Read this

[bktheirregular]

When I read this article, I could literally feel the blood draining away from my face.

Read it. NOW. And then try and tell me we're still living in the land of the free.

ETA: In my shock, I forgot to credit the original link to Atrios.

Fear, fire, foes! AWAKE!

Comments

[aadler]

Sorry, I read it and I don’t see what’s supposed to be the big deal. Why is it okay for everybody in the world to use the legal system to suppress, oppress, ridicule and defame religion (of all types, but ESPECIALLY Christian), but the moment someone tries to use the law to protect religious belief, there are instant cries of alarm about a new Inquisition?

The land of the free was founded, in large part, by people who came here to practice their religion without persecution by the state. Freedom of religion, not prohibition of religion.

[bktheirregular]

Freedom of which religion? And what if you aren't a member of the "majority religion"?

(Not to mention that they conveniently ignore those Founding Fathers who didn't happen to be Christians.)

One religion is being set above others, and being given preference - even while lip service is being paid to dissent, this resolution is a clear step towards laws respecting an establishment of religion.

The Founding Fathers were very worried about laws respecting an establishment of religion. Which is why it's the first thing covered in the Bill of Rights.

Prayer in public schools, for example. What of those who don't pray in an approved way? Or those who don't pray at all? The moment a particular religion, however widely the term "religion" is cast, receives preferential treatment by a government body, the very factors that led to the need for the Pilgrims to escape England, with its state-approved, state-mandated Church, take root here, in a land which the disenfranchised came to as a refuge.

I'm an agnostic. (Not an atheist; there's a difference.) Which makes me a minority. And legislation such as this terrifies me out of my skull.

[aadler]

Obviously religious persecution is a possibility (though these days Muslim countries have the monopoly on religious intolerance). However, that doesn’t mean that every expression of religion automatically leads to persecution. It isn’t an either-or proposition, there’s a very large ground in the middle. Those people in America opposing religion — and using the tools of government to enforce its suppression — have been having it their way for coming on forty years now. I don’t think a single motion in the opposite direction is an automatic omen of the Apocalypse.

[bktheirregular]

If it was a single motion in that direction, you might have a point. But it's not; I don't have the links on hand right now, but what worries me is that between coercive proselytizing in the Air Force Academy, judges defying the federal government to claim that American law is based on the Ten Commandments (despite the direct conflict between the First Commandment and the First Amendment), a high-order pundit claiming that the proper course of United States foreign policy is to bomb Muslim countries to rubble and convert the survivors to Christianity, it is not isolated.

What scares me is not the incident; what scares me is the pattern.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

The law would not "protect religious belief" in general, it would privilege one religion in particular. Joshua Holland at Alternet points out (http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/33056/) that the purpose of the bill, which *cannot* stand up to legal scrutiny, is to help Christians feel persecuted. Judging by you, it seems to be working.