A Tale of Two Cities: Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco, Sunday June 30. 2002

On Sunday; June 30, 2002, there was rejoicing by crowds in Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco. In Rio, Brazilians were ecstatically celebrating the victory of Brazil in the world soccer championship. It was a joyful event, like carnival. The psychological explanation of both the Rio and the San Francisco explosions is that they distracted people from their frustrations. Brazilians had a right to be proud. Personally, I do not like crowds or noise, and I prefer cooperation to competition. Yet the Brazilian team excelled in games which demanded extraordinary stamina, coordination, skill and team play, in other words first-class physical condition. The globalization of soccer should result in a great improvement in the health of the youth of the world.

However wild, there was something charming about Brazilian rejoicing. People wrapped themselves in Brazilian flags bearing the national motto "Order and progress" and they thought to themselves that "God is Brazilian"-- not any particular god, but rather "Godīs in his heaven, all's right in the world". Some Brazilian players, who crossed themselves during the game, crouched after their victory in group prayer, in what looked more like a Muslim than a Christian posture. It was not dogmatic; they were just rejoicing that their order had brought progress. It was both Positivist and positive thinking.

Meanwhile San Francisco had been celebrating Gay Pride with a mass parade down Market Street. The once-joyful word "gay" has been wrecked, and the pride and the joy were pathetically unconvincing. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal in San Francisco had just issued a judgment approving the claim of an atheist that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because it mentions God. The New York Times (7/1/02) ran an article on him; he is not just an atheist, he is full of all kinds of odd ideas, including some on the family, reflecting his own unhappy married life. He denounces "his, him, she, her" as sexist and demands that the English language scrap them, a rather difficult task. He is a graduate of Brown University, a good institution generally viewed as having more than its share of oddballs.

He was following in the footsteps of a woman called O'Hare, who turned out later to have been engaged in sordid criminal activities. She persuaded the US Supreme Court to issue a decision enforcing the separation of Church and State. That such a person could prevail in the US Supreme Court tells us something. In fact, there is general misunderstanding of the separation of Church and State. It is commonly interpreted as meaning that God is outlawed in state activities, but that is historically incorrect. While in the colonies the Anglican Church was the official one, the colonies had in fact been founded by pious men of different denominations: Puritans, Congregationalists, Dutch Reformed, Jews, Quakers and Catholics. Freemason Deists led the revolutionary movement. The separation of Church and State simply meant that the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church should not have a privileged status. In fact, the people of other denominations displayed a deeper piety.

So, bask to the joyful celebrations in Rio and the gay ones in San Francisco. Take your choice. Mine is Rio. In fact, San Francisco is an embarrassment.

Ronald Hilton - 7/2/02