Page 30 - Flathead Beacon // 11.26.14

30 | NOVEMBER 26, 2014
LIKE I WAS SAYIN’ Kellyn Brown
A Kalispell Crowd
THERE WAS CONCERN ABOUT WHETHER the state championship football game in Kalispell would draw a big crowd. Following the Class AA semifinal game, some boosters from Glacier High School expressed worry over low attendance, with the lack of lo- cal enthusiasm attributed to everything from the cold temperature to the relatively recent school split.
But on Friday, Nov. 21, attendance at the first high school championship game held in Kalispell since 1980 was a problem for the opposite reason. There were too many of us.
Ten minutes before kickoff, I parked four blocks from Legends Stadium and began hustling toward the field. Near the entrance, a bus attempting to make a tight turn on the car-lined streets had struck a parked vehicle’s bumper and officers were directing traffic around the scene. The line to get into the game was at least 100 fans deep when Glacier and Great Falls C.M. Russell began playing.
That line moved at a snail’s pace as the facility, with just one ticket booth at each entrance, was ill prepared for so many late arrivals. Glacier scored before the line had shortened at all, and by the time I walked through the gates there was just 4:10 left in the first quarter.
The packed metal grandstands, which hold 3,400 fans, shook as I walked underneath them to join the spectators lining the fence at the south end zone.
It was truly a Montana moment.
Moms and dads standing in the overflow section near the sidelines, yelling, “Here we go boys!” Kids lining up to buy mini donuts. Teenagers wearing shorts even though it was cold enough to see their breath.
I stood next to a father and son from Libby for most of the first half and listened as they discussed the rules of the game. For an hour, as we cheered in unison, I felt like a kid again. I’ve always loved this game. I grew up with it, although I was never any good at playing it.
In high school, my brother started at fullback for Uni- versity High School in Spokane, and the game was a large part of our family’s lives. We watched him every Friday, although Mom struggled seeing him get banged up play- ing such a brutal position. We then watched him on Sat- urdays at Whitworth College.
I recalled those games walking the sidelines in Ka- lispell last week, seeing whole families bundled up under a single blanket; listening to the student section perform various cheers; and watching the crowd dance to House of Pain’s classic rap, “Jump Around.” Once the second half began, the game was never in doubt, and I joined our sports reporter on Glacier’s sideline. Despite the lopsided score, few left the stadium as the fourth quarter waned.
Over the PA, with 3:20 left in the fourth quarter, the announcer told students not to rush the field. I high- fived the mascot as the final seconds ticked away before fireworks lit up over the stadium. It’s true, most of the parents in attendance were affiliated with Glacier High School. But there were several Flathead High parents there, too. And there were lot of people like me – unaf- filiated with either school who simply wanted to witness a Kalispell team win its first state championship since 1970.
In the end, it was a decisive victory. The final score was 56-19, and about 4,000 people were there to witness it. They witnessed a group of kids, many who won their first and last championship in anything and several oth- ers who played the last football game of their lives.
It was worth the long wait in line. For a few hours anyway, the rest of us got to feel like kids, too.
OPINION FLATHEADBEACON.COM
TWO FOR THOUGHT
Local Topics, Opposing Views
Gay Marriage and Equal Protection
By Tim Baldwin
Start with first principles: (1) Marriage is a contract between two consenting adults; so, uni- versal contract rights apply; and (2) civil law pro- hibiting homosexual marriage has nothing to do with protecting the family or procreation/child rearing. We know (2) is true because (a) if hetero- sexuality is natural, then laws are not needed to protect it; (b) laws making homosexuality non- criminal means it is not harmful to society; (c) people often marry without procreating; (d) the law does not require procreation; and (e) the law permits homosexuals to adopt children.
When government licenses marriage for “state purposes,” it does so under Equal Protec- tion limitations. This means it cannot prevent consenting adults from entering into marriage contracts when there is no compelling state in- terest. None exists, in part, for reasons stated in the above paragraph.
Too, government has no right to force church- es to perform homosexual marriage ceremonies. Many religions see marriage as a religious act. The government cannot force them to contra- dict this religious tenet. As for tax and insurance benefits homosexuals will enjoy ... good. We need fewer taxes, and all people should have good in- surance.
One need not agree with homosexual mar- riage to support Equal Protection any more than one need agree with a person’s speech to support the First Amendment.
By Joe Carbonari
Gay marriage is viscerally, almost physically wrong, to some people. It is no wonder that they oppose it. I ask them to consider that what is nat- ural and right, for someone born with the physi- cal wiring for homosexuality rather than hetero- sexuality, is to form families for nurturing and support, just like everyone else. It’s the best way for them to live, just as for everyone else, children included. They are decent. They can raise them.
When people who have basic differences from us, say skin color or sexual preference, ascribe a general disapproval and distaste to us as a group, it makes life harder. We have laws to constrain these expressions of distaste and disapproval. They are necessary.
It is also necessary to recognize and protect their full rights of citizenship, acceptance and appreciation. They are not evil. Think of infant sons and daughters. They vary, but they did not wire themselves for sex. Have some sympathy if their wiring causes them to be treated in a way that makes them doubt their basic “decency,” their “goodness.” Consider: should they all get a fair chance in life?
Judge them on their merits as they live their lives, just like everyone else. They are like every- one else when they are treated just like everyone else. So let’s just keep our sexual lives to our- selves. Private, by invitation only.
GUESTCOLUMN | BobBrown
A Truly Noteworthy Election
Political candidates usually passionately pro- claim that the election in which they are running is “the most critical in a generation,” or the “the most important in modern history.” Despite the hype, elections are rarely noteworthy events or turning points in history.
One election that was enormously significant happened exactly 150 years ago this month. Civil War President Abraham Lincoln was in deep politi- cal trouble with the approach of the election of 1864. Americans, North and South, were in the bleakest and bloodiest phase of our most cataclysmic con- flict. An appalling 60 percent of the soldiers in “Mr. Lincoln’s Army” that invaded Virginia in the spring of 1864 had fought their last battle by July.
There was no election scheduled in the battle- ravaged South in 1864, but there was in the Union, and the people of the North were weary of war. “Let the South have its own country. How could forcibly preserving the union be worth this hideous slaugh- ter?” Thus the Democratic “Peace Party” made its case. Lincoln himself expected to lose.
All the Confederacy wanted from a negotiated settlement was its independence. Such an outcome would have assured two competing countries. With the concept of secession validated, the breakup might have continued, so a map of North America might soon have looked like one of South America.
In the suffocating southern summer, the armies of Grant and Lee were clinched in deathly deadlock in a grinding siege near Richmond. No end was in sight. Then, unforeseen events reversed the for- tunes of war, and with them the tide of the election. In August, Admiral Farragut’s dramatic capture of
Mobile Bay sealed the blockade of southern ports in the Gulf of Mexico. Economic strangulation of the South was probably inevitable, but only if the North had the determination to stay the course.
In September came the capture of the south- ern stronghold of Atlanta, and General Sherman’s victorious breakthrough into Georgia. In October, General Sheridan established Northern control of the vital Shenandoah Valley at the conclusive battle of Winchester.
In November, 55 percent of the people of the North decided to soldier on. With Lincoln lead- ing, there would be no turning back. The unified, powerful, prosperous, democratic and free United States America was the ultimate result of that elec- tion 150 years ago. The world is a better place be- cause there is a United States.
In a strange and little-known way, that election also impacted Montana. An obscure ramification of it was Green Clay Smith. What? A person or a piece of pottery you might ask.
I wondered that too, when first learning about this in a lecture by Dr. Mike Malone, my Montana history professor over 40 years ago at Montana State University in Bozeman. In the same 1864 con- vention that renominated Lincoln, Congressman Smith very narrowly lost the nomination for Vice President to Andrew Johnson, who then became president after Lincoln’s assassination. And Green Clay Smith? Well, in a tiny echo of that great elec- tion of 1864, rather than becoming President of the United States, he ended up being appointed, by Johnson, as governor of Montana Territory.
Bob Brown is a former Montana secretary of state