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A Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community
About Me :
I'm a grownup nerd living in the Boston burbs. I write computer programs for a living and plays for fun.
I'm married to a wonderful woman, and we share a nice little house with our daughter and our cats.
I'm a humanist, a technologist, an artist, and an idealist. I believe in reason, freedom, love, equality,
and democracy. (Did I mention that I'm
an idealist? I did, OK.)
I'm also a pragmatist and an empiricist. I reject ideology and dogma, especially when they conflict with
practical facts (i.e., pretty much always). I particularly hate willful ignorance, which tends to go hand-in-hand
with ideology and dogma.
Like the alignment of the planets, this blog gets updated as I have the time, inspiration, and inclination to do so.
Like the alignment of the planets, this blog gets updated as I have the time, inspiration, and inclination to do so.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Christian Exodus
I came across Christian Exodus a few days ago, by way of the Daily Kos. Christian Exodus wants to gather 50,000 Christian "conservatives" in one of the states as a precursor to secession. The choice states? No surprises here: they want to take one of Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina. (I guess Georgia's too progressive for them.)
Why do they want to do this? To "protect children from homosexual predators and the abortionist’s knife", naturally; to avoid living in a country where "Preaching Christianity will soon be outlawed as 'hate speech'"; and because "Redemption of all 50 American States and their general government is totally impossible."
I wasn't aware that preaching Christianity was soon to be declared illegal... I think I would have heard of that. I certainly didn't know that homosexual predators and abortionists with knives were stalking Christian children, but it's a vivid image, isn't it? Well, I suppose if you're already trained to believe any nonsense on command, you'll believe that there is a national epidemic of roving gangs of limp-wristed gynecologists on the streets, sharpening their scalpels and licking their lips in anticipation of what they're going to do to your children.
It's easy to dismiss Christian Exodus as a bunch of loopy cranks with an impossible dream. Which they are. Nevertheless, their motivation bears a few moments of thought. Here we are, in 2004, under a government utterly dominated by the right wing of the Republican Party, which has pretty much the exclusive backing of the Christian religious right. Together, they have accomplished a great deal of their agenda, and seem poised to achieve still more of it. But that's not enough! There's actually been some push-back from people who disagree with them! They cannot tolerate any dissent! They must not merely control the government -- they must dominate. Those who disagree with them must have no political power. It seems to me that the "Christian Exodus" people wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than a rigid Christian Theocracy, and that's what they aim to establish in one of the aforementioned states.
(By the way, when they say "Christian", I rather doubt that includes Catholics. My guess: it's hard-line Evangelical Protestants only, thank you very much -- Baptists only, maybe they'll tolerate Methodists. Nobody else need apply.)
When and if they ever succeed in establishing a "Christian nation" in one or more of these states (dream on), I wonder how long they will take to understand why the principle of the Separation of Church and State is so important. The Founders of the United States understood that the Establishment Clause protected everyone's freedom of conscience. The organizers of Christian Exodus are unsatisfied with the democratically expressed will of millions of peoples' conscience, and therefore their plan is to create a state where there is no such freedom. They wouldn't put it that way, but once you've thought it through, that's what it boils down to.
0 comments
I came across Christian Exodus a few days ago, by way of the Daily Kos. Christian Exodus wants to gather 50,000 Christian "conservatives" in one of the states as a precursor to secession. The choice states? No surprises here: they want to take one of Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina. (I guess Georgia's too progressive for them.)
Why do they want to do this? To "protect children from homosexual predators and the abortionist’s knife", naturally; to avoid living in a country where "Preaching Christianity will soon be outlawed as 'hate speech'"; and because "Redemption of all 50 American States and their general government is totally impossible."
I wasn't aware that preaching Christianity was soon to be declared illegal... I think I would have heard of that. I certainly didn't know that homosexual predators and abortionists with knives were stalking Christian children, but it's a vivid image, isn't it? Well, I suppose if you're already trained to believe any nonsense on command, you'll believe that there is a national epidemic of roving gangs of limp-wristed gynecologists on the streets, sharpening their scalpels and licking their lips in anticipation of what they're going to do to your children.
It's easy to dismiss Christian Exodus as a bunch of loopy cranks with an impossible dream. Which they are. Nevertheless, their motivation bears a few moments of thought. Here we are, in 2004, under a government utterly dominated by the right wing of the Republican Party, which has pretty much the exclusive backing of the Christian religious right. Together, they have accomplished a great deal of their agenda, and seem poised to achieve still more of it. But that's not enough! There's actually been some push-back from people who disagree with them! They cannot tolerate any dissent! They must not merely control the government -- they must dominate. Those who disagree with them must have no political power. It seems to me that the "Christian Exodus" people wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than a rigid Christian Theocracy, and that's what they aim to establish in one of the aforementioned states.
(By the way, when they say "Christian", I rather doubt that includes Catholics. My guess: it's hard-line Evangelical Protestants only, thank you very much -- Baptists only, maybe they'll tolerate Methodists. Nobody else need apply.)
When and if they ever succeed in establishing a "Christian nation" in one or more of these states (dream on), I wonder how long they will take to understand why the principle of the Separation of Church and State is so important. The Founders of the United States understood that the Establishment Clause protected everyone's freedom of conscience. The organizers of Christian Exodus are unsatisfied with the democratically expressed will of millions of peoples' conscience, and therefore their plan is to create a state where there is no such freedom. They wouldn't put it that way, but once you've thought it through, that's what it boils down to.