Churched Think They have it So Hard

I have been wanting to write so much lately, but work calls. I have a great one about the Olympics and the IOC mob swishing in my head. We shall see if I can put it together.

But today, I want to talk about those fun organized religious folks. This stems, of course, from people posting about Chik-fil-a and their 'Christian' Anti-Gay stances. Most folks I know are outraged, but of course, there have been a few people who have taken the "its my religion so I am not hating" drum.

Hmmmm. Would they be so quick to agree if their religious leaders were saying black people really are not human? If the Pope came out and said that women should not vote or own property, would they follow suit? If Orthox Jews** who don't eat pork, started Anti-Pork eating initiatives, would folks call that freedom of religion?

Well of course, we actually have examples of this. Because of some the examples above have actually happened in history. And rarely to religious leaders look back to this. Today I responded to someone who said being hateful was his religious freedom with this:

Here is something else.... Churched people always act like they have never had to deal and change their beliefs. Never had to struggle with maybe they had to look at their religious texts differently. Lets see... slavery. Bible used time and time again to support. Women owning property, mixed race marriage. Christians all had pastors and people used passages from the bible to be against these things. And luckily there were brave people who could look past the black and white of a fallible text and could change their ways.

Any time you see a religious leader saying gay is bad, if you replace the word 'Gay' and put slave you have the arguments of the 1850-1860s. Women were considered property forever and Christians believed it was in the bible. Ordained by God. The same is true here. Nothing is going to be against the fabric of religion. What we need are the brave people who are churched to stand up to these bigots and tell them that you cannot, on one hand, promote direct translations of a text, but then, on the other hand, promote only using it as a guide and a metaphor. Because let's face it, if churched folks did that, men could still have multiple wives and women could not own property.

And while the arguments for this need to be laid out in another post, I will leave you churched folks to think about this. Next time your religious leader starts to get into politics: Which people to vote for, initiatives to vote yes or no, funding-raising for candidates, calling congress peoples, etc. Remember you are tax exempt because there is supposed to be separations of church and state. Remind your 'church' that if they insist on getting involved in matters of the state, then your religious group needs to start paying taxes and threaten to report them to the IRS!

THIC

**To get some of your panties in a bunch, I consider people who call themselves Christians part of the Jewish faith. Yup. Jesus was a Jew. The Jews who followed him added to Torah. They are a sect of Judea. Trippy huh! :-)