesn’t say that anywhere in any of our founding documents, neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution? But God is mentioned four times in the Declaration. He said the whole point of the First Amendment was just to insure that no one particular federal denomination was set up, the way it was in England at that time, and the way it was in most of the original colonies. And it was supposed to protect churches from state interference. Not to take general Christianity out of our laws or out of our schools or out of our public places.” Carrie’s voice was rising as she talked.
“What did William think?” Mary asked.
“That’s what you won’t believe!” Carrie said, then lowered her voice. “He listened and started to get into it. He made some notes on the handout. Riding back, he said that what Reverend Ludwig had said sounded interesting, but he wanted to read it himself and have someone look up the references. You know William, always the lawyer. Anyway, I think he may actually ask someone to look up the original texts cited in the book and maybe even read the passages about good government in the Bible.”
“Oh, Carrie, we should all keep praying. And don’t be bashful. After a week or so, why not suggest that William meet with Robert Ludwig, or even with the man who wrote that book, if he’s really interested? I bet both of those men would change their schedules in a minute to discuss the Christian foundations of our country with the president!”
“Good point. I’ll keep praying. And you’re right, only God could have arranged all of this. I don’t know where it’s heading, but I thank him for it.”
“Me, too. Now, did you want to talk about the summer?”
They talked for another twenty minutes. Then Carrie said, “I’ll call you tomorrow about my Bible reading, Mary. And pray that Katherine will start reading with me. She says she might.”
“We’ve got a lot to be thankful for, and a lot to pray about,” Mary concluded.
5
No person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.
NORTH CAROLINA CONSTITUTION. 1876
Thursday, May 10
One Week Later
THE WESTERN ATLANTIC—For three days the USS Fortson and two other warships had been simulating ASW attacks on two U.S. nuclear submarines and then allowing the submarines to attack them in turn in the Western Atlantic. Now the surface ships took a break from undersea concerns to practice another more basic skill: underway vertical replenishment by helicopter. Like underway refueling, it required the participation of the entire crew below the rate of first class petty officer, including those who had just come off their regular watches and those who had been up most of the night. Hugh Harrison’s First Division prepared the helicopter deck for this event.
There was a huge amount of material that had to be unloaded quickly from large pallets dropped on the helo deck near the stern of the ship by a squadron of helicopters. The choppers flew back and forth like swarming bees, to and from the supply ship. Each box had to be checked and then taken to a freezer, cooler, or a temporary storage area, which was usually the mess deck where the crew ate their meals. The crew formed a human conveyer belt. As each helicopter arrived overhead from the supply ship and deposited its pallet on the helo deck, the next man or woman in line was given a box and a destination by the supply officer, with the details noted on a large preprinted order form held by the senior supply chief.
It had been over two years since the Fortson had participated in a vertrep, so most of the crew were new to the procedure on the ship, and the younger recruits had never seen it done on any ship.
The Vertrep Detail was called out thirty minutes before the designated time for the first helicopter that morning, and members of the supply department coached the sailors in small groups on what to do. Then the helicopters started arriving, and the boxes started moving. At times it was like an old television comedy, with the number of boxes seeming to overwhelm the capacity of the crew to move them off of the helo deck.
It was at such a hectic moment when Seaman Apprentice Raymond Tyson, one of the new men who had just reported onboard with the supply department, responding to yells to hurry up and return to the helo deck, dumped his heavy load on top of a hatch cover in a corner of the mess deck and started to move aft for another round.
Unfortunately Tyson did not notice the large sign printed on the bulkhead above the hatch cover warning that this particular hatch cover was the top of one of the escape routes from the fireroom below. Under the mess decks the ship’s large boilers developed high pressure steam to drive her turbine engines, and even a pinhole leak in one of the steam pipes could fill the fireroom with scalding steam in about ten seconds. Therefore, the boiler technicians took their escape routes very seriously.
Boiler Technician First Class Wulford Higgins, a large man known to his friends as “Wolf,” was just climbing up the ladder from the after fireroom when, despite all of the noise and confusion from the vertrep’s deposits on the crew’s tables, he saw Tyson drop his box on the escape-route hatch cover.
“Hey, you!” Wolf roared across the open space full of sailors, as he bounded toward the hapless recruit. Tyson, like most of the other men and women on the mess deck, turned toward the sound of Wolfs shout. A moment later Tyson found Petty Officer Higgins in his face, yelling.
“You stupid little faggot—can’t you read? Or don’t you have to worry about your shipmates, ‘cause you’re some kind of special prima donna? How would you like to be trapped belowdecks in a steam cauldron, trying to get out, and find the hatch stuck because some queer put a box on it, and went off to redo his makeup, while you burn to death? Huh, how would you like that, you little
twerp?”
Wolf was so intent on chewing out Tyson that he didn’t notice someone coming up behind him. As he finished the first part of what he planned to say and took a breath to begin again, he felt a tap on the shoulder and spun around. There, big and smiling, was Yeoman First Class Diane Davis, the senior petty officer for the lesbians who had joined the admin department, and who had herself been on duty in the ship’s office, just aft of the mess deck. Yeoman Davis was almost as tall as Wolf Higgins, and she obviously worked out regularly with weights. Around her neck, now inches from Higgins’s face, she wore a gold choker that was inscribed “Bull Dyke.”
“Hey, big guy. Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?” She smiled tauntingly.
“What!” was all that Wolf could muster.
“So this guy made a mistake. So what? He’s new. Didn’t you ever make a mistake? Or are you another Mister Perfect? I’ve seen a lot of those in the navy. Tell me, are you one, too? You seem to qualify. Big, white, obviously not too bright. Yes, you must be another Mr. Perfect! I’ll mark it in your service record. We’re so lucky to have you on board.”
Wolf raised a fist to punch her, then remembered she was a woman and realized that everyone on the mess deck—gays and straights, blacks and whites—had stopped what they were doing and were watching the three of them. It suddenly dawned on Higgins that Tyson and Davis might have other friends in the crowd, and he started to look around for his own friends, if it turned nasty. Could he count on his black, straight shipmates, or had she neutralized them? Confused and flustered, he started to explain, looking at Davis. “He put a heavy load on top of our—”
Wolf never finished. Just then Hugh Harrison pushed his way onto the mess deck. “What’s going on here? The helo deck is jammed with boxes, and the helicopters are having to stand off with our loads,” he yelled at no one in particular. Realizing that everyone was focused on the three people in the corner and sensing the tension, Hugh quickly looked around for the senior person there, who seemed to be Gunnersmate Chief Grimes. He repeated his question, looking at Grimes. “What’s going on here?”
“A little altercation, sir,” Chief Grimes said. “Nothing really happened.”
“Well, you stay here with the people involved. Where’s the mess deck master-at-arms? Everybody else, back to the vertrep. We’ve about messed up the whole thing.”
Hugh stayed long enough to be sure the process began again and that Chief Grimes had moved over next to Davis, Higgins, and Tyson. Then he turned and headed back to the helo deck.
RALEIGH—“This equipment is just what we’ve needed for years,” said Claudia Farris, one of the parents appointed by PTA president Norman Templeton to the study committee for the BioTeam gift offer. The two of them plus Mary Prescott, four other parent members, and Jean Bowers, were meeting late that afternoon in Principal Lawrence Perkins’s office, sitting around his conference table. “I honestly wish we’d had something like this when I was in high school. Maybe it would have settled some of my curiosity, and I wouldn’t have done all the things I did after my senior year.
“Back then even the consequences, as serious as we thought they were, were nothing compared to today. I hope our daughter will learn as much as possible with this system. Then we won’t have to worry about AIDS or pregnancy or the clap. My husband and I are all for it.”
Tom Williams, the husband of one of Mary’s best friends in Moms-In-Prayer, said, “No one can deny, of course, the need to stay away from the consequences of premarital sex. But there’s a lot more involved here. Let’s just start with a few. God intended sex as a great joy and a blessing for married couples, not as cheap entertainment. Now I know his design has been violated for centuries, but we shouldn’t add to it. Husbands and wives are supposed to learn about ‘advanced’ sex, if you will, beyond the technical basics, together, not at an arcade.
“And, second, this equipment will expose our kids to possibilities and experiences far beyond what they could even imagine on their own, and some of which are apparently immoral and unnatural.”
“Oh come on, Tom,” said Scott Blanship, “join this century. You live in a dreamworld. You and I grew up in the ‘feel good’ generation. What do you think kids want today? Whatever God may have intended sex for in the beginning, we’ve progressed far beyond that now. Sex is entertainment. Open your eyes. But this machine is trying to channel that energy back into real learning, and it will do it in a way that won’t hurt anyone. And who cares what they experience, so long as it’s by themselves?”
“I do,” Mary answered. “Have you ever read interviews with men who have committed all sorts of awful crimes, including murder, because they became hooked on pornography and were always seeking greater and greater thrills? Or people who were despondent or mixed-up as teenagers, who found themselves drawn into a homosexual life style which years later they claimed was ‘natural’? Or a wife who is left, divorced with young children, because her husband has decided to chase a sex life based on this kind of deceptive fantasy, which no natural man or woman can hope to create or sustain? I don’t want either of our children experiencing those kinds of lies about their bodies and about their future spouses. There are other ways to stop the kinds of problems you mentioned which don’t make an awful situation much worse. Like virginity.”
“Well, break out the hoop skirts and warm up the barbecue,” chided Claudia Farris. “Miss Scarlett is back in town! Do you realize how silly you sound? Nothing you just said makes any sense today. It’s not relevant. It’s irrational.” She turned to the PTA president. “Norman, how can people with such thoughts even have a vote on this issue?”
“Claudia, that’s enough,” said the PTA president sternly. “We’re all parents and all equally entitled to our opinions. That’s why we have this committee.”
Mary smiled and looked at Claudia. Speaking quietly, she said, “The ideas I’ve just expressed made sense thousands of years ago, and they’ll still make sense thousands of years from now, if the human race lasts that long, because they’re based on the principles of the One who made us. Our problem is not those principles. Our problem is that we’ve ignored them.”
“Have you ever thought about becoming a preacher?” Farris asked.
The committee continued talking for another hour with little progress in changing anyone’s initial opinion. Finally Principal Perkins said, “I’m concerned we’re never going to get beyond the tie vote we would have had when we walked in here.”
“I agree,” said Tom Williams. “None of us appears to be ready to bend. So let me ask you this, Jean: I assume that even if the gift was accepted and the class was instituted as you have proposed, individual parents could still request that their children not participate, couldn’t they?”
Ms. Bowers looked at Mr. Perkins. She paused. “I suppose that technically they could. But I would really discourage it. It would really disrupt such a high-tech learning curriculum to have a few students not participating. How could they even learn or experience along with the others? How could we test that group? You know, sex education is mandated by the state school board.”
“How do you other parents feel about that?” asked Mary.
“Well, as much as I’m in favor of this program,” said Scott Blanship, “I don’t think any student should be forced to participate against his or her will, or against their parents’ will, if they’re not eighteen, of course.”
“Oh come on,” Farris said impatiently. “There’s nothing wrong with this. We’ve got some of the best minds in the world giving us something incredible, and it’s free. It can’t hurt anybody, only help. Jean Bowers will be in charge of the whole program. If some students don’t use this gift, how will she possibly grade them with the others? I’m tired of creating special rules for old fashioned ideas. We’re in a new century, folks, and we’d better get with it. I say there are no substitutes.”
There followed another ten minutes of even more contentious discussion. Finally Norman Temp
leton called a halt. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re getting anywhere on this, either. Now is there any reason to meet again next week, or are we deadlocked on both the system itself and on making it mandatory?” There was silence.
“Then I really don’t see any need to meet again. I tell you what I’d like to do. Will each ‘side’ write up a report—no more than two pages—with your views on the proposal? Then we’ll send a fact sheet on the system, plus both reports, and a notice of our next full PTA meeting to every parent in the high school. Hopefully we can then have an enlightened discussion and a vote in three weeks. Unless someone has a better idea, or an objection, we’ll proceed that way. Okay?”
ATLANTA—Rebecca opened the door to the examining room and realized that her memory was correct. She smiled.
“Hey, Eunice. Didn’t we just do this together last year?”
Eunice Porter, wearing a paper gown, was sitting on the examining table. She looked up but didn’t return Rebecca’s greeting. After a quick glance at the floor she nodded her head and said, “Yes. Yes, we did. I’m no more pleased to be here than you are to have me.”
Rebecca walked over next to the young woman. “Well of course I’m glad to see you. I’m sorry if I sounded flip. I guess I just didn’t think you’d be pregnant again so quickly.”
“Me, neither. In fact, I took one of those morning-after pills this time, and I never thought I’d be here. What a mess, with two little ones already at home. I haven’t seen my boyfriend in a month, so I guess he’s gone. I just don’t know what to do. I’m thinking about getting rid of this one.”
The President Page 17