You may have noticed that there are tall tree-like things appearing all over the landscape these days. They are not trees although they sometimes stand among trees. They are towers that hold the electronics to transmit our various signals for telephones, cellphones, television, radio, and who knows what else. They are shiny metal and easy to identify. And one of them can grow up almost overnight in a place there never had been one before. Sometimes they grow up from the ground and also they can sprout from the tops of buildings. They are not attractive.
I guess someone decided they could be attractive, though, and might be better accepted as part of the landscape if they were. I can imagine the discussion in some corporate boardroom now. Different people presenting their innovative concepts for how to make these things attractive. And the winning plan was . . . to disguise them as trees! Brilliant, right? We already have lots of trees, so who would object to a few more? This can even be considered an environmental beautification plan, like planting wildflowers in the highway medians.
Now you may think I am making this up, because it sounds so ridiculous. I would have thought I was making it up until yesterday when I was driving along a new highway in Montgomery County, Maryland. Off to the right I saw this tree-like thing, but not a tree. I could tell instantly it was not a real tree, at least not any variety of tree I had ever seen before. It did have sticking out things with green stuff on them like a tree, but clearly fake. And the top of this tree–a dead giveaway–held the same shiny metal relay equipment as those other towers we see everywhere.
When I was a Boy Scout, I earned the Forestry Merit Badge which required you to identify a lot of trees by name. Sometimes we had to identify trees just from a piece of their bark. I have always liked trees and a home surrounded by them. I hate it that developers often start by bulldozing their subdivision land and removing all the trees. Then they build these expensive new homes out there in bare fields. Not for me. I'll buy an older place with trees around it. And if I had a vote, I'd vote to outlaw the practice of killing off millions of nice young trees just to decorate and stand in our houses for a few days around Christmas. I was mad as hell about the State of California allowing logging companies to cut down almost the last of the Redwoods. I am tree-friendly, I guess.
The designers of the tree-disguised relay tower may have considered themselves tree-friendly also. They may have held focus groups where they showed pictures of their "trees" and paid people to give approval. They may have paid ad agencies to print slick brochures and plant advertising in strategic publications. They may have bought the votes of politicians for support.
We sadly live in a time when money can sell a lie for the truth, when money can substitute something fake for something genuine. We grow accustomed to advertising that is all about lying and fakery. A radio ad I heard the other day promised to eliminate your debt no matter what you owe or how much you earn. And some people will hear that and believe it, just as some people will accept these "trees" as trees.
Not me.
I am guessing I was twelve or thirteen at the time. My father was teaching summer school at what was then the Appalachian State Teacher's College in Boone, North Carolina. Dad and mother and I lived in an apartment on the second floor above the student center. My activities included tennis, exploring Howard's Knob and other nearby mountains, fishing trips, playing trumpet in a summer band, and working on my Boy Scout merit badges.
Lincoln knew this well, and he pressed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (April 4, 1864) which completed the abolition of slavery in the United States. The vote in the Senate was 38 to 6. The vote in the House of Representatives was 119 to 56.
But what do you assume when you hear one of these alarms going off? Do you assume a robbery in progress and call the police? Heavens no. We hear the damn things so regularly that we hardly notice, much less doing anything about it. 
When I visited Guadalajara I was lucky to hire a private tour guide with his own car for a full day of looking around. I told him what I was interested in, and he took me there. He was a nice man who did accounting for the hotel and took people touring on the side. He took me places I would never have found or gone on my own, and I felt safe and comfortable being with him.
They stand on the long concrete lane dividers. As the cars line up, they walk slowly along holding their hand-lettered signs and sometimes a container for contributions. They watch for a window rolled down and an outstretched hand. Mostly the windows stay rolled up and people avoid eye contact. Sometimes they walk down the actual pavement between the rows of cars. There are men and women, old and young, many appearing crippled or otherwise impaired.
Some of the people passing by are religious, but they look the other way and pass on by like everyone else. Their "social issues" do not include this social issue. The mayor and bank president are greeted warmly in their church, but these street people would not be. They would be an embarrassment.
Planned Parenthood
When I was a young man and newly married, also being at the same time a poor college student, I did not want or need the burden of another child to raise. Our first had arrived just eleven months after the wedding. I did, however, want to have sex with my wife. The answer, of course, was contraception, and the most obvious solution was "rubbers," as we called them then.
Buying rubbers was not as it is now. They were sold only in drug stores and only from under the counter, like something illegal. You had to ask the pharmacist for them. I hated this process and was embarrassed every time I made such a purchase. So I would buy as many as I could afford each time. But being a poor college student, that was often not a lot.
The time I remember most went like this:
I entered the drug store and pretended to browse the aisles while scoping out the situation. I located the pharmacist and made sure he was a man. Then I monitored other customers and waited for an opportunity to approach him privately. The last thing I wanted was to be in the middle of this transaction and have a woman walk up and listen in. The sense of danger could hardly have been greater had I been planning to rob the local bank.
I saw my opportunity and approached the pharmacist. I quickly told him my business. My face was very serious as was his. He asked me how many I needed. I said three dozen. He looked me up and down, sizing me up. There was something of a twinkle in his eye. He reached down behind the counter and got the three boxes. He placed them embarrassingly on the counter in plain view, although that was actually the only place he could have placed them. Then he smiled broadly and said out loud: "Think this will last you to the end of the week?" I was not amused then as I am now. My cheeks burned red and I did not answer the question.
This was around the time that Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical letter known as Humanae Vitae (Latin for "Human Life"), which reemphasized the Catholic Church teaching that it is always wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence. Contraception is defined as "any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act , or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible." This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus, the Pill, and all other such methods. (Catholic Answers – www.catholic.com) This certainly applied to my purchse at the drug store counter.
Until recently, I had thought that debate over birth control was a curious and rather humerous relic of the past. Like my purchase of rubbers from under the counter. I probably knew that for Catholics the Humanae Vitae letter was "still on the books," but I also knew that practicing Catholics paid no attention to it. Some 98% of Catholic women have used sterilization, condoms or other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus, the Pill, or other such methods. One would certainly assume the same for Evangelical Christians and other members of conservative religious groups. Why then this outcry against planning parenthood? Why then these efforts to enforce bans on contraception through State and Federal laws? Is it not pathetic that religious leaders who cannot get their members to observe such a ban through teaching and instruction should try to get it enforced through government legislation?
Up in nearby Pennsylvania there are sincere Amish people who believe it is wrong to own and drive automobiles. They get around in horse-drawn carriages instead. We grant them this right, although it does pose some traffic and parking problems now and then. But the Amish are not trying to get legislation passed to ban automobiles for the rest of us.
You could argue, however, that if their religion was large enough and strong enough and political enough, they might be doing just that. The English Puritans who became American Pilgrims had suffered under religious persecution in their homeland. But when they came to the New World and found themselves in the majority, they turned around and practiced religious intolerance themselves. From this did Roger Williams flee to found Rhode Island as a colony based on religious toleration, separation of church and state, and political democracy. It became a refuge people seeking liberty from religious persecution.
The temptation of all religion has been to ally itself with the State and use the power of the State to enforce its beliefs and support its institutions. That works well for religious majorities but not for religious minorities or for those who choose to opt out of religion altogether. Because of this, America was founded on a separation of Church and State.
If Churches wish to refrain from cars or condoms, let them do it. But don't let them use the power of Government to impose it on the rest of us.