The Examiner’s big front-page head, “Pay to Pray,” reflects the opposition of some religious folk, including the Rev. Amos Brown, who was one of the worst supervisors in San Francisco history, to Sunday afternoon meter enforcement. OMG! People won’t be able to go to church because they’ll have to feed the meter! It’s sexist, too, since: Women go to church! And, apparently, none of the Rev. Brown’s parishoners walk or take the bus.
But let’s put a little reality into this. First of all, the meters are good for four hours, and if you’re listening to Rev. Brown preach for that long, you need to take a break to feed the meter anyway. But in all seriousness, we know exactly what’s going to happen here: The cops and meter-readers who patrol the areas around the churches aren’t going to issue tickets while services are going on. They never do. Anywhere.
Drive along Valencia some Sunday morning — the church-goers just park in the middle of the street. It’s fine — no tickets. It annoys the hell out of me, since you can’t go to, say, yoga on Sunday and park in the middle of the street without getting a ticket, maybe because Jesus never did yoga or something, but the reality is, nobody in any of these churches is going to have to pay anything.
At least, the ones who drive won’t. The poor souls who take the bus to church don’t get free passes on Sunday. They have to fork over the full fare like the rest of us.
And shouldn’t all these people of the cloth be encouraging their flocks to be good Christian citizens and avoid driving when they don’t need to? Aren’t all the bishops and stuff denoucing global warming? Isn’t God an environmentalist?
Pay to pray. As they say at the churches back where I came from, Yougoddabefuckinkiddin.