Have you heard about the new fangled cry for "Religious Freedom"? Has it penetrated your psyche as it seems to have penetrated the right wing conservative mass?
Religious freedom, that's a GOOD thing, isn't it? Everyone gets to believe as they wish to believe and live as they wish to live and we all, all of us in America, live happily ever after.
Come with me below the fold for a look at how this fervor for the freedom to believe in "A" God is seen by those of us who don't believe in "Their" God.
It's all the rage anymore, if there is something that you don't like, scream, loudly, that it's against your religion and hope like hell you get your way. And it's being positively championed among those groups that have the most to lose.
They declare openly that they want the right to refuse service to gays because their God tells them they should "Love the Sinner but hate the sin". They want the right to never, ever have to marry any couple that doesn't fit what they say their God sees as a couple. They want what they want and that's ALL there is to it!
Really?
Alright, alright, I'll bite. If you ask one of them to give you some idea of where they draw the line, why, they can't answer. Ask them if there is a limit, in their opinion, on just how far that religious freedom defense can go- of course there is, why, cults can't murder people! And no one can tell a Christian how to serve his or her God! That's about as far as their reasoning gets.
If you ask them to define just who their so called "Enemy" is, why, it isn't the old fallen down angel Lucifer, it's "Everybody who tries to get me to commit a sin!"
Whew, so much for personal responsibility, eh?
And it looks as though there are enough politicians ready and more than willing to grant them the right to be bigots, the right to establish a non secular democracy.
Doesn't it?
Now, let us be brave, and ask them about people like me, a pagan who worships a couple of those Deities that "Their" God told them to ignore. According to them, even granting me the possibility that Manitou and the Goddess, the Great Mother exist is a sin. Or like one of my friends, who shall remain nameless to protect his soul from the nasty things he'd have to slog through if the missionaries were to find out about him. I'll call him "Mike" Mike is an atheist.
If a law is passed that says they cannot be made to do anything their God says they cannot do, no matter what the circumstances, why, then, they have not only a spiritual right to deny me my forms of worship, or Mike his form of non belief, heck, it will be LEGAL too!
Now, on the face of it, religious freedom seems to be a fine thing. If it were equitable, why, it would go something like this.
"Any American has the right and liberty to believe in any Deity they feel compelled to believe in, failing that, they have the right and liberty to believe in no deities at all. The rights of the individual to believe and worship as they are led to by their reason and conscience shall not be abridged failing a compelling argument on the part of Government"
Whew- that's saying a lot, but it seems to be a goodness.
But that hits a little thing called reality and it falls to pieces. The WHY of it falling to pieces is the most interesting part.
See, the people screaming most for any sort of "Religious Freedom Restoration act" are, in reality, calling for a "Religious Tyranny Restoration Act" They don't want to grant Pagans or Atheists anything. When we stand up for what are our "Inalienable" rights, these same people who scream they are being unfairly discriminated against because they won't let gay people eat cake, start screaming that there is suddenly a "War" against Christians.
If you bent it any more, you'd make a pretzel green with envy.
How does that all work?
Under any RFRA, people who worship Satan, for example, have a right to do everything Christians do. Yet, a woman committed destruction of property in Florida because someone had put a scene of the old boy, Luciferos, descending into hell beside a scene of Christ being born in a stable. The charges against her were dropped. Would they have been dropped if a Satanist had destroyed he nativity scene? I somehow doubt it. I do, however, bet it would be all over Fox news.
And that woman? Why, she's in a RIGHTEOUS FIT! How DARE ANYONE not worship Christ, and publicly on top of that. She's on a crusade to save America from Evil- even has a Gofundme account to prove it- and pay her lawyer's fees. How dare anyone show anything but Christianity to the children!
She said it, not me.
These people have all the holidays, some of them paid holidays, bu we pagans, we don't get that, heck, we don't even get asked if we'd like to have that. It's a non issue. They also have the majority population by a huge margin. And they have proven themselves to be violent. Heck, just look at what they've done to some abortion clinics and anything that crowds their nativity scene.
If pagans go to the courts asking for relief from laws that prohibit them using substances that they have used for many, many thousands of years, why, we go before Christian judges who just gave their kids wine the day before at a mass. When we point out the hypocrisy after inevitably losing the argument, we are told the government has a compelling interest to stop us chewing on a mushroom or a bit of peyote so that we can more fully enter the realm of the spiritual, stop us smoking that evil cannabis because, well, those things cause immense harm to the peoples of this nation- even though that harm has never been documented.
Behind this is the idea that "Jesus didn't do it, you aren't gonna either!" It really seems to be more along the lines of "If we let them use drugs, we'll lose all of the people who like drugs out of our churches- there goes the damned tithe!" There is no effort to understand that we see this as a sacrament and a holy tool, no, it's automatically parsed as "Bunch of freaks wanting to get stoned."
And GOD knows alcohol never hurt anyone. So, if I do as my religions says I should, I go to prison. How's that "War on Christianity" working out for ya?
I've been in the position of trading editorial letters back and forth with a Baptist minister in Wyoming. It didn't go well, and my hat is off to the newspaper that let us take swings at each other- fair minded indeed.
What was so unforgettable about it all was his final letter on the subject, I'll quote him as best I can.
Paraphrased because I'm an old man and it was a long time ago.
"I think you and people like you should be put into prison for not believing in our savior Jesus Christ, you, atheists, Mormons, all of you should be jailed immediately!"
That sounds like a guy having a temper tantrum because I wouldn't stop saying that his belief in his God didn't trump or negate my belief in my Gods. It started with his fiery letter to that same newspaper saying that Halloween, the blatant worship of Satan, should be outlawed. It's his narrative, but it's become pretty common knowledge that Halloween has nothing whatsoever to do with Satan or anything Christian. It's a pagan holiday and always was. But, I digress.
What is scary is that, in a state and a nation wherein 99% of the legislators and judges ARE Christians- his desire is, sadly, one that could actually be realized.
To all the more moderate Christians who tell me "He's a fringe idiot, don't worry about him! That can never happen." I give you Governor Pence, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, Justices Alito and Scalia and any of the shows on Fox news.
That fringe has become quite mainstream.
I've sent politicians, namely, President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders letters about this issue- I get back one thing in common from all of them.
Crickets.
Silence.
So, yes, indeed, I think it a FINE thing when Christians move to restore the freedom to worship or not to worship- to Americans. As long as it is restored, in full, to ALL Americans.
If they do it that way, and don't use it as a means to solidify their hate and bigotry in law, then I'm all for it.
Otherwise, leave it alone before you make it worse for me, my fellow pagans- and my friend "Mike" and people like him.
Kelly