Thursday was the annual National Day of Prayer — never that big of an event in Arizona. Coming on a Thursday with daytime activities typically outside city halls and other venues, it is not that convenient to attend for working people. And standing outside for an hour at midday in May can dissuade many from taking part.Obviously, an early morning prayer walk at the Arizona State Capitol Thursday and noontime prayer rallies outside of government buildings were tailor-made for politicians who could use their free time or lunch breaks to take part and not consider it being done on the publics dime.

All, in all, National Day of Prayer, held the first Thursday each year, is observed spottily from city to city in Arizona and is not well promoted. Some large cities cant muster events at all.

The American Humanists, who put reason and human values ahead of theology and doctrine, countered National Day of Prayer on Thursday with the National Day of Reason.

Its executive director, Roy Speckhardt, noted that Humanists regard the Day of Prayer as a dividing intrusion with its call for universal prayer. Humanists say, instead, it should be a chance to seek commonality. Founded in 1941, the American Humanists call themselves the oldest and largest Humanist organization in the U.S. with more than 100 affiliates who seek to promote a positive, nontheistic outlook based on reason and experience.

Our elected officials arent being true to their oath of office when they promote divisive political props like national prayer, Speckhardt said. Our secular government has no business calling on people to express their beliefs in one way over another.

He pointed to a rigorous national prayer study releases several months ago that found no direct efficacy of prayer for better health.

Millions more Americans who retain faith in prayer see it as a private matter and are offended by politicians attempt to hijack their deeply held religious beliefs to boost their poll numbers.

The Humanists president, Mel Lipman, urged a wider worldview: Reason is commonly recognized as a sound basis for decision-making. Scientific reasoning explains much of human progress and potential, and no one, religious or not, wishes to be unreasonable.

Lipman contends some 80 national and local groups in 46 states were having Day of Reason events Thursday.

In the big picture, neither side is getting much attention or participation for its day. The Humanists efforts are predictable especially in response to situations in which they see government actively involved and promoting the day.

Yet it is healthy for both sides to put their cases out there for people to see if either side resonates with them.

I detect a growing wariness of religion and its potential for tyranny. Part of it is the arrogance, piety and hubris of many religions.Part of it is pure backlash to the grip that larger faiths seem to impose on a society and culture. With war and economic upheaval across Africa, Asia and Latin America, people are on the move. Immigrants and refugees are moving into once settled societies and bringing their religious demands with them.How much must a receiving society bend and reshape its culture and laws to accommodate the folkways and peculiarities of incoming waves of people? When and at what point should local and national laws be changed because of the demands from immigrant newcomers, especially those ascribing demands to the pure practices of their religions? When can a nation and society balk and say this?: “You have a choice: Live by our laws, stop that practice and you can stay. Insist of keeping your peculiar practice, and you are not welcomed.

Its not necessarily new. Christian missionaries, for example, spread across the known world from the 1400s on. With the influx of emigrants from Europe came their evangelization and cultural ways. Native societies were made to accept such civilizing with all its benefits and curses.

Ironically, Europeans in other centuries pressed their practices on native peoples, and now immigrants to Europe today, especially Muslims, are overwhelming European communities with their distinct religious culture and practices that contrast sharply with those nations 21st century lifestyles and freedoms.

Were reminded how in 1996, the U.S. Congress, for the first time, outlawed female circumcision — genital mutilation — in response to the influx of African families who expected they could continue the macabre practice on their daughters in this nation.

Recently the Swedish government, backed by moderate Muslims, refused a demand from Mahmoud Aldebe, leader of the largest Islamic organization in Sweden, to make it the law that Muslims don’t have to work on Fridays, their holy day, nor on Islamic holidays. He also said the Swedish law should be changed to give Islamic holy men, or imams, authority to approve divorces of Muslim couples.

A Sweden official responded that it was completely unacceptable to make those changes. Interestingly, moderate Muslims apparently like the Swedish divorce laws, presumably because they are more fair — and civil — than traditional Islamic law. That was summed up by a Muslim lawyer, Mariam Osman Sherifay, If we are going to live here, we should adapt to the laws that exist — we should not have a separate law just because we have a different faith.

Of course, that attitude can cut both ways. It can actually bar sorely needed reforms in a society.

In Angelica, N. Y., a Hindu couple lost their state supreme court appeal. They said they should be allowed to keep cows on their front lawn, part of two acres they owned. They contended those cows were sacred in their Hindu practices. They are more family than anything, the couple said. But the village has laws that ban cattle on less than 10 acres. The New York court determined their claims of religious freedom were not valid enough for exemption.

In a pluralistic society, there is good reason for the common good. Things that might be OK in Sumatra should be properly scrutinized for Gilbert, Ariz. Just because something can be labeled sacred or religious is not good enough, especially how it impacts other, both adherents and non-believers.

There are reasons why polygamy, psychic surgery, treating women like chattel, genital mutilation and other practices are labeled wrong for our world.

Wise lawmakers and courts should insist on social and human justice standards. Religions can transform and reform. They can get more civilized, too. It was Charles Lucas who said, Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind.

Pity old Fred Phelps, the Topeka, Kan., Baptist pastor who is so consumed with hatred about gays. He and about 60 volunteers from his church of 75 members — Westboro Baptist Church — so far have picketed about 150 funerals of U.S. servicemen who have died in the war in Iraq or in military accidents.Since late last year, I have regularly gotten faxes from that church, typically saying Thank God for IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and announcing that the church would be picketing the funeral of a specified dead soldier, whose photo is often shown. Gays are always described as "f–gs. There is always this poem on the press release: They turned America over to f–gs, theyre coming home in body bags. And there’s always the notation that American bombed our church with an IED made by f-g students at Washburn University in Topeka. In his retaliatory wrath, God is killing Americans with Muslim IEDs, Saying touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm. 1 Chronicles 16:22. Most of the press releases have cartoons of aircraft and explosions. They carry stern, angry scripture such as And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath. Jeremiah 21:5. In March 1999, I met and interviewed Fred Phelps and his wife, Margie, as they picketed outside of Ashbury United Methodist Church in Phoenix where the Rev. Jimmy Creech was speaking. Creech is a United Methodist pastor who was suspended by his bishop in Omaha, Neb., in 1997, for performing a same-sex marriage ceremony. I object to the monstrous evil they are calling marriage, Phelps told me. It is a union made in hell. Call it what you want, but it is an abomination of God. He and Margie were armed with 16 neon-bright cardboard signs with the most vicious remarks. Thats the same Fred Phelps who picketed Barry Goldwaters funeral at Arizona State University in 1998 for the late senator’s sympathetic statements regarding gays. Ive collected 20 separate press releases from Westboro Baptist. One announced picketing schools and churches in Tampa, Fla., to object to the Gay Students Association. Why churches? Because they are f-g infested sodomite whorehouses masquerading as churches — as representatives of Americas 600,000 apostate churches and synagogues. It listed four churches to be picketed, promising that many evils and troubles shall befall them. Recently, I called Westboro Baptist and spoke to Phelps daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, to see how their hate business is going. Everybody in the world knows Westboro Baptist Church and what we have to say about this matter, she said. We are completely successful and that has come mercifully and kindly in the hand of the Lord our God. He is the one who opens the door of utterance, and we a just thankful participants at this hour. Pretty nervy to picket funerals of Iraq soldiers. Any backlash?, I asked Phelps-Roper. Oh, sure, she said, but you understand our job is to not give a hoot about that but instead to cause America to know her abominations, to put the crock of the fury and wrath of God to the lips of this nation and make them drink. How could the Westboro Christians be so cruel to soldiers families? I asked. Those families had better take it very quietly, she said. They are the ones who raised that child for the devil and then sent the child out and put him in the cross-hairs of a raging, mad God and then the child was snatched from this life and dropped straight into hell. I think they had better keep their big yaps shut. I’d say theyve done enough. The U.S. military, she insisted, has no clue about what the Lord their God requires of them. They are demonstrating that they are in in lockstep with filth. This is a f-g nation, this is a f-g military…. The landscape of America, she explained, is littered with filthy perverts and lying false prophets …. They deliver a lying message to keep this nation standing in perversion. When coal miners died last winter in West Virginia, the church said it will humbly pray for God to visit more calamities upon West Virginia. They subsequently picketed the miners funeral, saying God Hates West Virginia — God himself has now become West Virginias terrorist. The Phelps gang has it vitriolic statements perfected in its pathetic and cruel efforts to use religion to change a nation. Hate unchained. Have hatred will travel. Imagine spending your days in such dismal loathing.

With more than four decades of writing for publication, I an no fan of censors and those who would throttle the free-flow of information. But there is something about respecting the sensibilities of others and avoiding in-your-face offensiveness.The American Decency Association is complaining about the open display of the May issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, or Cosmo as the chic magazine is known. Across the front, visible especially at grocery story check-out counters, is a headline that says (can you believe this?) Orgasms Unlimited: How to Achieve a Feel-Good Explosion … and Then Another and Another.

Good grief, Cosmo!

In our newsroom, headline writers who produce the best zingers and most created string of words get them posted on the big board to be admired. Readers like clever headlines, too. They do draw potential readers to stories.

What did the writer at “Cosmopolitan” magazine receive for that eye-grabber? I have to believe there was a lot of debate before that headline got the go-ahead. Maybe this is the toned-down version.

American Decency Association, which calls itself a Christian-based, pro-decency organization committed to educating the general public on matters of decency , was far from amused. It let the retailers have it in what it calls a full-age unprecedented ad in the May 1 issue of Supermarket News, a trade magazine for food retailers. Such a magazine cover, it says, it highly inappropriate for the general shopping public.

It makes two specific points in its questions to national supermarket presidents and chief executive officers: Are there no standards of decency in your stores? and will you take a stand for decency and immediately remove the May Cosmopolitan with these offensive headlines from display?

Fair questions.

The ADA offered another option — placing something over those words on the cover or moving magazines to discreet places on the magazine racks, as was done by 24 food chains in 2001 after a now-forgotten controversy.

Two years ago, my 8-year-old nephew had the usual class fund-raiser of selling magazine subscriptions. I pondered and wondered and finally settled on a subscription to Mens Fitness magazine. Now, Mitchell has been carefully raised well away from suggestive TV and media, so I was especially appalled when I got the first copy of the magazine with titles of articles all over the cover, including one about healthy sex Each successive issue has its hook headline. Among the most recent ones: The Fit Guys Guide to Tons of Sex and 7 Solutions to Save Your Sex Life and Sex in America — Men’s Fitness Poll — The Horniest and Hottest Dates.

Its an otherwise good magazine, but do they have to be so crude?

How about some self-restraint with posting ones message.

I never had the nerve to tell Mitchells parents whats been coming to our house because of that school fund-raiser.