Columnist Benjamin Grove: Parched ranchers wait for Congress to help

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Sept. 27, 2002 | 6:05 a.m.

IT'S BEEN TOUGH THE last few years for fourth-generation Nevada cattleman Steve Boies, who keeps roughly 2,000 head on his family's ranch in the far northeastern corner of the state.

Last year's drought cut into the previous year's slim profits, and then some. Boies and his wife Robin also raise native grass and alfalfa hay to feed their herd, and the dry season forced them to buy more forage for the winter.

When Boies tallies up the last three year's balance sheets, it was only with federal assistance that he has about broken even.

This year Boies was lucky. It was dry -- June, July and August hardly brought a drop of rain -- but his corner of the state 25 miles south of the Idaho border saw more showers than others. Many of Nevada's ranchers, like so many other cattlemen and farmers around the nation, suffered through worse.

Many asked Congress for help, and the Senate on Sept. 10 approved $6 billion in drought aid on a vote that was colored by election-year politics and that ignored President Bush's objections. House lawmakers haven't followed suit.

It's not clear how much drought aid will be available at the end of the congressional session for Nevada's ranchers.

And it's not known how many might apply for the aid if it becomes available. But it's a large percentage of them, Boies said. As it is, many are struggling year-to-year to keep their operations going.

"The real issue here is keeping the family farmer and rancher alive," said Boies, who is president of the 700-member Nevada Cattlemen's Association. "It's important, not just to the cattlemen, but to the communities and to the land."

Boies wants his children to inherit the family business.

"A corporation could come in here and they might take care of the land," Boies said. "But nobody could convince me that they could have the same intimacy with the land that we do.

"And sometimes we need help."

A likely invasion of Iraq continues to dominate the headlines in the nation's capital, captivating a diverse body of interests, including U.S. religious leaders.

Among them is Shaun Casey, assistant professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, who several weeks ago sought out fellow Christian ethicists to sign a statement against conflict with Iraq. (Casey says President Bush has not made a moral justification for it.)

Casey launched a nationwide search, and using mostly e-mail, within 10 days he had assembled a list of 100, both pacifists and advocates of "just war."

What caught my eye was that the Christian ethicists hailed from about 30 states, spanning the nation from Berkeley, California's Pacific School of Religion to Harvard Divinity School in Massachusetts.

But there were none from Nevada. Seems the state known for gambling, brothels and quickie divorces also has no Christian ethicists.

Casey laughed when I asked about it.

"I'm sure there is nothing innate in Nevada that precludes it from having Christian ethicists," Casey said, adding, "It's just not a very populous state."

Casey said "Christian ethicists" typically have degrees in ethics or theology and teach Christian ethics.

But Nevada has no seminaries or theology schools, and its two major universities have no religion major. UNLV used to offer a religion concentration as part of its philosophy program, but hardly anyone enrolled.

"It's like throwing a party and no one shows up," said Craig Walton, director of UNLV's Institute for Ethics and Policy Studies. "It's depressing."

Walton said that as far as he knows the last true Christian ethicist to live in Nevada was Las Vegas native Francis Beckwith, a 1978 Bishop Gorman graduate who left the state in 1996. He used to teach at UNLV but is now a constitution studies and political thought fellow at Princeton University.

Neither Walton nor Beckwith seemed too bothered by the fact that Nevada has no Christian ethicists to guide it.

Walton's students routinely wrestle with issues of faith that intermingle with their philosophy studies. And he said Las Vegans are engaged in a number of healthy debates on their own that challenge their thinking about religion and morals, on issues ranging from gay marriages to helping the homeless.

Beckwith praised Walton's ethics program, but added that every university benefits from a Christian ethicist's perspective.

"You want to be challenging students by putting them in touch with very different points of view, including the Christian one," Beckwith said. "That puts students in a position to wrestle with these issues at the highest level."