Recently, there was a sizable public outcry in the great state of Oklahoma.  The reason?  A billboard.  It was just a standard oversized highway billboard that asked a question and provided a website address.  But the question was: “Don’t believe in God?”  Following that was the statement, “Join the club,” with a website for atheists listed. The outcry was substantial, and that probably wasn’t surprising, since surveys show that something like 80% of Oklahomans are Christians of some variety.

There is another side to the issue, of course.  You can’t drive anywhere, it seems to me, without seeing billboards or other signs that tout religion.  And there are certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of religious programs on television, cable/satellite, and radio.  Why should so many people get upset about atheists advertising their “belief” and reaching out to others who believe there is no supreme deity?  Yet many religious people were calling for the removal of the message, claiming it was unChristian and unAmerican.  UnChristian, certainly, and, I suppose, unIslamic, unHindu, etc…. but unAmerican?  Not on your life, not while we live under a Constitution that provides us with a guarantee of the freedom to believe what we wish, or not to believe.

The double standard lies in the belief of the protesters that it’s all right for them to champion their beliefs publicly and to seek converts through public airspace and billboards, but not to allow that to those who disavow a supreme deity.

Unhappily, we live in the age of double standards.  Those who champion subsidies and “incentives” for business, but who oppose earned income tax credits or welfare, practice a double standard as well.  For all the rhetoric about such corporate incentives creating jobs, so do income supports for the poor, and neither is as effective at doing so as their respective supporters would claim.  But… arguing for one taxpayer-funded subsidy and against another on so-called ethical or moral grounds is yet another double standard.

Here in Utah, the governor has claimed that he’s all for better education, but when his opponent for the office suggested a plan to toughen high school graduation requirements, the governor opposed it because it would limit the “release time” during the school day that allows LDS students to leave school grounds and attend religious classes at adjoining LDS seminaries – and then the governor blasted his opponent for sending his children to parochial schools.  Wait a minute.  Using the schedules of taxpayer-funded schools to essentially promote religion is fine, but spending your own money (and saving the taxpayers money to boot) to send a child to a religious school is somehow wrong?  Talk about a double standard.

Another double standard is the legal distinction between crack and powdered cocaine, especially since the legal penalties against the powdered form are far less stringent than those for crack, and since the powdered form is used by celebrities and others such as Paris Hilton, while crack is the province more of minorities and the denizens of poorer areas.  I may be misguided, but it seems to me that cocaine is cocaine.

I’ve also noted another interesting trend in the local and state newspapers.  Crimes committed by individuals with Latino names seem to get more coverage, and more prominent positioning in the same issue of the paper, than what appear to be identical crimes committed by those with more “Anglo” surnames. Coincidence?  I doubt it.  While it may be more “newsworthy,” in the sense that reporting that way increases sales, it’s another example of a double standard.

Demanding responsibility from teachers, but not from students, a practice I’ve noted before, is also a double standard.  So is the increasing practice of colleges and universities to require better grades and test scores from women than from men, in order to “balance” the numbers of incoming young men and women.  Whatever the rationale, it’s still a double standard.

Going into Iraq theoretically to remove an evil dictator and to improve human rights, but largely ignoring human rights violations elsewhere, might be considered a double standard – or perhaps merely a hypocritical use of that rationale to cover strategic interests… but why don’t we have the courage to say, “Oil matters to us more than human rights violations in places that don’t produce goods vital to us” ?

Double standards have been a feature of human societies since the first humans gathered together, but it seems to be that the creativity used in justifying them is increasing with each passing year.  Why is it that we can’t call a spade a spade… or a double standard just that?