Dear Readers,
I read through AtheistNexus.org today. One article mentioned how Texas Republicans want their state legislature to publicly endorse "reparative therapy" to help gay people "convert to heterosexuality". What is there to "repair"? Being gay isn't a " choice" and even if it was a "choice", why can't consenting adults make a "choice" that works for them that doesn't hurt anyone else? What about people who want to "convert" from heterosexuality to homosexuality? If you allow, people to " "switch" from homosexuality to heterosexuality, then shouldn't people be allowed to "become" homosexuals? Why is America so anti-choice when it comes to sexual-decision making amongst adults? Some comments on this article, which were rather off-topic mentioned how the State of Texas tries to teach Christian-based creationism to kids. If you want to teach creationism, then you need to teach the creation stories of all religions and tell them from each perspective of the religion's various denominations. Another article mentioned how atheists cannot hold public office in many Midwestern and Southern states. Tennessee requires political officials to hold belief in a deity and even more specifically in an afterlife that consists of reward and eternal punishment. I thought that our secular government wasn't supposed to promote religion over non-religious thinking? Not to mention, many political officials try to base our laws off of their personal interpretation of religion which is inappropriate.
In Texas for instance, since most Texas identify as Christians, particularly fundamentalist Christians who take the stories and rules in the Bible in a literal fashion, political leaders seem to try and base their decision on what they think is Yahweh's "will". Christians have different ideas of what they think "God's will" is. America is not a theocracy. Texas acts as if it were a theocracy in itself. Not all Texans are Christians and not all Texan Christians agree with things like rewriting science textbooks to include ideas like Intelligent Design and creationism. It's odd how in the U.S. that over half of the church-state violations are committed by Christians. What about people like Rick Perry who prayed for Yahweh to make it rain and asking his fellow Christians to help him with this? I though Jesus told his followers not to pray in public as it made them just like the hypocrites. Not only that, but I thought that Yahweh could do whatever he wants, what if he doesn't want to make it rain, Rick, then what? Why should we have to have out tax dollars used to support religious schools? I'm sure that the Roman Catholic Church has more than enough money to support the funding of it's schools, particularly from the students legal guardians who have to pay for their kids' tuitions.
We also have fundamentalist Christians in America who are involved with conservative political parties supporting settlement of the Jews in Israel, largely because they think it will lead to the "imminent" return of Jesus the Messiah and supposedly all those Jews are either going to be thrown into a lake of hellfire and tortured forever, be cast in outer darkness, away from Yahweh where they are tormented by their own thoughts or they shall be killed during Armageddon by Yahweh's heavenly army and then they shall remain eternally dead and it will be as if they never existed. Why are so many of my fellow Jews, particular Israeli Jews so ignorant of or possibly in denial of how these fundamentalist Christians are using them for their own selfish reasons? It's frightening these fundamentalist Christians talk about helping Yahweh to bring about the "Second Coming". Not to mention, you have Christian Dominionists who want to turn American into a theocracy complete with laws based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. What gives these people the right to turn our lives into a literal hell?
I think that Christians in America today, do not understand what religious persecution really is. Go over to Iran and see how non-Muslims are treated over there. In America, we say that we are proud to live in a country that supports freedom. Yet, we have people who think that enforcing people through law and social coercion to comply with a specific worldview is a "freedom". Boy, we sure do have a lot of growing up to do, don't we? Think about it.
Sincerely,
B.W.
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