There are a bunch of folks who insist that America is a "Christian Nation," It is hard to understand just what they mean by that since their definition of "Christian" is by no means universal. Rick and Newt call themselves Christian. Mitt's Mormonism is a kind of fuzzy Christian. Rush claims to be a believer, as does Bill, Ann, and Michael. Then again, Obama makes the same claim, and Jimmy, as did Martin. "Christian Nation" could mean pretty much anything. But really, those who claim it the loudest are from the right edge of our society, and what they mean is Conservative / Republican / Tea Party / Christian. (CRPTC)
I am an atheist and would like to argue for America being a secular, educated, first world society of human progress, civil rights, and democracy. I would like to be a member of an enlightened society on the cutting edge of human advancement in science, technology, justice and compassion. And I would like to think that those who make the loudest demands that American IS a Christian Nation and needs to be MORE Christian as simply blowing smoke out of their partisan political asses. But the more I look around the more I wonder.
America expends more resources on its war machine than all other peoples on the earth, combined. America has more nuclear weapons trained on the world than any other society. This nation has been at war for 216 of the 236 years since it was founded. That is more than 91% of the time. I will be 57 this year. US wars in my lifetime? Vietnam of course; (1961 - 1973). A complete waste of more than 58,000 American lives with Vietnamese casualties numbering in the millions. There was Granada (1983) and Panama (1989). Both military actions launched by the US into countries that posed absolutely no threat to our nation. 1991 saw the First Gulf War - the one where US combat troops saved the dictatorship of Kuwait from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and returned the al-Sabah dynasty to power. (Up until then Hussein was an ally.) I remember Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1994 - 95) and Kosovo (1999). Bush II started the war in Afghanistan that rages to this day, and lied us into the war in Iraq in 2003. What ever else he was, his claims of being a good Christian Man where never much challenged by the Christians of America.
Our Christian Nation is the world's largest weapons supplier by a wide margin, accounting for 39% of the trade in war. The US recently sold $30 billion worth of weapons to the Islamic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia. Of course we have sold untold billions of dollars of weapons to Israel over the years so they can fend off their Islamic enemies. Buyers of American weapons include Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Egypt, India and Pakistan. Do any of those strike you as particularly stable places in the world? Cluster bombs and landmines are staples of the US arms industry. We set the standard when it comes to war profiteering.
Maybe, if you worship the war god of an ancient band of nomads, endless war and a lust for weapons is what you get.
In America 715 of every 100,000 people is in prison, the highest per-capita rate in the world. We also have the harshest sentencing laws in the first world with thousands enduring the endless torture of solitary confinement. The failed "War on Drugs" is largely responsible for packing our jails to overflowing. Say one word about abandoning the "war" that isn't working and howls of protest will rise from the Christian / Corporate / Republican party.
Maybe, if you worship a god who will send most of humanity to hell for all of eternity, packed prisons of endless abuse seems perfectly reasonable.
Nearly 100,000 Americans will be killed or wounded in gun violence this year. I haven't checked but I'll bet a cup of coffee with anyone that a majority of the Christian politicians are upstanding members of the NRA. Not one of them is going to speak against the violence of video games or movies marketed to kids. Make a movie with two attractive people mowing down a mall full of teens using assault weapons and hand grenades and the Powers-That-Be will hang an "R" rating on the film. (Or maybe a PG-13 if the flying body parts are kept to a minimum.)
Take those same two attractive people, put them in a different movie and show them having sex, (particularly if the guy's erection makes an appearance on screen) no violence, no flying body parts; and NC-17 will be the rating. In this Christian nation violence isn't much of an issue, but sex is. Gay people, single people sleeping together (and using birth control), married people having affairs (unless one is a Christian running for President), according to the Christians these are the true threats to American youth. Western society is said to be collapsing under the weight of all this non-biblically-approved humping and bumping and something must be done! So birth control now becomes the issue, Christians protesting that some minuscule bit of their medical insurance premium might off-set the costs of a young women buying The Pill.
I don't recall anyone complaining about a minuscule bit of their medical insurance premiums subsidising the cost of Viagra. Nor have there been any complaints that much larger chunks of Christian insurance premiums subsidise the cost of using tobacco, over eating, or abusing alcohol. On the surface that might be taken as nothing but massive hypocrisy on the part of the bitching Christians, and it is, but from a different perspective.
The Catholic Church, religious home for about 1/4 of the American adult population, has an impenetrable glass ceiling when it comes to women. It is a matter of deepest principle that women be absolutely forbidden to hold positions of leadership within the church. In America a group of virgin old men sat before a panel in the highest reaches of our government and expounded on the proper way all women should be required to live their lives. That panel was made up of Christian political leaders, not all of then Catholic. The current assault on birth control isn't really a sex issue, its about male dominance.
Maybe, if you worship a god of institutional Patriarchy, sexism is what you get. And if you worship a bible where the very first story includes the idea that nakedness is an evil that must be covered up, a weird and completely twisted set of sexual rules seems to come along with the oppression of women.
Christians in America openly talk of their "black churches" and their "white churches", apparently without a hint of understanding the institutionalized segregation such talk suggests. Black American Christians apparently want little to do with their White American counterparts. A good many White American Christians seem to feel the same. Southern Baptists, the quintessential American Protest denomination, formed specifically to reject the civil rights movement. Mitt Romney's Mormonism was explicitly racist until 1978. That was the year god removed the curse on black people. (Yep; 1978, curse on black people, and this is the guy to be POTUS?)
The Christian god is all about tribes, with some of them approved and some of them not. In certain places and at certain times that same god has approved genocide and slavery. Maybe, if you worship such a god, racism wouldn't seem to be much of an issue.
The Christians on the Supreme Court have decided there is no such thing as political corruption. Somehow the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution of the United States that democracy is served when elections and politicians are sold to the highest bidder. At the same time they discovered that god breathed the breath of life into International Corporations and made them "people".
The Christians who run corporation and support Christian politicians celebrate pure greed as the proper motivation for an economy. It would seem heaven is a haven of capitalism. Child labor? Bring it back; somehow it will be good for our kids. Minimum wage? Bad. Just because a person is working 40 (or 50 or 60) hours a week doesn't mean they should be living above the poverty level. Universal health care? Apparently the sick only get cared for after they die assuming they have invited Jesus into their heart. If not they are going to hell anyway...so what does it matter if they die moaning in pain for the lack of insurance? (Insurance being, like every business, in the business of making profit first and only.) Regulate Wall Street and Banks, (who have deep ties to the arms and defence industries)? And prevent the transfer of god's blessing to those same Christian business leaders and politicians? Not much chance of that happening.
Maybe, if you worship a god who demands tithes, rewards kings with wealth and land, and lives in a city of gold, crony capitalism somehow becomes the moral way to run an economy. No wonder money is so close to the heart of American Christianity.
With the help of Christian leadership our society now frowns on education. Science is dismissed by people who believe in magic but love their air conditioning, cell phone and Internet connection. (Where, it would seem, the good Christians of America flock to XXX rated web sights. I guess they love their fantasy worlds; be it heavenly dwellings or heavenly bodies.) Money spent on public education is routinely derided and teachers, particularly if they form a union, are openly despised by the Christian political leadership. (Sports figures on the other hand, particularly Christian sports figures who play football and give Jesus the glory when they beat the snot out of their opponents, are held up as role models.) College professors earn an added helping of loathing from these same leaders. Christians prefer being believing people over being educated, and insist that the rest of us stay uneducated as well. (Even if we are not interested in believing.)
The original sin in the bible involved eating from the tree of knowledge. Maybe it isn't a puzzle that Christians loath education.
America has her Bible Belt; Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, George, Alabama, North and South Carolina. Run that list through your brain; any of those states stand out as passionate defenders of universal human rights? Governors, state legislatures, judges...any heroes of equal access and equal opportunity for all Americans jump up at you from that crowd? Do any stand out as ardent defenders of scientific inquiry and dedicated to providing a quality education for every child in their respective States? Fuck, can you think of a single one who would stand up in his or her respective State House and insist that the earth is, in fact, billions of years old and evolution is how biology works?
Is there any doubt that virtually every one of those Governors, legislators, and judges are Christians in good standing of their local congregations?
Having exited the Reservation to the left, one would think I lay most of the blame for America's abandoning the liberal, democratic hope for human kind at the feet of the Tea Party Republican party. And I do regard them as the most blatant servants of Corporate Christianity. But President Obama is an outspoken Christian, standing by his faith as firmly as President Bush. Obama is fighting secretive drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and is encouraging the war fever that is in full bloom this spring with Iran the likely target. There are 11 countries around the world where more than 1,000 American military personal are deployed. Anyone heard the current Administration suggest some of those troops come home?
Wall Street remains largely untouched by Obama's Justice Department. Full rights for gay people is still off the table. Though the Right hate his health care plan, it was largely written by insurance providers and nods to HMOs. Single payer health care can't even be mentioned in the US today, though it works pretty well in other parts of the civilized world. I have heard of no ardent environmentalists, rabid women's rights advocates, radical labor leaders, or non-crony-capitalism economists who think of Obama as representing their views.
I don't recall that Obama has ever mentioned the war on drugs or America's burgeoning prisons. Does anyone think of him as standing against the growing assaults on civil liberties in the same of Homeland Security?
From my point of view Obama is in full partnership with Christian America.
That the far right Christians hate the middle right Christianity of Obama doesn't really surprise me.
The history of Christianity involves many a sectarian war. Though perhaps it is more accurate to say that is the history of any who worship the god of Abraham; Jews, Christians and Muslims. Has there been any point in history where those who worship this god have not be at war with themselves?
This isn't to say that every Christian in the Land is racist, sexist, loves violence, worships greed, and supports war. (Though I would say exactly that of Mitt, Rick, Rush, and Newt. It seems a bit odd to accuse Obama of racism, but he certainly loves his wars and is a friend of Wall Street.)
But the religion has these as institutional possibilities. Christians who are racist can easily find churches where racism is never openly challenged and is often subtly (or overtly) supported. To a greater or lesser degree sexism is explicit in nearly all Christian expression. There are very few churches that will stand against sexist attitudes.
Christians do a little better when it comes to opposing war, that meaning a small minority voice opposition. But when Christian political leaders are looking for a votes, not one of them suggests cutting the Pentagon's budget. (Knowing full well that most Christians will not vote for them if they do.) Indeed, Christians will vote for a war monger even if they, personally, oppose war; so long as the war monger hates gay people and supports "traditional family values."
Maybe America is a Christian Nation after all.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Wisdom
I think a lot about wisdom, what it is, how each can gain a little, what it means to share it in a society. Recently I have been thinking about it more than usual; for the obvious reason. By all appearances humanity has abandoned anything having to do with wisdom. The world is obsessed with power, oppression, hate, greed and war. Religious and political leaders via for dominance. Economics is nothing but greed.
This is particularly highlighted by the current election cycle in the US. There doesn't appear to be a single wise person involved; anywhere, in either party, at any level. Which brings up the question, how would we spot a wise person if one showed up? What does it mean to be wise?
Most of us would like to claim that we would know it when we see it. Maybe. But it doesn't seem to me many of us are looking for it for ourselves; why would we expect to see it in others? So here are some of my thoughts on wisdom.
Like all attributes wisdom is a composit thing, made of overlapping characteristics that glow through many layers. I think of it is an aggregate thing as well, the result of interlocking characteristics which are, themselves, made of many layers.
One of those characteristics is understanding. Understanding starts with gathering and accepting facts and assembling the consequences of those facts into a basic kind of education. Thus is how the world exists, here is my place in it, these are the relationships between things and people and events. Such an education is added to other educations based on different sets of facts, merged and honed they become knowledge. A knowledgeable person may or may not be an outright expert in one discipline or another, but such a one is well grounded and good at spotting the true from the false. Mix in enough knowledge with humility and empathy and there is understanding.
Understanding is a necessary thing and we don't have near enough of it in the world, but makes up only the intellectual layers of wisdom. Understanding is the mind's contributions, if you will allow me to put it so. Wisdom has vast practical layers as well; callouses, bruises, hours of sweat dripping off one's nose, hard decisions and taking responsibility for both the expected and unexpected consequences of those decisions. There is no wisdom outside of experience. Experience is the body's contribution, added to that of the mind. It may also be the hardest part of wisdom to accumulate as it can't be rushed, circumvented, ignored or faked. One can be smart without experience; talented, gifted, expert even, but one can't be wise.
Yet even a person with layers of experience laid over those of much understanding may still not know much of wisdom. They can have the mind's contributions of understanding kneaded into the emotional leaven of humility and empathy. They can have the experience of years etched into the skin around their eyes. But there is one more layer needed, the contribution of the soul if you will.
Love.
Without love the very core of wisdom is lost; understanding is dry and without context; experience is largely just suffering. Understanding and experience tempered by love leads to wisdom.
Which is why there is so little wisdom in politics or commerce. Politics seeks only power. Commerce runs on greed. To suggest that love should be part of the calculations of either discipline is to provoke nothing but snorts of derision from the politician and the business exec. And I don't know if it has always been this way, but in today's world politics is mostly about war. From nearly any vantage point humanity's primary interest is in preparing for, fighting, recovering from and preparing for the the next armed conflict. Commerce makes much of it profits from supporting this same war effort. Love, and thus wisdom, are not much in demand in a world enamored by war.
Religion would seem a place to find wisdom, the religious make big claims of love and equally big claims of understanding god. They make a claim of wisdom they rarely exhibit. The Pope is a good example. In a world full of deep poverty, exploitation, corruption and war, he makes most of his headlines deriding gay marriage. Really? He doesn't have anything he thinks more pressing to address? This is his idea of sharing wisdom with a world in need?
If knowledge and love are two requisites for wisdom, religion has little chance of exhibiting any. Which is understandable since religion is mostly about exclusion, "We are god's people. You...are not." They are also pretty dismissive of any knowledge that conflices with their assumptions. Nothing much good can come from such hubris, certainly nothing as sublime as wisdom.
With politics, commerce and religion rejecting the paths to wisdom there seems little hope that humankind will do very well in the near term. That's the bad news. The good news is that individuals seems to find little spheres where they accumulate some wisdom and share it willingly. A school teacher who has the knack for motivating a few of the young minds around her; parents and students often don't think of such as being particularly wise, but they are. The practical nurse who catches the mistakes on meds and who also has that healing touch that can mean the difference between healing and faltering.
And though it is fair to say I am an anti-religious person, there are ministers and priests and religious leaders who actually do find their way to wisdom. Usually they are renegades, people who care little for doctrines and edicts, who know that love is written in lives not on parchment. The best of them, at least in my experience, have pretty much given up on practicing religion at all. A few are just one word's definition away from being non-believers, but they practice love and cherish understanding.
Those that I know who are wise are loath to lie. They cringe at the thought of unnecessary harm and are quick to forgive the frailties of those around them. To a person they show courage that boarders on heroics and they seem to be their own least concern.
Now if we could just figure out how to get them to run for office...though most of us would probably vote for the other guy.
This is particularly highlighted by the current election cycle in the US. There doesn't appear to be a single wise person involved; anywhere, in either party, at any level. Which brings up the question, how would we spot a wise person if one showed up? What does it mean to be wise?
Most of us would like to claim that we would know it when we see it. Maybe. But it doesn't seem to me many of us are looking for it for ourselves; why would we expect to see it in others? So here are some of my thoughts on wisdom.
Like all attributes wisdom is a composit thing, made of overlapping characteristics that glow through many layers. I think of it is an aggregate thing as well, the result of interlocking characteristics which are, themselves, made of many layers.
One of those characteristics is understanding. Understanding starts with gathering and accepting facts and assembling the consequences of those facts into a basic kind of education. Thus is how the world exists, here is my place in it, these are the relationships between things and people and events. Such an education is added to other educations based on different sets of facts, merged and honed they become knowledge. A knowledgeable person may or may not be an outright expert in one discipline or another, but such a one is well grounded and good at spotting the true from the false. Mix in enough knowledge with humility and empathy and there is understanding.
Understanding is a necessary thing and we don't have near enough of it in the world, but makes up only the intellectual layers of wisdom. Understanding is the mind's contributions, if you will allow me to put it so. Wisdom has vast practical layers as well; callouses, bruises, hours of sweat dripping off one's nose, hard decisions and taking responsibility for both the expected and unexpected consequences of those decisions. There is no wisdom outside of experience. Experience is the body's contribution, added to that of the mind. It may also be the hardest part of wisdom to accumulate as it can't be rushed, circumvented, ignored or faked. One can be smart without experience; talented, gifted, expert even, but one can't be wise.
Yet even a person with layers of experience laid over those of much understanding may still not know much of wisdom. They can have the mind's contributions of understanding kneaded into the emotional leaven of humility and empathy. They can have the experience of years etched into the skin around their eyes. But there is one more layer needed, the contribution of the soul if you will.
Love.
Without love the very core of wisdom is lost; understanding is dry and without context; experience is largely just suffering. Understanding and experience tempered by love leads to wisdom.
Which is why there is so little wisdom in politics or commerce. Politics seeks only power. Commerce runs on greed. To suggest that love should be part of the calculations of either discipline is to provoke nothing but snorts of derision from the politician and the business exec. And I don't know if it has always been this way, but in today's world politics is mostly about war. From nearly any vantage point humanity's primary interest is in preparing for, fighting, recovering from and preparing for the the next armed conflict. Commerce makes much of it profits from supporting this same war effort. Love, and thus wisdom, are not much in demand in a world enamored by war.
Religion would seem a place to find wisdom, the religious make big claims of love and equally big claims of understanding god. They make a claim of wisdom they rarely exhibit. The Pope is a good example. In a world full of deep poverty, exploitation, corruption and war, he makes most of his headlines deriding gay marriage. Really? He doesn't have anything he thinks more pressing to address? This is his idea of sharing wisdom with a world in need?
If knowledge and love are two requisites for wisdom, religion has little chance of exhibiting any. Which is understandable since religion is mostly about exclusion, "We are god's people. You...are not." They are also pretty dismissive of any knowledge that conflices with their assumptions. Nothing much good can come from such hubris, certainly nothing as sublime as wisdom.
With politics, commerce and religion rejecting the paths to wisdom there seems little hope that humankind will do very well in the near term. That's the bad news. The good news is that individuals seems to find little spheres where they accumulate some wisdom and share it willingly. A school teacher who has the knack for motivating a few of the young minds around her; parents and students often don't think of such as being particularly wise, but they are. The practical nurse who catches the mistakes on meds and who also has that healing touch that can mean the difference between healing and faltering.
And though it is fair to say I am an anti-religious person, there are ministers and priests and religious leaders who actually do find their way to wisdom. Usually they are renegades, people who care little for doctrines and edicts, who know that love is written in lives not on parchment. The best of them, at least in my experience, have pretty much given up on practicing religion at all. A few are just one word's definition away from being non-believers, but they practice love and cherish understanding.
Those that I know who are wise are loath to lie. They cringe at the thought of unnecessary harm and are quick to forgive the frailties of those around them. To a person they show courage that boarders on heroics and they seem to be their own least concern.
Now if we could just figure out how to get them to run for office...though most of us would probably vote for the other guy.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Gay marrage battles
If there is any battle in which I have no dog entered, it would be the continuing culture war over gay marriage. (I hate the fact that we describe everything as a "war". Can't we just have an argument about something and leave it be? Married couples do it all the time.) On this issue I am about as far off the reservation as it possible to be, watching the bru-ha-ha is mostly about seeing people at their, best, worst, and most confused.
It is hard to imagine that this war actually means much. Marriage is a fading institution. Mind you, I am a huge fan of marriage. Mine has been going on for 37 years come next week; with three grown daughters, 5 grand kids and two more on the way, I can't imagine my life having unwound any other way. But mine is not the majority story anymore, nor should anyone assume that my experience is the only or best experience for everyone. Clearly it wouldn't work very well if my romantic leanings were toward men, or my wife's toward women.
Regardless of the "war" gay people are going to love and live together without bothering to get a blessing from a church or a piece of paper from the government; just like a growing number of "straight" people. In some ways outlawing gay marriage is like trying to outlaw eating by gay people. They are going to eat anyway.
It is also an issue only because the religious keep it an issue. It is a bit like being left-handed. Not so long ago left-handed was just slightly "off." Left handed kids were forced to try and be right handed in school. Utter foolishness and completely unnecessary. Being left handed only mattered as long as right handed people tried to make everyone the same. As soon as society pulled its collective head out of its ass, left handed people just went about their lives. I can't see that being gay is any different. That someone is gay and wants to marry the person they love has no more of an effect on a straight person than a left handed person does on a righty. The utter absurdity of the religious position simply can't be over-stated.
There have been gay people throughout recorded history. (I get a big kick out of the argument that the story of David and Johnathan in the Jewish Bible is that of a passionate bi-sexual couple. One could certainly read it that way.) I know that the only real objection toward gay unions comes from religious people, and mostly from religious fundamentalists. So far as that goes I don't care. They are religious fundamentalists. Bigotry and senseless hatred are pretty much all we should expect from religious fundamentalists.
I am surprised to see so many African American church people lining up to resist civil rights for gay people. I know it is part of fundamentalist Christianity, but I never really thought of African Americans as particularly fundamentalist. They were, if memory serves, routinely bashed for being "liberal" Christians during the civil rights movement. I guess it is only oppression when it is your family, your friends, who are being shoved to the back of the bus. Even if they think that being born gay is some kind of "sin" I would have thought the African American community would chose to err on the side of acceptance and tolerance rather then side with oppression. I can't help but think that African American preachers who are leading the attack on gay marriage laws are the worst kind of hypocrites. Pass a law that states Black Americans can't get married, and listen for the howls of protest from those same pulpits.
I am equally surprised to see how many people have found the Church's doctrinal hatred of gay people as forcing their first steps away from unquestioned fidelity to religious ideology. This seems a pretty positive sign. When religions get out of whack things tend to get very ugly very quickly. It would help all of us if those following the religions abandoned the ideology at the first sign of cruelty, oppression, or hate. It is likely thousands of people abandoned their Catholic identity in the wake of the child slavery / abuse scandal and cover up. Perhaps many thousands more found the bond of power the RCC had over them somewhat lessened. That it is likely at least some people are reacting the same way to the Catholic and Protestant fundamentalists continuing hatred of gay people is a good thing. People abandoning faith when faith gets out of line is humanity's first line of defence against religious extremism.
Mostly though, I just don't get it. Of all the things in this world worth of hate, prejudice, war mongering, slavery, child abuse, poverty, religious extremism, cruelty to animals, why pick on gay people? Regardless of the religious paranoia, gay people simply don't hurt anything or anyone. Rising up to make war on them is just plain pathetic.
Which is about the only word I can come up with to describe the Republican Christan party these days...pathetic.
It is hard to imagine that this war actually means much. Marriage is a fading institution. Mind you, I am a huge fan of marriage. Mine has been going on for 37 years come next week; with three grown daughters, 5 grand kids and two more on the way, I can't imagine my life having unwound any other way. But mine is not the majority story anymore, nor should anyone assume that my experience is the only or best experience for everyone. Clearly it wouldn't work very well if my romantic leanings were toward men, or my wife's toward women.
Regardless of the "war" gay people are going to love and live together without bothering to get a blessing from a church or a piece of paper from the government; just like a growing number of "straight" people. In some ways outlawing gay marriage is like trying to outlaw eating by gay people. They are going to eat anyway.
It is also an issue only because the religious keep it an issue. It is a bit like being left-handed. Not so long ago left-handed was just slightly "off." Left handed kids were forced to try and be right handed in school. Utter foolishness and completely unnecessary. Being left handed only mattered as long as right handed people tried to make everyone the same. As soon as society pulled its collective head out of its ass, left handed people just went about their lives. I can't see that being gay is any different. That someone is gay and wants to marry the person they love has no more of an effect on a straight person than a left handed person does on a righty. The utter absurdity of the religious position simply can't be over-stated.
There have been gay people throughout recorded history. (I get a big kick out of the argument that the story of David and Johnathan in the Jewish Bible is that of a passionate bi-sexual couple. One could certainly read it that way.) I know that the only real objection toward gay unions comes from religious people, and mostly from religious fundamentalists. So far as that goes I don't care. They are religious fundamentalists. Bigotry and senseless hatred are pretty much all we should expect from religious fundamentalists.
I am surprised to see so many African American church people lining up to resist civil rights for gay people. I know it is part of fundamentalist Christianity, but I never really thought of African Americans as particularly fundamentalist. They were, if memory serves, routinely bashed for being "liberal" Christians during the civil rights movement. I guess it is only oppression when it is your family, your friends, who are being shoved to the back of the bus. Even if they think that being born gay is some kind of "sin" I would have thought the African American community would chose to err on the side of acceptance and tolerance rather then side with oppression. I can't help but think that African American preachers who are leading the attack on gay marriage laws are the worst kind of hypocrites. Pass a law that states Black Americans can't get married, and listen for the howls of protest from those same pulpits.
I am equally surprised to see how many people have found the Church's doctrinal hatred of gay people as forcing their first steps away from unquestioned fidelity to religious ideology. This seems a pretty positive sign. When religions get out of whack things tend to get very ugly very quickly. It would help all of us if those following the religions abandoned the ideology at the first sign of cruelty, oppression, or hate. It is likely thousands of people abandoned their Catholic identity in the wake of the child slavery / abuse scandal and cover up. Perhaps many thousands more found the bond of power the RCC had over them somewhat lessened. That it is likely at least some people are reacting the same way to the Catholic and Protestant fundamentalists continuing hatred of gay people is a good thing. People abandoning faith when faith gets out of line is humanity's first line of defence against religious extremism.
Mostly though, I just don't get it. Of all the things in this world worth of hate, prejudice, war mongering, slavery, child abuse, poverty, religious extremism, cruelty to animals, why pick on gay people? Regardless of the religious paranoia, gay people simply don't hurt anything or anyone. Rising up to make war on them is just plain pathetic.
Which is about the only word I can come up with to describe the Republican Christan party these days...pathetic.
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