Conclusion

Over the years that I have lived in California, I have come to terms with the neo-prohibitionist tendencies displayed by rather a large number of people. Time was when it would irritate me: “Shit, you get on with your life, and I will get on with mine.” Now I smile and accept: We are each of us driven to declaring with various degrees of intensity our beliefs and understandings of what is true, what is important, what is just and right. I have come to realize, though, that we should each respect another's truth (even dogma) but to fully expect that they should show consideration for ours. Beer is not for everyone, but please do not expect that it is something that I should forego for the simple reason that it does not sit comfortably with you.

The arguments against alcohol either center on a religious teaching or alternatively a thesis that alcohol in any amount or circumstance is antisocietal. The former is a stance to be respected and understood as the dogma of a given religion within which, hopefully, you have the free will to participate or not. The latter, however, eschews the very real benefits and positives that literally flow, for example, from a beer tap and seeks to stamp out the freedom that an individual should have to indulge in an element of this life that for the longest time has brought contentment, community, and (it is increasingly recognized) healthful comfort to those who indulge respectfully. As such, it would be as wrong to seek to ban beer, or make it prohibitively expensive, or marginalize it as it would be to forbid skiing because limbs can be broken, or driving because some people motor far too quickly, or candy because it leads to obesity and thereby all manner of physical crises. Equally it would be no less and no more justified than seeking to eradicate or diminish the religious belief of another.

I recall as an 11-year-old my very first game of rugby,^[1] for here was my first exposure to religious bigotry that made Wigan and its environs a low-key version of Northern Ireland, which is not that far away across the Irish Sea. That opener was down the road at the St. John Rigby School. The Catholic team kicked off and the ball looped into my arms, at which time I heard a priest on the touchline bellow “get the little Protestant bastard.” Sure enough I was hammered, emerging stunned from beneath a pile of bodies to find that my shorts were flapping about me as they had been rent asunder.

Although meaningful for me at the time as I dragged myself back onto trembling legs, it is a mere trifling example of the evils that surface again and again in this imperfect reality that we call our world.^[2] Not long ago the Israeli army invaded the Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks on their country from a regime that does not believe in the right of the Jewish state to exist. It is less than a decade since the nightmare of 9/11, founded on religious extremism; a fanaticism spawned a millennium ago with the crusading Christians seeking to eradicate their Muslim foes. In India today there are countless conflicts between Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.

Naivete, maybe, but I will never fathom how religion can be a true basis for conflict, for surely all religions hold at their heart a message of love and peace. And yet there is such dispute between faiths and even within doctrines—witness the recent chasms in the Episcopal Church founded on an intolerance of homosexual and female clergy.

Is it so very different for some to be seeking to deny me the quiet pleasure of my pint? For surely as long as I am peacefully enjoying the beer, nonexcessively and without harming myself or others, it is a simple and innocent aspect of God's reality? Or as C.S. Lewis wrote

An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

So in my beery world may I tolerate those folks who like their beers smothered in hoppiness just as I would hope they would tolerate the skill devoted by the big brewers to making bland lagers so consistently well. May I tolerate those who rejoice in beer exposed to bright sunlight so that it reeks of skunks while begging them to acknowledge my taste for tepid flat ales in an East End pub in London. And may the wine drinkers of this world know that I am totally tolerant of their preferred beverage just as I want them to allow me to sing the praises of my own.

And likewise may each of us tolerate black and white; straight and gay; rich and poor. Let us recognize that the selfsame humanity resides in a president and a panhandler, in a CEO and a janitor; in man, in woman, in child.