WTF, America?????

 I, as you know, am a big old heathen.

I have friends of a lot of different persuasions …………….. Jewish,  Muslim, Hindu,  B’Hai, Christian  ………. all good people with loving hearts and, for the most part, open minds.

In the video below you will find one of the worst examples of Christianity I have seen in a LONG time. This is definitely the type of  person/”preacher” who  puts a black mark on Christianity and ruins it for everybody……he actually manages to make Fred Phelps and his merry band of Westboro Baptist assholes look measured and thoughtful.

I don’t think I know ANYONE wouldn’t kick this guy in the jimmy for spewing his bile in their church.

Feast your eyes on one Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona (suPRISE!!!!!).

Yo, Pastor Anderson?

While I would certainly still think he’s a Grade-A Doucheyacht, I could totally overlook the rantings of this CrazyMan in Christian Clothes………if he didn’t so aptly and nakedly reflect the very sentiments that the majority of the people who were/still ARE seeking the Republican nomination held within their thinly veiled hearts.

Recently, Rick Santorum was welcomed to a Louisiana stage by a man who had THIS to say:

Rick Santorum , a man who wants to be President of the United   States,  applauded Dennis Terry’s loathsome, bigoted speech, and it is sadly par for the course for the Frothy one. Just a month prior to this latest endorsement of unhinged religious  zealotry, Santorum publicly declared that John F. Kennedy’s  1960 “made him want to throw up” because Kennedy was ‘banning religion from the public square”……………… proving once again that Rick “Homeschool Those Young ‘Uns!” Santorum’s grasp of history and reality is about as tight a an 80 year-old whore’s vagina on a super-slender Tampax.

Which is to say, NOT VERY.

It is so incredibly ironic that a rabidly hard-line Catholic man running for President in a country that, even though it has a sizeable Catholic population, still has a lot of misconceptions about and mistrust for Catholics and their perceived allegiance to Rome and the Vatican over their own country is taking the position that the first Catholic President of the United States was basically an atheist……..because in order to assuage the fears of the 1960′s Catholicism-wary electorate he had to  come out and say “hey, I know you don’t trust us wacky Catholics, but I swear, I’m not going to turn the White House into Vatican West and the Pope is not going to come over and re-write the Constitution to make you all pray the Rosary and  take part in Confirmation ceremonies – it’s cool. I can be Catholic on my own time and you REAL Christians can carry on as usual, wink, wink.”.

Rick Santorum has definitely let his  15 minutes on the 2012 GOP Frontrunner-Go-Round go to his head, because polls show that even with his recent primary wins, the average republican voter finds his Catholicism only slightly less troubling than Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, which is just as troubling as Barack Obama’s Secret Kenyan-Muslimism, but hey – when in doubt, go with the white guy.

He might be a Secret Mexican, but at least he was born on this continent!!!!!!!

Folks like David Barton and Bryan Fischer, who believe that Evangelical Conservative Christianism and the Seven Mountains Dominionist philosophy  should be the centerpiece of American government are  rounding up more and more  money and followers, who in turn are putting pressure on more and more political candidates to bend to their will or face  their wrath. People who should really have more sense are bowing to the pressure to sign “pledges” that affirm the “Christian” lifestyle while simultaneously laying out faulty and offensive premises like  slavery being better for black families than the Civil Rights act and women being better off when they stay home and let the man handle everything. Brave men and women who defend this country are being called disgraces to their uniforms because of who they love, while conservative candidates who trade in wives more often than most people do cars are being held up as an example of “traditional” marriage.  And now we are seeing their influence on full bloom, affecting the nation’s education standards  and now ,as the debate over contraception coverage  has given new life to bills across the country aimed at allowing people to discriminate and,  even more horrifically, withhold pertinent medical information and services on “conscience”, these dominionists have  stealthily launched an all-out assault on  the legislative process. They realize that while it is a slow process, the winds of change are blowing hard on issues like gay equality, and while abortion remains a constant battle, it is an issue they just don’t have the traction to defeat outright. But they have discovered that they CAN make a religious end-run around them, and there has been a flurry of activity to  use religion as the device to work around civil and reproductive rights issues.

If some of this legislation passes,   a doctor who thinks you might choose to abort a malformed or diseased fetus,would be within their rights  to not  inform you of birth defects on the premise that  providing you with adverse test results might lead you to make a choice THEY are morally opposed to. If a doctor objects to abortion, they could not be disciplined for refusing to provide rape victims with the “morning after” pill. If an employer has a religious objection to birth control, they could fire a woman who asks for contraceptive coverage. Many are loudly complaining of a plot by the government to “force” birth control upon people  - Michelle Bachmann says “effectively we’re becoming a dictatorship in that we don’t elect a president anymore, we elect a health care dictator, who we saw with Barack Obama with contraceptives.”  (Michele notably also said God told her to run for President, and we all saw how Punk’d she was on THAT score, so……….STFU, Michele), which shows what little grasp she  and many people have of  what the actual issue is  or how the insurance is supposed to work.

We have been pushed by the Religious Right over the wall that separates Church and State, and are free-falling from a ledge that juts over a pile of jagged, unforgiving rocks known as THEOCRACY .

Ironically, the ones doing the pushing are the same ones who so often take pains to remind their foes that America is a republic and not a democracy…………… and fail to see how their actions fly in the face of true republicanism.

Via Lexrex.com:

In a Democracy, The Individual, and any group of Individuals composing any Minority, have no protection against the unlimited power of The Majority. It is a case of Majority-over-Man. ~snip~

A Republic, on the other hand, has a very different purpose and an entirely different form, or system, of government. Its purpose is to control The Majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The Individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The Minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general.

The  extreme right of the GOP, working hard to re-establish America as a Majority White  Evangelical Christian Nation, has joined with groups like the AFA, NOM, and Focus on the Family, to name a few, to push an agenda of religion-based politics that unlike the intent of a repiblic, seeks to impose a narrow, majority-rule styled government where the views, needs, liberties and rights of the minority are not only unprotected, they simply cease to exist. The ultra-right GOP has become the real-life version of Star Trek’s Borg….we must all assimilate into their white, heterosexual, Christian male-dominated mold, or be crushed like the unworthy, inferior beings the GOP would like us to believe we are. There is no desire to safeguard “The Individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The Minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general”………..only the will to turn America into the very theocracy the pilgrims originally fled in England. The Founding Fathers, contrary to what the likes of Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Sean Hanity, Michelle Malkin,  Bryan Fischer, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, and a host of other conservative figures say, most definitely intended for  there to be a distinct separation between the government and the church…….ANY church. Christian,  Jewish, Muslim, or any other, religion was never meant to go hand in hand with the government of this country, and no religion was ever meant to be elevated above all others, either. Religion was meant to be a private matter for citizens, not a cudgel to control the masses with.

It is galling to see groups like NOM being exposed for nakedly race- baiting in order to gin up support for their discriminatory legislative efforts. It is galling to see state legislatures voting down anti-bullying laws and basically saying “my kids wouldn’t have to pick on your suicidal kids if they weren’t so damn GAY…..your overly sensitive kids wouldn’t be offing themselves if you’d just beat the gay out of them like any good, God-fearing parent would.”. It is galling to know that elected officials are bowing to bigoted pressure groups instead of listening to the voices of the people they represent.  It is galling to know that the GOP believes religion and government should mix when it comes to sexuality, reproduction, and education, but should remain totally separate when it comes to healthcare and feeding the poor. Theocracy is coming, and like the theocracy that the first colonists fled from, it wants to keep the citizens uneducated, fearful, and subservient serfs to the aristocracy .

I am not religious, but I am NOT anti-religion. Religion – all religion, whether you worship Jesus, Chtulu, Xenu, or a rock  - has its place, in churches and homes and hearts across the nation. But it does NOT belong in our government, and no one religion should be elevated above others, just as no one race, sex, or sexual orientation should be, either. EVERYONE in this country should have the same rights, privileges, and protections regardless of their faith or lack thereof.

That’s what the Founding Fathers intended, and that is the way it should remain.