Joseph N. Bell -- THE BELL CURVE

Holy jet stream! I made a vow when I turned in last week’s column that I

was through writing about the El Toro airport. There couldn’t possibly be

anything more to say that hasn’t been said a mind-numbing number of

times.

Then, on the day my column appeared, God was wheeled up to the firing

line and all bets were off. An organization called Clergy for Wholesome

Communities -- I’m not making this up -- surfaced to let the unwashed

know that God is irrevocably opposed to an airport at El Toro.

Interdenominationally, that is. Rabbis, priests and pastors have joined

hands to pass along this word.

So it’s no longer just an El Toro issue. It is really much bigger than

that. From now on, we need more than an environmental impact report to

move ahead with a secular project. We need approval from God, via the

Clergy for Wholesome Communities.

As their head honcho -- next to God, I’m presuming -- Pastor John Steward

of the Mount of Olives Lutheran Church in Mission Viejo put it to a Times

Orange County reporter: “I think it’s a biblical question: What is the

quality of life here? ... It’s not loving our neighbors as we are loving

ourselves.”

He went on to say that the divisive debate over El Toro must be replaced

with the strength of pure-and-simple religious leadership. I want to go

on record as saying that I have no problem with the “simple” part of this

statement.

Since the pure-and-simple leadership has come out against the airport,

the chief spokesman for Measure F, Len Kranser, has pledged his faith

enthusiastically, telling the Times: “El Toro is a moral issue in which

some people are doing unto others what they don’t want done to

themselves. And it is absolutely appropriate for the clergy to be

involved in that.”

The article didn’t say if he would feel the same way if the group came

down on the other side.

This reasoning, of course, opens up a whole new field for the clergy.

They can now be in the business of assessing secular activities to see if

they pass the biblical litmus test. To that end, I have some blights to

society that I would like to put before them in the hope they will turn

the firepower of God on these activities in the interests of creating

wholesome communities:

* Telemarketing. I find this much more noisy, distracting, frequent and

uncivil than the aircrafts that pass over my house from John Wayne

Airport. I trust the clergy will intervene with God to zap the people who

pay for this travesty.

* Leaf-blowers. If disrupting noise is a cardinal sin, then surely the

Wholesome crew can bring the influence of organized religion to bear on

destroying this practice. Perhaps a few bolts of lightning to dissuade

the hands holding the blowers?

* Talk radio, with special attention to Rush Limbaugh and practically

everyone with access to a microphone on local stations in Georgia,

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma whose combined sound

level and potential for spreading paranoia and hatred far surpasses the

most excessive charges of potential pollution made against an El Toro

airport.

* Gay bashing, with special emphasis on the Golden Rule, which the

supporters of Wholesome Communities cited repeatedly in justifying their

public opposition to the airport. By a strange coincidence, in the same

issue of the Times in which the clergy came out of the closet, there was

a long piece describing the agonies the same clergy is currently going

through to decide how to deal with gay people.

Apparently the Golden Rule doesn’t always get the job done here. Churches

are badly split on state Proposition 22, which would bar California from

recognizing gay marriages. But they appear to be much more in accord on

the innate sinfulness of an El Toro airport, which, according to Steward,

would hamper a healthy spiritual life for Orange County.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since the Wholesome group surfaced.

Actually, it hampered my spiritual life considerably when the Irvine Co.

chose two weeks before the election to allow as how the airport might

make it harder to sell some of their El Toro housing developments and was

therefore socially and spiritually undesirable.

It’s going to hamper my spiritual life if they build another runway at

John Wayne, so the Clergy for Wholesome Communities can be offered a

greater selection of flights without the inconvenience of noise from El

Toro.

It’s going to play hell with my spiritual life when I see the Wholesome

rhetoric reproduced in one of those hit mailers next week. And I’ve got

to admit that I’m not thinking warm and loving thoughts toward members of

the clergy who exploit God for secular purposes.

I can’t help wondering, though, if they might have any influence on the

one secular miracle that could influence me to overlook the El Toro

nonsense. If they could somehow just bring a pennant to the Anaheim

Angels this year...

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column appears

Thursdays.