Why Your Religion Shouldn't Be My Problem

My cousin Arlene was a devout Catholic, so deeply involved with her church the priest at her funeral service told us he was nervous that he wouldn't do right by her last wishes, worried that she would be wagging her finger at him from somewhere up there, showing her disappointment if he somehow messed up. She planned her last rites down to her choice of music, of scripture, and even of altar cloths. It was a tribute to her service to her church that they worked so hard to honor her.

She was a good person who died too soon, having so much more to give. Her devotion to her God was a prominent part of her life, but she did not and would not demand that someone like me should have to follow her lead.

I, too, do not demand that anyone follow my choices about religion. The fact that I don't believe in a god or feel the need to belong to a religion doesn't mean I want to diminish anyone else's devotion or beliefs.  Forms of religion have been with us for thousands of years, the idea of a supreme being and an afterlife so firmly entrenched I am considered the odd one for not going along.

I'm okay with that, as long as everyone else is.  But there's the problem. I try to be a good person--I don't cheat or steal, I haven't hit anyone since I was a kid, I keep my lies to little white ones--but I'm a pro-choice liberal feminist who votes with the Democrats and I don't go to church.  I'm one of them.

I'm all for religious freedom, but I believe even more in freedom from religion.  I'm thankful that I live in a country wise enough to build into our constitution the requirement that church and state must not mix. I'm grateful that there are enough citizens--many of them devout believers in their own forms of religion--who fervently agree with the founders.  But there are forces working now to change that, and I admit they're starting to worry me.

The opposition to same-sex marriage has less to do with legality and more to do with intolerance masked as religious belief.  The political attacks on Planned Parenthood, abortion, and contraception share the Old Testament tactic of blaming and shaming women. The made-up war on Christmas has morphed into a made-up war on Christianity, with no signs whatsoever of widespread or even close-up persecution.  And lately we're seeing citizens, politicians, and religious leaders alike praising God for the likes of Donald Trump, as if he were the coming Messiah.

Their beliefs, baffling as they may be to many of us, are their own until they're not. When it builds to a point where politicians attempt to make laws based on biblical beliefs, boldly seeing it as their right now, we draw the line. Our resistance, it should be clear, is not meant to undermine anyone's religious liberties. We do it to protect our unalienable rights--theirs and ours.

The freedom to worship does not translate into the freedom to rule.  Our laws, our rights, are based on constitution and common sense, and if they intersect with certain agreeable biblical teachings, it's not just coincidental. The idea of fairness and tolerance is, or should be, universal.

But lately religious tolerance has had to take a back seat in favor of  Old Testament meanness. The religious right is neither religious nor right. It's a usurpation, a corruption of centuries-old Christian philosophy, used and abused as a means to gain access to power.  The connection to a religion based on Jesus' teachings is in name only, yet their numbers are growing.

They are gaining power in the halls of congress and in local politics. Donald Trump courts them, promising to help them in their quest to insert their beliefs into our justice system. In turn, they praise Trump, claiming God called him to service, conveniently overlooking his long public history of egregious transgressions in hopes that he might do what he promised.

I mean. . .

Worship in your churches, sing your hymns of praise, pray, and, by all means, comfort the sick and the sad.  But don't bash and hate and call it God's work. When you demand respect for and subservience to your religion, you force our hand. We will resist. We must resist. 

This is not your America. It belongs to all of us. Even those whose faith, color, lifestyle, gender, or country of origin might not fit your idea of acceptance. That's the beauty of constitutional rights; they trump everything else.

They've even been known to save us from ourselves.

I'm Offended by my Country

As a denizen of the Internets given to spouting personal opinions I'm not easily offended.  I can't afford to be. It's hard enough to write without having to do it curled up in a fetal position, tears in my eyes, sucking my thumb.

But I'm offended by my country.

I'm offended by the very idea of a Donald Trump in the role of public servant, and even more offended by the narcissistic, asocial blowhard billionaire himself.

I'm offended by the Republican party for opening up the deep, dark hole Donald Trump felt encouraged to slither out from.

I'm offended by the press, whose idea of good journalism is the elevation and celebration of a madman who believes he can be president of the United States.

I'm offended by voters who hate our government system so thoroughly they're working to punish the entire nation by electing officials whose qualifications are limited to a mutual need to make us pay for our supposed sins.

I'm offended by my own Democratic Party for allowing this to happen.  We're supposed to be the party of the people and we've let the people down.  Our leaders wimped out and didn't fight hard enough for the people whose age, race, gender, religion, income, or health kept them down and sometimes out. 

The Dems didn't show enough interest in the economy, in our public lands, in our public schools, in our public roads and bridges, in the very water we drink or the air we breathe.  They didn't care enough about the health and welfare of the occupants of our beautiful nation. That's not to say they didn't show any interest. They cared far more than the Republicans ever did. But that's not saying much.

More people now have health coverage but too many are bogged down by crushing deductibles and copays.  We still have not capped the price of pharmaceuticals.  We still have not lifted the cap on Social Security.  We still have not figured out how to convince half the country that helping the least of us is what makes us wholly American.

The stock market is up, the deficit is down, but we're not feeling it.  We've cauterized the job cuts so that more people are working, but  too often they're among the working poor. We're winding down our military presence in countries that are not ours but our pantries still go empty while our war chest fills up. We've allowed our prisons to become for-profit industries.  We don't worry enough about other peoples' children.

We're in thrall to the one-percenters, we're leaning toward a church state, we're ripe for a demagogic takeover. 

I'm offended by my country when it stops being proud of what it can be and reverts to being ashamed of what we've become. We're in a mess of our own choosing, which means we can fix it if we choose to.  Now we have to choose to.  Because this sure as hell isn't us.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

It's Settled then: Women, We're at War

Don't expect me to be going over every single attack on women's rights, just because I'm writing about modern-day, 21st century, 2012, just-in-the-last-month attacks, which, as you might have noticed, are escalating at such a dizzying pace we can no longer ignore the rumblings of war.

It's ugly and it's all out there. Even Rush Limbaugh's scrubbed transcripts of his diatribes against Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student who had the temerity to attempt to testify before certain members of congress about the need for free contraception.  Even Patricia Heaton's deleted tweets about that same student (AKA G-Town Gal).  They're out there.  They're not going away.

No, we're here today to look at the big picture:  How did this latest war of the sexes start?  What was the catalyst?  And what can we do to grind it to a halt now that it's started? 

The obvious answer to question number one is that it's all Obama's fault.  As a part of his health plan (the catalyst), he told insurance companies they would have to offer contraceptive care at no cost to women.  (That would mean, for most, no  co-pay.)  Birth control aids would be free and available everywhere, and since it was mandatory, not to mention laudatory,  not to mention commonsensical and a long time coming, that was supposed to be it.  End of conversation.

Ha!  We wish! .

President Obama's first mistake was that he thought he was taking steps toward helping women more effectively and responsibly manage their reproductive years, when what he was actually doing was antagonizing pissants who have been posing as Manly Men for so long they're not about to be ousted from their comfy zones.

A whole host of Catholic Bishops, pseudo-religious politicians, and paid-to-be-mean pundits jumped on the bandwagon called Control the women by denying birth control, and weren't they surprised when the women they were so itching to suppress wouldn't give in?  A real donnybrook ensued, with everybody weighing in, pro and con, and here we are, in the middle of it all, coming out swinging, and if they want a war, okay, they've got one.

Some highlights:

• The Susan G. Komen Foundation is taken over by a Right Wing zealot who makes it known from Day One that Planned Parenthood can kiss SGK goodbye.  Susan Komen's sister/founder helps figure out a way to do it.  A huge, unprecedented fuss ensues.  Right Wing zealot goes on to greener pastures.  The sister stays and apologizes -- a Pyrrhic victory that nobody feels good about.

•   Long probes up the vagina with cameras on the end used not as medical tools but as instruments of shame-- Zap!  Gone!  Battle won!

• Gooey cold stuff massaged onto a bare belly so a government-issue wand can be waved, not to detect a zygote already determined by other methods to be there, but to establish once and for all that a woman doesn't actually have control over her own body--  Still working on it but we've got them in our sights.

•  Dozens of state legislatures scrambling to make laws against contraception and abortion so harsh Draco the Greek, if he were still alive, would be crying foul-- This one may take a while.

The legal issues, having some semblance of form and substance, are easier to deal with.  There are wise and learned people on our side ready to take them on.  But there's another, uglier issue and it's one we've faced many times before.  It's our old but formidable nemesis: blind, consuming hatred toward people of our gender.

With the rise of the Tea Party and pressure from the Religious Right-to Life-until-It-Actually-Becomes-a-Child, fortified by resident misogynist Rush Limbaugh and hard line Catholic Men in red robes and black robes and pullover sweater vests, the battle to enforce the reproductive rights we've already fought long and hard for is a battle we can't afford to lose.

 The spotlight is on Rush Limbaugh at the moment, but it's Rick Santorum we need to keep an eye on.  He showed his hand when he talked about his reaction to President Kennedy's 1960 speech to the Baptists, where JFK said he would fight hard for the separation of church and state.

Santorum wanted to throw up when he read that.  Why?  Because it's disgusting and unforgivable that  Kennedy had the chance to pave the way for an American Pope and he didn't take it.  Rick will remedy that when he's president.  And guess who will suffer the most under his reign?

The obvious goal is to make sure Rick Santorum never becomes president, but once that threat is gone we'll still be fighting those others working to take us down.  We thought that war was over, but all we really won, we know now, was détente.

Men (and, incredibly, other women) are fighting against those of us who go on believing our reproductive rights are sacrosanct.  Suddenly they're coming out of the woodwork, no longer pretending that Roe v. Wade is all that's keeping us apart.  Now it's about contraception -- a real puzzler, since birth control is the obvious remedy for unwanted pregnancies.

Only women can incubate babies.  It's a fact. If they get knocked up and it's not a good time, the sex police want us to believe they have no one to blame but themselves.  Really?  What other species on the planet punishes the female for being impregnated by a male?  Birth control is a two-way street.  It's irresponsible and gutless to pretend that women did this to themselves, and yet we're hearing it louder and clearer every day.

And why is that?  Because to the people who are coming at us with the same hoary arguments, it's not about the control of birth, it's about the control of sex. That nutty comment by Santorum backer Foster Friess about birth control being as simple as holding an aspirin between our knees?  The admonishment from Rick Santorum that all birth control should be banished because it can only lead to badness?  Rush Limbaugh's crazed, three-day masturbatory fantasy about the reasons women want free birth control?  Sex, sex, and yet again, sex.

It's the same tiresome struggle, but this time we're going to win.  Why?  Because we have a secret weapon.

It's men.  There are more than just a few good ones out there and they're on our side.  They're men who work with us, talk with us, and see us as equals.  They're men who live with us and see our roles as complementary and not competitive or without merit.  They're men who can love unconditionally and have grown so far beyond the ancient need to keep women bound and tethered, they're willing to fight beside us until this war is ended.  Some of them are already at the front lines.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, you dirty old men of yesterday.  A new day dawns and you've been left behind.  It has to be this way.  It's the way human progress works.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog, where some of the men I most admire hang out.)

The Religious Test is Alive and Kicking in American Politics. Again.

As a non-religious person I have faith that religion will always be with us.  It's the way of the world, and if I'm baffled by its constancy, by its influence, by the sheer numbers of people involved, I'm even more befuddled watching the move away from any pretense at goodness and mercy in favor of a peculiar form of public political bullying by the Religious Right.

There are many churches that do good works and act as sanctuaries in a cold, cruel world.  Their congregations are loving and generous and, by the way, have no problem accepting non-believers like me. We work well together.  There is that understanding that, while our goals are the same; the paths we take to get there take a different turn.

I've hesitated to get into this, mainly because I have family and friends who are religious and I love those people.  Most of them have enough respect for me to lay off any proselytizing, but I know that a number of them can't help but pray for my damaged soul.  I'm good at pretending that's okay.  They mean well.

But what's not okay is what brings me to this:  Rick Perry.  His phony piety, his bad acting, his destructive actions as governor of Texas showing him for the hypocrite he is.  It should have been Michele Bachmann's lame and lazy preaching that capped it, but Rick Perry has finally done it for me.  His performance at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University was as loathsome as Jimmy Swaggart sobbing open-mouthed on close-up for forgiveness or Jim Bakker weeping at the loss of his empire.  Rank insincerity is what bonds them all.  The significant difference is that, so far, Jimmy and Jim haven't aspired to be president of these United States.

Billboard in South Carolina

I listen to the calls to Jesus by Presidential candidates like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and even Ron Paul.  I see our presidents and members of congress fighting to one-up their Jesus-is-my-lord-and-savior status, and it's clear that  scrupulous avoidance of religious tests for political candidates is a thing of the past.

An avowed Atheist has never had a chance -- a fact that makes no sense in a democracy -- but even a quiet Christian wouldn't have a chance today.  If you're thinking of running for anything, you had better be out there professing your undying love of an accepted and specific God as defined by the one and only Holy Bible or forget about any future in 21st Century American politics.

This new century of ours is a puzzler.  It's suffering the worst kind of growing pains, but it's not as if it came from nowhere.  It's roots are in several centuries of ups and downs and lessons ripe for learning, yet it's as if American history is some quaint, nostalgic throwback having almost nothing to do with this modern world.

There are reasons for the need to see ourselves as a nation and not just as a country.  We're peopled with citizens as diverse as the world.  The fervent bleating of the more vocal Christian politicos cannot change the fact that not all Americans are Christians. We are not a Christian nation.  We never set out to be a Christian nation.  By clear Constitutional design,  there is no religious test for any candidate in this country.

If they can't get that one simple fact straight, one wonders what hope there is for understanding issues even more complicated.  Like the meaning of "Of the people, by the people, for the people", for starters.