REPUBLICANS THINK THEY ARE PATRIOTIC BUT THEY ARE FEAR MONGERING-TRAITORS

Yet, they tell you “It can’t happen in America”

By Paco Prado

How many times have I heard this before? I heard it when I lived in Cuba as a youngster. I heard it in America while Reagan advanced the Religious Right’s agenda and divided this country. I heard it during the Bush dictatorship as Faith Based Initiatives were instituted.
It can happen anywhere and I am not one of those fear mongers. But we have to look as recent as a few decades ago when Ireland was in a state of chaos due to a religious power struggle. In Iran, a country that although has a very religious population; it had a secular monarchy that allowed religious freedom. The Muslim thirst for power on the part of the Ayatollahs systematically gained the people’s support and eventually dominated every aspect of Iranian society.

In America, I hear that this is a “Christian Nation”; which is not, and I keep being bombarded by religion everywhere I go, from prayers at football games, to the Pledge of Allegiance which up until 1952 did not contain “one nation under God” in it. I went to a public school at the time when prayers were allowed and I suffered the social rejection from very cruel piers that were “Christians” because I did not conform and prayed alongside of them – we all know how cruel children can be to each other. 

 I get very agitated when I hear someone say “we have to protect the sanctity of marriage” and then go on to define marriage as “a union between a man and a woman”. I hope you see what they are doing. Some religions define marriage in just the way they say and yet there are others that do not. What is happening here is that the Christianists want government, local, state and federal to take it upon itself to help these people out and favor one religion over the other; something which the Constitution clearly forbids.
When religious fanatics claim that this is a “Christian Nation” claiming that the founding fathers were all Christians, I think they are not only misinformed but clearly misrepresenting the facts. All but one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were Masons, most were Deists or Agnostics and the ones who were religious were the most ardent supporters of the separation of church and state concept.

One more thing I like to point out: Up until the era of Constantine, the Church performed marriage ceremonies for people of the same sex. No one raised an eyebrow then and it was perfectly acceptable.
I would like to know, please, somebody tell me how the sanctity of marriage is affected or diminished by allowing gays to enter into it. Why do the religious fanatics insist in encoding into our laws their ability to discriminate and to hate; which in itself is totally contrary to the Christian teachings…and that is it in a nutshell, they want the Federal Government to manufacture a law that will give them the legal right to discriminate.

PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/g/a/2004/02/18/gaywedgallery.DTL&o=29