Yesterday, I received an email newsletter from Eric Maisel, and he shared a link for an organization that helps members of the U.S. Military secure their right to religious freedom.
Read all about it here.
Disturbing stuff.
When I lived in Texas, and the incompetent moron currently residing in the White House was governor of that state, there was a controversy regarding Wiccans, who wanted to practice their religion on an army base, meeting with official opposition. George W. Bush, being the informed and compassionate fellow that he is, said that Wicca is not a religion.
Which is when I began to deeply despise him.
No surprise to me that under his supposed leadership--is it even fair to refer to the cluster fuck of the last seven and a half years as "leadership"?--our military is faced with issues of religious freedom, as detailed in that website. I said back then that people who are willing and likely to die for their country ought to have the freedom to worship how they wish. Of course, the right to religious freedom is guaranteed to all of us, serving in the military or not, by our Constitution. It seems especially heinous to me to deny freedom of religion to the very people who are willing to die to preserve it.
Whether or not I believe the reasons for our military presence in any given foreign country are valid, men and women are dying for their country, and they ought to be secure in worshipping Jesus, Inanna, purple unicorns, Flynn the Leprechaun, or nothing at all.
The constant push of religion--and in this case, in almost every case in my corner of the world, Christianity--into every area of life, into every cranny of our discourse, wearies me. Daniel and I went to the Farmington Founders Festival on Saturday, and we walked by some church group's booth, where a woman called out across the river of people, "Do you need healing? I can pray for you!"
Well...if she's able to heal random strangers just by praying for them, why the hell isn't she set up in some oncology ward, praying her little heart out and healing people right and left?
The absolute, unadulterated nonsense permeates everything with its unholy stench, and I heartily confess I'm completely fed up with it.
I have no issue with individual Christians or other religious devotees believing in their deity, celebrating that deity's festivals, living their lives by the dictates of their religion. Believe in Jesus, love Jesus, worship Jesus, die for Jesus, I don't care.
But depriving people of their right to not believe in their god? Depriving people of their right to marry whomever they wish? Endeavoring to use the military as their army of missionaries to spread the gospel?
The line has to be drawn!
Religious freedom is sacred to me. The government should never control what we profess to believe. The founders of our Nation were very articulately clear upon that. Christians are becoming more and more dangerous because they refuse to back down. They refuse to accept that they do not have the right to dictate to the rest of us how we think.
As much as I find Christianity's doctrine to be disturbing and vastly irrelevant, I would never support restricting the freedom of Christians to believe in it. I'd like the same courtesy.
And I'd like those of us who still value religious and other freedom to wake up and not take quite so kindly to these people pushing and pushing and pushing against the edifices of our liberty. They do not have the right to take away our freedom not to believe. They do not.
Copyright 2008 Melissa LaFavers