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The small film company I sometimes work for was planning a feature on new trends in funerals, and I had flown out for the weekend to try to meet some of the younger, hipper funeral directors at the conference. One of these was Ryan, a round man with a wide smile and an impeccable hair-part, whose car, he told me, has a bumper sticker that says "Let's Put The 'Fun' Back In Funeral." He started his career as a funeral director, but had since moved into the lucrative field of “death care industry” consultation, where he works with funeral directors on ways to expand their businesses. In one of our conversations he tells me, “The worst thing I’ve heard a funeral director say is ‘we’ve always done it this way.’" Later, I tell him my plan to attend that evening's “Funeral Directors Under 40: A Night on the Town” event. Without missing a beat, he lowered his voice and said, “Funeral directors are notoriously heavy drinkers. There will definitely be some hook-ups.”

The funeral industry is in the midst of a transition of titanic proportions. America is secularizing at a rapid pace, with almost 25% of the country describing itself as un-church. Americans, embracing a less religious view of the afterlife, are now asking for a "spiritual" funeral instead of a religious one. And cremation numbers are up. Way up. In liberal, secular states, specifically in the Pacific Northwest, cremation rates have steadily increased to more than half of disposals, up from the low single digits in 1990. The rest of the nation had also experienced steady gains in cremation since 2000 (except in the Bible Belt, where cremation rates remained relatively low). The rate of cremation has skyrocketed as Americans back away from the idea that Jesus will be resurrecting them straight from the grave. And so in the past twenty years, funeral directors have had to transform from presenters of a failed organism, where the sensation of closure is manifest in the presence of the deceased body, to the arbitrators of the meaning of a secular life that has just been reduced to ash. Reflecting this trend, this year's NFDA conference was, for the first time in its history, held jointly with the Cremation Association of North America (CANA).

Talking with funeral directors at the conference, I began to realize the scope of the crisis spurred by the rise of cremation and its new importance. As one former funeral director said, “If the family wanted a cremation, we’d say ‘That’ll be $595,’ hand them the urn and show them the door. Not anymore though.” The industry is scrambling to find a way to add value-added cremation services to remain solvent.

This tension about how best to innovate was in evidence at the first presentation I attended, titled “How To Step Up Your Game.” The presenter worked for a consulting firm that specialized in business strategies and management—the funeral industry was his particular subject of expertise. He launched into his talk with a story about a recent trip to Disney World with his daughter. While walking through the park, he realized how much the funeral industry could learn from the attraction. At Disney World, every interaction had been scripted and rehearsed, down to the greetings from the custodians. Experiences are controlled. Likewise, he said, every funeral should offer the same experience for everyone, whether cremated or open-casket. If, say, the customer was having an open-casket service with a priest and an organist, there should also be a corresponding service for someone, possibly secular, who has just been cremated. If priests are no longer always present to say platitudes over the dead, funeral directors would have to develop a corresponding basic, secular service to stand in as a reverent farewell. Thus they'd take a much larger role in the memorial, acting more like mainstream event planners and offering such amenities as video tributes, arranging for music and other points of the new-age burial.

***

The next morning I walked from the Loop, where my hotel was, to the conference center. The walk took me along the rebuilt parts of downtown Chicago, brimming with condos and families with young children. Essentially, all waterfront redevelopments really do look the same. And just as these upwardly mobile Chicagoans strive for a lower carbon footprint and uniform luxury housing in life, they will most likely do so in death as well. Cremation has been touted as the “green” way to depart this coil, and several biodegradable urn choices have become available, their sides ornamented with images of fire, water and earth. To compensate for the relative cheapness of cremation, funeral directors have begun adding a series of value-added services, from a string orchestra, to webcasting for distant family and friends, to a remembrance “rose-petal” ceremony for young attendees. (I never fully understood what exactly the rose-petal ceremony was, but from what I gathered kids throw rose petals into the air as each older family member says something about the deceased. Whatever it was, it looked adorable.)

The message attached to all these services seems to be: cremation is green, and if you choose something else, you're a polluter, even in death. Funeral homes employ a host of chemicals, chief among them formaldehyde, to embalm a body. Some funeral homes either don’t have a correct method of disposal, or, if they are in a rural area without a sewage system, dispose of the carcinogenic—formaldehyde being intended for use on things that are already dead—right down the drain. In 2007, an EPA report found dangerously high levels of formaldehyde and phenol in drinking water in locations near funeral homes throughout New York state. The burial of a corpse in a metal coffin, with the embalmed body inside, deposits other chemicals in groundwater. The coffin's metals leach into the ground, followed eventually by the chemicals used to preserve the corpses. Every graveyard may be lush and green, but when you look at its chemical makeup it starts to look like a mini-Brownfield. (Distressingly, higher rates of cancer have been found among embalmers who have to breathe in this stuff every day.)

Still, while cremation is on the rise, embalming remains the dominant form of disposal; current figures put it at over 60% the population. A table at the conference center had been set up for the National Funeral Directors Political Action Committee, which was advocating against some recent environmental regulations that could limit and fine the amount of waste associated with embalming. At one workshop I attended a funeral director said, “We’re not here to beautify anyone. We’re here to identify them.” He told a story of an older neighbor who lived across the street whose hands were always bruised because he worked at a factory. Knowing that he would one day be burying him, the director made a mental note not to use cosmetic to cover the bruises, because “that’s how he always looked.”

Meanwhile, on the floor of the trade show, the entrepreneurs were clearly betting on cremation's continued rise in popularity. The floor held booths for hundreds of vendors, selling everything from health insurance to back hoes for grave digging. At one point during the weekend, a red ceremonial ribbon was cut and the tradeshow curtains parted to reveal a new line of hearses. But by far, the largest contingent of vendors were hawking cremation-related products: urns with Bible verses on them, urns with dolphins flipping in front of a Lisa Frank-style sunset, rings with diamonds made of ashes, and an iPhone app that lets you know the progress of a cremation. Funeral homes have to invest in the equipment that will guarantee a solvent future and the funerals-peripheral industry, always with its ear to the ground, is entering the cremation game in full-force. For $150 you can have a pendant that can be worn from the neck, filled with the ashes of loved ones trapped in decorative glass.

There are also options for our furry loved ones. As it happened, just as I approached the pet-urn section, my sister texted me to let me know her boyfriend’s cat had just died. I resisted asking what her plans for the ashes were, but was just then passing the eco-friendly cat urns, made to look like a ball of yarn. There were dog-bone urns, too. The young couple that was selling the pet-urns looked like they might have just as easily been peddling artisanal cupcakes. They told me they were sorry about the cat.

Attending this event as an outsider elicits a mixture of morbid curiosity, a confrontation with your own mortality and beliefs—and, if you are a good consumer, an eventual conclusion as to what you'd choose for your own earthly remains. I made the decision about the disposal of mine when I came across a table with degradable urns that were also tree planters. A special soil unlocks nutrients from the ashes that eventually become part of the tree itself. That sounded just about right for me, and I will probably insist on being planted somewhere pretty (until, of course, I am cut down to make a baseball bat for my great-great-grandchild, a baseball bat that I guarantee will only hit home runs).

Eventually, I reached the cosmetics section of the trade floor. Makeup, meant for corpses, was being applied by airbrush to a (still-living) elderly woman. She sat there on a stool, still and frail-seeming, eyes closed in the manner of anyone getting a makeover, as the presenter sprayed her with the makeup. No one seemed to consider this odd or in poor taste. Why would they? To those in the business of death, the distinction between the living and the dead is a simple matter of economics. Someone is much more valuable to them dead than alive, and the elderly among us are futures to be counted on for next year’s bottom line. I thought of the embalmer’s neighbor, the one with bruised hands. Who were we fooling? One day we will all die, and these people are the ones who will be paid to dispose of us. In this light, their preparation and commitment to self-improvement is both beautiful and professional.

The coffins took up the next section of the floor. As with urns, coffins are easily branded to accommodate the former personhood of the body within. “The Waldorf,” a solid mahogany coffin, is for the “Business Leader and Family Man," its accompanying flyer features a picture of a silver-haired Wall Street executive. Other coffin styles targeted other professions: “Sovereign Realtree” for a rancher and “A Man of The Earth,” “Westmoreland” for a school librarian, who was also “An Elegant Women” and the “Prescott” for the architect who was “straightforward, honest, no frills,” but taken too soon from us. (Although I have a sneaking suspicion that the architect will have chosen cremation.) And of course there were the Major League Baseball caskets, so a Cubs fan can spend eternity celebrating that personal hell.

On the far side of the floor, past the new hearses, is where the future began. Just as Playstation 2 is sure to come out right after you've bought Playstation, there’s already a cooler, better, more expensive form of cremation. While cremation is technically “greener” than burial, the burning of the body still releases into the atmosphere whatever you might have embedded in you—dental fillings containing mercury, a hip replacement made of plastic. The newest, greenest thing is called “alkaline hydrolysis,” a process that uses sodium hydroxide (basically, lye) and extremely hot, highly pressurized water to rapidly speed up the process of natural decomposition. The body is placed in a large tube with a square control base (upon seeing a picture, a friend of mine commented that it looked a lot like a bong, and it kind of does), bathed in chemicals and highly pressurized, and in a few hours all that is left is liquid and ash.

On that ominous note, I left the future and returned to the present. A man tried to sell me Thanoseal (for when a cadaver I’m embalming begins to leak). I passed earrings made from cremated remains, and a pavilion devoted to pre-made video tributes (all that’s left is to insert photographs of the deceased against the background of a golf course).

While the funeral industry is mostly resistant to recessions, it's still feeling the effects of our economic downturn. Funerals have become less lavish, and fewer people have been making down payments on "Pre-Need" services. Still, it remains an incredibly lucrative field, because its services are, eventually, inevitable. Or they are for most. On my way out I spoke with a cemetery owner who dismissively waved his hands at the booths with the funeral-related iPod apps and video tributes. He was, he said, very fond of the Quaker method for body disposal, just simply putting the body into the ground and letting it go. “They’ve been doing ‘green’ burials forever,” he told me. “I admire that.”

As I left the floor, the funeral directors were heading en masse towards the auditorium to elect officers for the next year. A girl dressed as a sunflower handed me a bag of M&M’s and a flyer supporting a candidate, a well-dressed ringer for Jonathan Franzen, who was running for secretary. I checked in with Julie, my liaison at the conference, about my tickets for the evening’s 40 and Under social outing. She lowered her gaze in apology: “It’s all sold out.” Not even room for press? “We’d have to order another party bus.”

She gave me the address of the bar where the bus would be dropping off the directors. By the time I got there the young directors were already bedecked in fluorescent necklaces and quite comfortably soused; I didn't see any actual hooks-ups going down, but there was an inordinate amount of touching and hugging going on in the room, so maybe that happened later. I said hi to a few of the people I’d met and listened to a few “things I accidentally said in front of the Reverend"-type jokes, but I could tell I wasn’t all that welcome. And I knew why. For the directors there, this was their one night to be with others who, just like them, live among the dead. They could feel free to have a good time, far from their hometowns, far from company who expect them to only ever comport themselves with the highest dignity and attitude of reverence.

The next day, on my flight home, I thought about how one of the people at that conference—maybe someone I had met, or maybe their son or daughter or apprentice—might be the last person to ever touch my failed body. I looked around the plane. Someone in one of these seats, snoozing, working on their laptop, will undoubtedly be tucked into a coffin or put into a cremator or even, one day, bathed in alkali by someone I just shook hands with or napped next to during the presentation on corpse hair-removal.

The truth is, I’ve never been to a funeral. I’ve been fortunate in life that only grandparents of mine have passed away—neither parent, no friends, no teachers. Each time one of my grandparents has died, I’ve been too far away to be able to attend their funerals. I wish I’d known this then, but you can now videoconference in to a funeral, and witness the remembrances and recessionals, the condolences and appreciations, all of it floating through the digital ether as you sit and watch in a living room half-a-world away.

For this type of service though you would need the Platinum Package, which would be an extra 400 dollars. But you can’t really put a price on that, can you?

Max Rivlin-Nadler is a founding editor of Full Stop Magazine. He can be reached here.

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And you know, God bless him!

It is, of course, quite sobering when a person wakes up and has to dip into his own bank account rather than the fortunes of a giant corporation. But that independent responsibility is precisely what drives Ford now. In May, he made news by selling an Andy Warhol self-portrait for $32.6 million (more than double what it was expected to fetch), spending the profit on stores in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. He had met with—and rejected—outside investors. “What I want is the freedom to say, I really like fashion and I’m going to come back my way and never have some corporate person say, ‘But you can’t do it that way.’ My goal,” he enunciates with dead seriousness, “is to be like Armani and Chanel.”

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But first? MoveOn.org showed up.

MoveOn.org has tried to make the Target story its own, at times bumbling into the bear traps set for it. One can almost smell the salivation of the Wall Street Journal writers who framed it like so: "The campaign against Target was orchestrated by liberal-advocacy group MoveOn.org." No, actually, it wasn't.

The Journal story goes on to quote Ilyse Hogue, who uses the opportunity to pun: "We made Target the target." In the process, MoveOn.org scrubbed much of the gay rights outrage, moving the focus to just another red-state-blue-state my-team-your-team Mission Swiftboat Accomplished debate. In the end, Ms. Hogue demanded Target stop "meddling in our elections." One assumes she then tore off in the Mystery Machine.

Those in Minnesota might be left wondering where MoveOn's Target boycott was two years ago when the corporation and its executives were the largest benefactors of Norm Coleman's now legendary campaign against Al Franken. (Coleman, by the way, supports a gay-equality-banning constitutional amendment and, as St. Paul's mayor, refused to endorse the Twin Cities Pride.)

But that's not the point, is it? Yesterday, a MoveOn.org email hit inboxes saying "We need resources to pay for these high-profile tactics. If we can raise $150,000-the same amount as Target donated to a right-winger-we're confident we can break through the media chatter and spin." One "high-profile" tactic proposed by MoveOn? "Skywriting above Target's headquarters."

Despite being twisted into a Citizens United showboat by MoveOn, the Target fiasco is really about the corporation's claim of "unwavering" support for gay equality.

* * *

The pro-gay rights Human Rights Campaign is up a creek without a paddle. It's CEI ratings of businesses were the one thing it held over Target. Now devastated in meaning, with Target's gay-facing PR already blown to smithereens, HRC's challenge is like a fart in the room, embarrassing the one who did it, laughed at by the one who heard it.

One might wonder why HRC's outrage has not been backed by PFLAG, (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Inc.), a gay advocacy group with over 200,000 members and over 500 US affiliates. PFLAG has yet to even acknowledge the Target matter. Surprising given the organization's official policy statement on marriage equality, stating that PFLAG opposes "any attempts at either the federal or state level to introduce constitutional amendments restricting marriage to heterosexual couples, rendering LGBT people second-class citizens" and its recent statement regarding the Prop 8 overturn: "The right of gay and lesbian couples to wed on an equal legal basis with heterosexual couples has long stirred opposition not only among social conservatives but also among a much broader swath of society. But in the time since the landmark California Supreme Court ruling legalized gay marriage, a significant social shift seems to have occurred."

PFLAG's silence is especially confusing regarding the involvement of Randi Reitan. The gay-rights activist (and mother to a gay son) was widely known in Minneapolis as a "PFLAG mom" long before she became the public face of the Target protest. Reitan's essays had even appeared in PFLAG publications.

PFLAG's silence might have something to do with Brad Wagner. Wagner is billed as Target's "diversity consultant." His consulting duties appear to include being the good gay face of Target in its time of need. When those 250,000 signatures were delivered to Target on Friday, Wagner was trotted out, along with Alexis Kantor-one of the co-chairs of Target's gay and lesbian business council and reported in the press as an actual bona fide lesbian-to collect the ballots and placate the outraged. For his part, Wagner offered his own apology (?) for Target: "We're sorry that this decision affected people that we did not intend. Or we did not anticipate for it to intend."

It just happens that Wagner also sits on the board of the Twin Cities PFLAG, to which Target is a primary donor. Wagner and PFLAG did not return multiple requests for comment.

The twisted mind-screw is that-the money relationships between corporations and advocacy groups they support and depend on for street cred aside-there is a fundamental question to be asked about how much can be expected from Target's leadership going forward given their personal beliefs. This is especially true of Target's most powerful man, CEO Gregg Steinhafel.

* * *

Steinhafel himself maybe finds his guidance as much in faith as in a balance sheet. Though an extremely private person, a few details point to a man and a family involved in a particular strain of Christianity well beyond that of simply going to church on Sunday.

When it comes to leadership advice, Steinhafel endorsed Rev. Tim Geoffrion's spiritual life coaching and leadership consulting, which combines "relevant biblical teaching" with "leadership consulting." The Target CEO also found guidance with Terry Esau's "Breathing exercises with God" program which "nudges human hearts to willingly say,... 'I want to become the brush in Your hand, Jesus.'" Steinhafels endorsement called the lifestyle exercises espoused by Esau "a better way to live."

It must be noted that there is no evidence that Steinhafel's spiritual guides are outwardly gay-hostile-after all, Geoffrion has even appeared on HuffPo.

But there's more. Steinhafel and his wife are also top-line donors to to the Minnesota organization "TreeHouse," which provides "faith-based hope and guidance to hurting teens, alumni, and parents during difficult times." Steinhafel also serves on its board. The organization's annual report highlights one teen's story, "Before I began TreeHouse, I didn't even believe in God. Because of TreeHouse, I now have a relationship with Him. I know that God has something great in store for my life." Another's success story goes, "One day I was meeting with a staff member and we began to talk about God. I became a Christian that day and I remember feeling for the first time in my life, I truly belonged somewhere."

Steinhafel's daughter attended Wheaton College, a Christian school that signs all incoming students to a Biblical "Community Covenant" which condemns homosexual behavior. Wheaton expels any homosexual it identifies. The school's Center for Applied Christian Ethics currently includes resources on homosexuality such as "Science and the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates," which classifies homosexuality as a "crisis," and "Understanding Homosexuality" which argues that "The removal of homosexuality from the DSM does not and cannot conclusively decide the issue of the pathological status of homosexuality."

Despite the $40,000-plus tuition per year, the Steinhafels likely did not qualify for financial aid.

After Wheaton, the Target CEO's daughter landed a position as a Target Senior Business Analyst for the retailer. She also attended the Focus on the Family Institute. That's the same Focus on the Family that offers "counseling for unwanted same-sex attractions." (The Target CEO declined an opportunity to discuss this.)

* * *

Steinhafel also chose not to discuss his vague claim regarding timing of "a strategic review and analysis of our decision-making process for financial contributions."

Target's current corporate statement explaining its civic activity in the realm of political giving states, "Corporate political contributions and related activities are reviewed regularly with our senior management" and that before being made, donations are checked to "determine that the contribution is consistent with our business interests and, under the circumstances, is an appropriate means of advancing our public policy position. This determination is made either by our vice president and Government Affairs, executive vice president and general counsel or our chairman and chief executive officer." (Emphasis, mine)

Those last two, chairman and CEO, are the same person (Steinhafel). The executive vice president and general counsel also happen to be the same person, Timothy Baer. Baer's personal giving history? Thousands to Erik Paulson, Mitch McConnell, John Kline and the anti-gay rights Freedom First PAC-and, of course, Norm Coleman. He has donated to a couple pro-gay rights candidates. For example, in 2006, he gave Ember Junge $250.

That leaves just one other person in Target's political giving review process beside Baer and Steinhafel. Target's VP of government affairs is Matt Zabel, the former chief of staff for South Dakota Senator John Thune. Beside deciding where Target's political money goes, as Target's government affairs head, Zabel, an anti-gay equality acolyte, is the corporation's official legislation-facing representative.

Just to be clear, the Target CEO's commitment to gay equality includes hiring, into one of its highest positions, the former chief of staff for a politician who supported a constitutional amendment banning gay equality as well as a law banning gay adoption. Meanwhile, upon his hiring, Baer said, "Matt brings broad knowledge on a range of important policy issues...."

In retrospect, other Target decisions seem suspect. After giving grants to Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and South Dakota for every year since the late 1970s, Target's foundation suddenly stopped in 2001. That came a year after Target's change from Dayton family ownership in 2000. Yet, the Target Foundation had made these grants for years despite a prolonged boycott effort by anti-abortion activists. The change in policy was attributed to the Target Foundation coming under new leadership-coinciding with Gregg Steinhafel becoming Target's CEO.

Then there is Target's recent "conscience clause," which allows Target pharmacists to cite religious beliefs and refuse to fill emergency contraception prescriptions without penalty. Tom Emmer, whom Steinhafel has supported with Target's corporate money and his own family's, authored Minnesota "conscience cause" legislation.

If the three people who completely control the purse strings to Target's political giving all favor conservative Republicans, with one finding his core guidance in Christianity and another (the company's political liaison) having actively worked to promote anti-gay equality politics, is it philosophically reasonable to believe the Target CEO's support for the GLBT community could be, in Steinhafel's own words,"unwavering?" In fact, from Target's own "conscience clause," should it be expected to be?

Steinhafel has been adamant that the recent donations made by Target to support anti-gay candidates like Emmer, Bachmann, Roy Blunt, etc., were solely with business interests in mind.

So we thought it was right to ask Steinhafel directly: "do you personally support a law in Minnesota legalizing gay marriage, as well as national legalization of gay marriage?"

The Target CEO's response (via Target Communications)? "Unfortunately, we are unable to address the points or the questions in your e-mail to Mr. Steinhafel."

That is unfortunate. But more happily, it's a question Mr. Steinhafel's daughter will not have to worry about during her wedding at his church a month from now.

Those gay Americans who are legally denied equal rights by the herd of politicians Target has zealously supported, including those who it now includes in its highest ranks, can take solace in the happiness soon to be enjoyed by the Steinhafel family. As told by the Target CEO's soon-to-be son-in-law:

"She turned to see my mom on the top deck of a 3 story, 17th century, wooden steam boat. We both stood and watched as my Mom threw a large white sign over the side of the railing. It read: "Love of my life..." Then my dad popped up from behind the railing and threw over the next sign, "Be my wife." [Her] mom was next; her's read, "I love you forever." And finally, [Her] dad threw over a sign that read, "Will you marry me...?"

I turned to [her], told her absolutely nothing of what I had planned to tell her at the massage but, instead, all that I truly loved about her, and then paused, got down on my knee, pulled out a ring that looked just like everything she had just told me she wanted, and asked her to marry me.

Her answer was 'yes.' It was the happiest moment of my life."

In 2007, Abe Sauer briefly worked for a temp agency that placed workers with Target, though he never worked there. Instead, he briefly temped at Best Buy. You can reach him at abesauer AT gmail DOT com.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Gregg Steinhafel attended Wayzata Community Church. While Steinhafel chose not to deny this claim when it was presented to him during fact checking, church officials have confirmed it. It is still true that Steinhafel's daughter will be married at Wayzata Community Church on Sept. 5.

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