The miserable business of "counseling troubled youth" will naturally continue to thrive under Conservative Communism, even if certain of the poor dears' criers come and go now and then. Taking each case on its own demands an eye on details always properly set in the big picture, like naming the winner in a close race to hell or congratulating someone acquitted of a murder charge. There is a lot more afoot than meets most people's eyes.

It is always far more categorically important in these matters to not "take each case on its own," because of the nature of "these matters." I certainly do not suppose everyone in the world intelligent enough to abide my own nearly Victorian world-view in the matter of dealing with children -- to say nothing of them as criminals -- but I can righteously demand that they one & all keep their bloody hands out of my pockets while they're at their own way about it. And I always do. The categorical imperative here is, as always: private property. Do not rob me in order to pay for your goods.

Conservative Communism, however, is about the continuing business of setting various gangs and herds against each other at the lip of the village soup pot. War-fighting doctrine now calls for establishing Faith Bases out where the enemy of poverty controls the night. Naturally, strategic hamlet chieftains must be carefully chosen for the role they will play in deploying such critical resources.

Looking out the chinks at the darkness all day long and glancing over one's embattled shoulder at comrades toiling the brats in any given hamlet qualifies them to gauge a "good job" at that sort of thing, if anything does. Thus the wailing reaches us over the walls at one of the little forts because a good comrade has been cast out.

The New York Times Magazine brings the sad tale of Alicia Pedreira, whose good works at the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children of Louisville, Kentucky, have come to naught because she is a lesbian. The works are alleged to be "good" by the brats themselves, various peasants living about the hamlet, as well as Alicia, and that's good enough for the chink-outlook. I'll take it.

She really cared. The brats loved her. She had a "sterling reputation" behind the walls, and she is educated, with "a degree in expressive therapy." She was solicited to work at the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children and she even told them that she was a lesbian during a job interview. Nonetheless, she took her place among the comrades and brats and things went swimmingly until somebody went and won a state fair photography contest with -- guess what -- a picture of Alicia with her arm around her girlfriend at some AIDS walk around the hamlet.

Well, that was that for the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, who decided that they could take the seventy-five percent of their budget that they get from the state government and discriminate against Alicia by firing her because they can't use queers or dopers. Actually... to be fair here, the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children didn't really say that Alicia was a doper, but they said they couldn't use dopers, anyway.

Anyway, Alicia's fired, various of her comrades have thrown themselves over the hamlet walls in her name, and the brats are in tears.

So, now, a man can stand at Cincinnati, cock an ear downriver, and hear the lawyers thrashing toward Louisville.

Alicia and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a federal lawsuit in United States District Court at Louisville, because the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children have a religious problem with a queer on the staff. Conservative Communism is said to be alarmed at some implications of the case, coming as it does in time with the new war-fighting doctrine of Faith Bases. Homosexual legaleers are scouting the most important case since some people recently told others to get away from their private campfires. Adventurers scaling the range of the 1964 Civil Rights Act are marking territory from which to lay fire on "Charitable Choice" strongholds, and Conservative Communist benders make the viddie rounds pleading for a special discrimination ("only on the basis of religion" -- Stephen Goldsmith) hoping nobody notices such craven weenietalk.

The central issue in this case is the probity of a right to be dumb with other people's money. If the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children were truly and centrally concerned with their brats' welfare, then they would also have concerned themselves with the instant facts of Alicia's daily drill around the hamlet, which is said to have been quite soldier-like. "She really cared," etc., and she apparently wasn't the sort to start laying tongue-holds on the poor kiddies, or even walk around glaring about how "gay" she is. Nobody knows what actually concerned them in this case, because they weren't concerned with it before some amateur took a picture of her. None of the ink they've sprayed at the matter seems to clear the air of it, but it really doesn't even matter now, except for the hollering, and maybe a million or two in punitive damages years down the road.

To people living in and around these matters, it is the most rational possible thing to go to war over how they're going to spend each others' money. Every sort of creep with a jag on over "sky muffins" will be on hand to scream about how their money shouldn't pay for "imposing religious beliefs." (They're absolutely right about that, but nevermind.) The Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children have said that they would rather "stop contracting with government" (as if receiving stolen funds can represent a contractual arrangement) than to change their ways, and I'll try not to laugh while I'm waiting. The governor of Kentucky has expressed concern at such a dire turn of affairs, and while the case only involves money stolen by the state, legal fangers hold out great hope of federal constitutional high-life.

The Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children and all the Faith Bases deserve the battle, of course. It's only natural when there's a war on.