Huckabee, read the wise words of Rev Susan Russell:
Religious persecution is when you’re prevented from exercising your beliefs, not when you’re prevented from imposing your beliefs.
In the same article, she also said:
Kim Davis is arguably the canary in the coal mine called Theocracy – “a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler.” Her case is a test case for those who confuse their theology with our democracy and would replace liberty and justice for all with “liberty and justice for those who believe what I believe.” And make no mistake about it: the threat is very real.
If my memory is correct, one of the things that has been driving younger people away from religion is the zealotry and the unwillingness of the clergy to move with the times. I live in a city with several different denominations nearby, and the ones with the most attendance have been the ones who have chosen to back women’s rights, gay rights and speak out against racism. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has started talking about shuttering the private school here due to incredibly low attendance, and several Catholic Churches have shut their doors already.
the shameful thing is that he’s given any media exposure – or challenged on his idiotic proclamations… but the cables (esp cnn) are desperate to gin up a confrontation on this issue.
According to certain versions of Christianity, not being able to impose your beliefs amounts to being persecuted. This is especially true of certain branches of Evangelicalism. They take the idea of spreading Christianity very seriously and intend to spread it by imposition if at all possible. This is part of why we had holy wars under the Christian banner for so very long and the Wars of Religion, which inspired the Founders of the US to guarantee freedom of and from Religion.
Unfortunately, these are people who have never really read the Constitution, and so do not know the history of the document itself. The key to the discussion of the Constitution actually lies in the Declaration of Independence and the idea that government serves the needs of the people and power over the people flows upward from a mandate form the people.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Literally, that means that religion cannot be imposed by government officials. They really don’t get that, do they?
True, but that’s not why she’s being jailed. She’s being jailed for contempt of court.
And, a big THANK YOU FOUNDING FATHERS for the very liberal ideal of division of church and state.
We went through this religious crap in the 60’s when the pill was released. Then in the 70’s when abortion was legalized…now in the 21st century with gay marriage (yes they are still whining about birth control and women’s legal right to choose) however, they are becoming as irrelevant as gnats buzzing our heads. They are annoying, but stoppable.
I have friends who attend a very nice Presbyterian church. Mellow place, sophisticated. Same-sex marriages are part of their practice and everyone’s fine with it. If there’s some fundamental tenet of Christianity that forbids same-sex marriage, the people who run the place were absent that day, I suppose. Not that it matters legally, assuming the Constitution is still in force.
They do indeed and they’re not kidding. There’s no legal case here at all but if you’re a devotee of Dominion Theology that’s not really a problem. And if Huckabee isn’t one of those people he’s nevertheless fluent in the language.
Oh no! Christianity is under attack and is being destroyed in America!!! ____ Quick, someone run and tell the more than 225,000 churches in the United States ! Oh…the humanity!
I was explaining why they think their being persecuted, but the reason why we have the First Amendment is because of the Wars of Religion during the 17th and 18th Century when factions of Christianity were fighting to impose their versions on others. And in the 60’s, this religious fanaticism was also behind a lot of the resistance to integration. According to the Segregationists, God separated the various ‘races’ into different continents and Blacks were inferior because they were the children of Cain or some such nonsense.
