Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

A religious bigot is a religious bigot is a religious bigot. As I’ve said before. It doesn’t matter if they are a militant Christian hate group such as the Raven Ministries or if they are the Muslim Taliban. They all seek to bend the world to their narrow interpretations of reality and God. Look how many centuries the Catholic church held back science by demanding that their religious interpretation of a universe with a sun revolving around the earth be the false standard. It was not until the lens of the telescope were in place for years and their religious lie could no longer stand up in the light of truth that they gave in. Another thing that religious groups seem of have in common is the subjugation of women to positions as second class citizens. The Taliban, for example, don’t believe that females should be educated.  In fact they don’t believe that females should even be accorded the right to be human. Their husbands and fathers can murder them with relative impunity.

It is absurd that a minority have been allowed to replace their religious opinion with historical fact in textbooks for school children in Texas.

One thing that I do take heart in knowing:  There is still a vast storehouse of truth available to school children everywhere on the Internet and I’m sure that many will be curious enough to seek it out and then share this truth with their friends.

Thomas Jefferson

To relegate Thomas Jefferson to a back seat in the history books because they don’t like that he clearly advocated separation of church and state is more than ridiculous.  It is  propaganda.  Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most brilliant president our nation has ever had.  Real historians credit Jefferson with having been the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.  Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

It is interesting that they chose to wash Jefferson from history because he distrusted cities and financiers and favored states’ rights and a strictly limited federal government.  But I guess it was his strong support for separation of church ans state along with the fact that the was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that has gotten these religious bigots in such a twit.

The mere fact of Thomas Jefferson’s existence as one of our major founding fathers, which he was and will always be, and who CLEARLY, beyond a shadow of doubt advocated for separation of church and state, removes the argument than these bigots like to make which was that our founding fathers wanted our nation to be a “Christian” nation.  Our nation was founded on the principles of RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

Thomas Jefferson has consistently been ranked by scholars (not religious bigots) as one of the greatest of U.S. Presidents.

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I also hear that these wingnuts want to elevate one of the worst hate mongers and bigots, Joe McCarthy to a position of reverence in history.  Joe McCarthy was a drunkard and a bigot.  At least with McCarthy we still have news reels of him leading some of his “hearings” obviously drunk as a skunk and slurring every other word.  The man was demented and his lies and gossip ruined lives of hundreds of decent Americans.  To even suggest that this paranoid drunk has a place in the halls of honor and that Thomas Jefferson does not is an extreme act of narrow-minded religious bigotry.

AMERICANS NEED TO REMEMBER THE SPEECH OF ED MURROW

George Rekers and “Lucien”, for hire Boy Wonder, at Miami International Airport

Photo courtesy Brandon K. Thorp

61-year old Rekers, a married Baptist minister who “cures” homosexuality, took a 10-day trip to London and Madrid.  He recruited a young man from the sexually explicit website, RENTBOY.

Rekers who recently had surgery [so he claims] of course says that it is all a mix-up–that he hired the young homosexual to lift his luggage.

As  you can see from the photo above, Rekers is the one lifting the luggage, not his rent-a-boy.

On May 14, Frank Rich wrote an article on the topic titled:  A Heaven-Sent Rent Boy

I grew up in a small town in West Texas, but even there we had our own share of religious intolerance.

Odd as it may seem to some, the Methodists in my community were the “liberals”.  We were the ones who had youth dances in our basement on Sunday evening after vespers.  As in most small towns in Texas, the Baptists ruled, although now they have serious competition from evangelical sects who are even less tolerant.

I can remember there was a huge discussion as to whether we would even have a prom because there were so many Baptists in my class whose parents did not believe in dancing.

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However, my earliest memory of meeting religious intolerance face to face happened when I was about 9 years old.  I had spent the night with a little friend and we attended her church the next morning.  It was the Church of Christ.  I was amazed that the church had no music.  No music in a church!  My own church had a huge and beautiful pipe organ that often played tunes written by Bach as we filled into the church–tunes that made my heart vibrate with feeling.

But the most frightening revelation, and one that disturbed me for months to come, was that my friend told me that because I was a Methodist I would be going to hell.  The only people who would get into heaven would be members of the Church of Christ.

It frightened me and for months I worried about it.  What if she were right?  What a cruel twist of fate to have been born into a Methodist family.  Gradually, as most childhood worries, it receded into the background and eventually fell away as I came to realize that Hell would not lack for company if she were right and I was comforted in the knowledge that I would not be alone.

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Religious intolerance is an issue that in my opinion needs a lot more discussion–by ministers in the pulpit, by politicians and by mainstream media.  Instead of fanning the fires of religious intolerance and hatred as many religious leaders and mainstream pundits to, they need to be pointing out that one of the foundations of our democracy is religious tolerance.

Jewish Mezuzah on a door post  and a Hindu offering in a front yard in Garland

Yesterday as I walked through our Third District in Garland collecting signatures for my petition to get my name on the ballot, I saw evidence of several different religions:  Jewish, Hindu, Protestant and Catholic.  Above  you will see a couple of photographs that I took of two that I saw.  No evidence of the Muslim religion was apparent to me, but that is because most of the 7,500 people in our district who follow the teachings of Islam live in Collin County, also a part of our district which I will begin to cover next week.

When I saw the diversity of religious displays, my heart swelled a little in the knowledge and pride that people still have the freedom to practice the religion of their choice and follow their own way of life in our nation.

All Americans of all faiths need to remember that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a national religion by the Congress or the preference of one religion over another, non-religion over religion, or religion over non-religion. And while we are remembering that our nation embraces religious freedom, we also should remember that religious fanaticism is not limited to any particular religion. All religions have their fanatics—and all religious fanatics without exception think that the end justifies any means if it furthers conversion of others or death to those who disagree.

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Since day one of our Nation’s history there have been people who have come to the USA to escape religious persecution.  But for the past few years I see indications of religious and racial intolerance that I find disturbing and I think that many pundits from mainstream media are responsible for fanning the fires of religious intolerance and hatred.

We have groups like Repent Amarillo, an evangelical Christian hate militia in Amarillo Texas who are harassing and intimidating citizens of Amarillo who do not live the lives that members of Repent Amarillo think that they should.  This intolerant bunch of thugs need to be reminded by the law that their freedom ends where the other person’s begins.  They have no right to be in the faces of citizens who do not agree with them.  We have laws in our nation to protect people from harassment.

We need to remember that ALL religions have their share of religious fanatics who believe that God will reward only them.  In this aspect, the Christian zealots are no different from the Muslim, Hindu or Jewish zealots.  A religious fanatic is an intolerant person who often believes that harming others, even murdering them in the name of their definition of God is acceptable.

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Prior to the Inquisition, we had the crusades, a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns to restore Christian control of the Holy Land.  These wars were fought over a period of nearly 200 years between 1095 and 1291.  The Crusades were fought mainly against Muslims, although campaigns were also waged against pagan Slavs, pagan Balts, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cthars, Hussites, and essentially any enemy of the Pope.

Historical evidence supports the fact that faiths that come out of the biblical tradition—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—have the tendency to believe that they have the exclusive truth.

One thing that appears to be true of religious fanaticism is that it starts small and grows larger, fueled by ever-increasing hate and acceptance of intolerance by the majority.  For example, in the beginning of its establishment in 1233, the Inquisition, a Roman Catholic tribunal for discovery and punishment of heresy, dealt only with Christian heretics and did not interfere with the affairs of Jews.

Then about 10 years later in 1242, the Inquisition condemned the Talmud and burned thousands of volumes.  In 1288,  55 years since it beginning,  enough hatred and intolerance has been fueled to initiate the first mass burning of Jews on the stake in France.

Finally in 1492 the Jews of Spain were expelled (after no less than 13,000 of them had either been burned at the stake or murdered).  Expelling a religious group is often a tactic that those who are religiously intolerant adhere to.  For example, Bryan Fischer of the “American Family Association” recently made the simplistic suggestion that we send all the Muslims in our nation to Muslim countries where he condescendingly suggested that they would be happier.  That’s another thing about fanatics.  They also tend to be mind readers who know what is best for others.  Mr. Fischer forgets that religious freedom is a cornerstone of our democracy.  He also forgets that not all Muslims are first generation immigrants.  But like all suggestions that are based in an underlying intolerance of others, we must ask–where does it end?  Who is next?  After the Muslims then who?  Unitarians who don’t hold to the same literal interpretation of the Bible as evangelicals–are they to be next?  Then after them perhaps the liberals against whom many evangelical religious fanatics like to rail?  This is democracy?  No it most certainly is not. It is the face of prejudice and intolerance of those who are different from you.

As for where it ends, we can take a lesson from the Inquisition which lasted several hundred years and did not end until near the end of the 18th century.  By that time an estimated 32,000 heretics had been burned at the stake and many more tortured to death and murdered.

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RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS ONE OF THE CORNERSTONES OF DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA AS WELL AS THE LEADERS OF ALL RELIGIONS SHOULD MENTION THIS TRUTH AGAIN AND AGAIN TO THEIR FOLLOWERS.

No one in the USA has the right for any reason to impose their religious ideology upon another or to harass those who believe differently.

As I mentioned in a previous post, an evangelical Christian hate group militia that calls itself “Repent Amarillo” is harassing local citizens of Amarillo Texas who do not agree with Repent Amarillo members’ narrow restricted interpretation of God.

In that post  I also mentioned that the leader of Repent Amarillo, David Grisham is a security guard at Pantex, a nuclear bomb facility in Amarillo.  January 10 of this year, a  W-56 warhead, with a yield of 1,200 kilotons,  almost 100 times the destructive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (15 kilotons)  was almost detonated in Amarillo Texas. The Project on Government Oversight watchdog group said the “near miss,” which led the Energy Department to fine the plant’s operator $110,000, was caused in part by technicians at the plant being required to work up to 72 hours per week.

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Think about it:  A religious fanatic works as a security guard in Pantex, a nuclear weapons assembly/disassembly plant in Amarillo Texas.  A near detonation happened just a couple of months ago.

WHAT IF THE WAR HEAD HAD DETONATED?
LET’S COMPARE TO HIROSHIMA

Hiroshima
Population 340,000 in 1945
Dead: 70,000 instantly
166,000 over next few years
Land area of Hiroshima:  349 Sq Miles

Amarillo, Texas
Population 187,206 in 2010
Dead:  Most likely no one in Amarillo would have survived
Land area of Amarillo: 90 sq miles

I’m not sure what this means, but if the Amarillo war head was 15 times stronger then perhaps halve the  diameter  of 90 sq miles and we have 45 miles.  Then multiply that 45 miles by 100 times more powerful = 4,500 miles.  There must be some other factor to consider, but even halving that estimate we would have a 2,000 mile radius directly impacted from ground zero which would take in all of the bread belt of our nation and the cities of Dallas, Ft. Worth, Oklahoma City, Santa Fe, Denver, and Los Angeles.

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We need to start focusing on some of our home-grown religious fanatics and doing what we can to neutralize them.  They pose a much more serious threat not only to our national security, but to our survival as a species than any Muslim fanatic half-way around the world.

CAN WE PLEASE START PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT MATTERS INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON THE NEXT SENSATIONAL INTERPRETATION OF GLENN BECK OR SOME OTHER WINGNUT LIKE SARAH PALIN OR MICHELE BACHMANN?

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PHOTOS THAT FOLLOW ARE GRAPHIC

but I want to remind people of the irrevocable nature of nuclear war and in particular how close we who live in Texas are to ground zero of such a disaster and its final and horrible consequences.

Housewives and children were incinerated instantly or paralysed in their daily routines, their internal organs boiled and their bones charred into brittle charcoal.

Radiation deaths were still occurring in large numbers in the following days. “For no apparent reason their health began to fail. They lost appetite. Their hair fell out. Bluish spots appeared on their bodies. And then bleeding began from the ears, nose and mouth”.

The State of the Religious Right: 2009

The 81st Legislature: Change at the Capitol?

With the end of Tom Craddick’s reign as speaker and a near-even partisan split in the Texas House of Representatives, one might assume the religious right’s influence will be much weaker in the 81st Legislature. But that would be wrong. The religious right’s influence over public policy was strong well before Rep. Craddick became House speaker in 2003. Moreover, early signs indicate that hyper-partisan battles over social issues that have split the House in recent years are already shifting to the Senate on the other side of the Capitol. So while the House has now booted out a speaker anointed by the far right, the religious right will not easily give up its long-standing influence over public policy. This year’s State of the Religious Right report looks at some of the legislative battles on the horizon.

This report also includes:

• a history of legislation on sex education, textbook censorship, stem cell research and private school vouchers since the early 1990s;
• our regular look at what people on the religious right had to say last year; and
• our annual update on financial and other data for far-right pressure groups in Texas.

Read the 2009 report (pdf).
State of the Religious Right report archive