my life and never will. Do not even talk about religion with anyone other than my children. You may believe what you want. Are you suggesting that a church having a building of its own is somehow forcing religion on you?

force of government.

THe rightwing asses want the govt to enforce their bigotries in the name of religion

They really shouldnt live here, America was created to do the opposite. .

...then he's be setting you up. You'd be all hooked up, votes would go your way, everyone would agree with you. He's God, after all. But he's making the peons do all the work for him while he gets all the accolades? Seems like a CEO to me. Not someone I'd worship.

Whenever you read "religious liberty" translate it as: "reactionary priviledge".

Reactionaries have a tendency to take the name of something august and beautiful, then twist the meaning of that name until it justifies something vile and ugly.

denying the religious nuts their religious freedom..or something. I read nothing that says they can't get married in the city hall, in a church, on the park lawn, in their home, in their back yard. Or that they can't have a pagan ceremony, a religious ceremony, or any kind they want.
What are they griping for??

The fact that their church is already discriminating against other groups (atheists, jews, muslims, etc probably can't marry in their church) flies right over their head.

I disagree.

There are public buildings that all of us are entitled to use. Why does any group have to allow the use of their building to non-members? The Jews and Muslims are probably not going to open their doors to each other or Christians. They have their own buildings. The country club has members and they do not allow others to use their facilities. Private schools do not have open enrollment policy in most cases. So are we saying that no group can build a hall for their own private use?

Having said that I do think it is wrong to deny a member of a church who is gay the use of the church building for their wedding.

I also think it is just plain stupid to refuse to bake a cake for a wedding because someone is gay. If you are in the business to the public you must serve all customers.

We're called "atheists". FYI, courthouses are not particularly nice environments to stage a wedding.

hall that was huge and did their own decorating. The man who married them was a tribal elder who got permission from the government to preform the wedding. The whole thing was beautiful. And not a Christian symbol in sight. They did it their way.

The truth is that no one is stopping anyone from joining. There are plenty of people in churches that do not share the beliefs of the group. They belong for other reasons.

And yes rwers do use issues to make money. Money is their god. I will never defend them.

They believe with absolute certainty that they are correct. And thus forcing everyone else to follow their practices is actually helping other people avoid damnation.

They haven't quite figured out what to do when one fundamentalist sect disagrees with another. They haven't had to deal with this because, so far, they have been held back enough that they are fighting over general ideas.

It seems to me that the only thing they want to do with their "religious liberty" is to deny the rights of whomever they don't like.

beliefs ad nauseum. And borrowing off another poster, god sanctioned discrimination and persecution, and the interpretation of what the god said.

Their perspective is different. To them, freedom to practice their religion includes the freedom not to have to allow different, ungodly practices. In fact, it is strictly speaking enjoined upon them not to permit ungodly practices. Religion, in this mindset, is not a matter of opinion, but of fact, and denying the fact is destructive of values. Their religion tells them they should build a society not where the truth is relative, but where it is in alignment with the truth they have received. Really, their argument is not at all hard to understand if you grant them their absurd premise.

-- Mal

Part of the Constitution. Jefferson put it in because Virginia had a state religion and Baptists were prosecuted and forced to leave the state in order to practice their religion.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/amend_1.htm

It is extremely ironic that the Baptists have always led the pack in trying to inflict their religious beliefs on everyone else.

But really, when have the religious right ever cared about the Constitution? Even if it was written by Moses.

-- Mal

Completely? They think nothing of lying, stealing, adultery, killing, etc. It's OK so long as it is their own group doing it while condemning anyone not in their inside circle to damnation for things not listed in their supposed holy laws.

I grew up with Southern Baptist relatives and have utter contempt for them and their religion. They are the reason I don't believe in any religion and doubt the existence of a deity.

This way it sounds like a positive. Sort of like patriot act or Bush's clean skies act.

that once Christianity becomes the law of the land, THEN, which brand of Christianity might that be? It might not be theirs, they might find themselves suddenly in the apostate group.

Real religious liberty protects the religious as well as the non-religious.

People are free to go to their houses of worship in this country. People are free to pray to whatever deity they want. They can read their Bibles, or whatever else, with no worries of being arrested and their books confiscated. They can go door-to-door (subject, of course, to any local laws about solicitors) and try to convince others to join them. They can stand on street corners and hand out tracts all the damn day. They can have whole television networks dedicated to their beliefs. They can publish newspapers.

Compare that to other countries, which do persecute religions. There IS no comparison, and whenever I hear the religious folks bring up how they're being "persecuted" here, I want to puke. They don't know the MEANING of that word.

I guess what they don't seem to get is, they are NOT free to shove their beliefs down the rest of our throats. Therefore, their "religious liberties" are in peril, I guess. Twisted thinking.

I think of it similarly to how we also have ass-hole liberty.

I'm not an ass-hole, but folks are absolutely free to be an ass-hole towards me. To try and fill me with their ass-hole ideas, and try to bring me to their line of ass-hole thinking.

This is America, and anyone is free to be an ass-hole. It's all part of free speech, and people try to force their ass-hole ideas on me all the time...

Like that ass-hole who tried to convince me that ass-hole trickle-down-economics was good and that I should be all for it.
Like that ass-hole who tried to convince me that I should buy stock in Enron.
Like that ass-hole who yelled at me because my motorcycle was in his way when he tried to pull out in front of me.
etc...

But as usual they are totally misreading what religious liberty is all about. IMO there are two reasons that is part of our law.

First it was to stop the government from forcing us to be a part of a government established religion such as the Church of England. England ended up fighting horrible wars insisting that the only church that one could belong to in England was the Church of England. Both Ireland and Scotland were often the target in these wars.

Second the rule was created to keep us from fighting the religious wars of Europe over again. We wanted religion to be a personal choice and to be separate from our government. Many of our ancestors came here to escape these wars - they wanted no more of it.

Unfortunately today the rw wants a theocracy and freedom is the last thing they care about. When they are insisting that we are somehow discriminating against them when we allow same sex marriages they are reflecting the "established church" idea and some obscure connection between church and state. But they are forgetting that marriage is based on a marriage license provided by the government and not the church. One has never needed a church to be legally married in the USA.

BTW I am a Christian but I agree with you totally on this issue.

Charles Johnson
?@Green_Footballs

The “religious liberty” talking point is nothing but a facade for Christian theocracy.

And it's damn fun for them to power trip on those under their heels in the meantime.

If it made sense to you, then you would have genuine reason to be concerned.

Most of the greatest scientific minds of the last couple hundred years have been freethinkers, non-believers, agnostics leaning atheist and flat-out atheists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_in_science_and_technology

Apart from the art and music it inspired in the past, religion has made damn few contributions to the advancement of the human species.

Religion being the adherence to dogma.
Liberty being free of dogma.
Next question?

personal boundaries, at all, which gives them carte blanche to bully everybody around them.

I no longer tolerate that. I guess that makes me a New Atheist instead of just a grumpy old bag, but if you want to make a spectacle of yourself by loudly exhorting some deity while the food gets cold, be prepared to watch me dig in while you do it. And if you accost me on the street to demand if I'm saved, be prepared for the rough side of my tongue, you'll get it.

If you are a bully, you will be called on it, even if god is your excuse of the day.

small businesses. People want to run their business in a personalized way, and they bring their religion into it. They hire who they want to hire, and they bring a tremendous amount of discrimination into it (though they regard their kneejerk feelings as affirmation of their own good judgment and "common sense&quot . Moreover, in small towns where everyone knows each other, people even prefer to think they are "free" to serve whomever they wish to. For instance, my Mom used to work in a rural motel. They had a "special rate" for strangers coming from out of the area during September (passing through taking kids to college) - the "special rate" was more expensive, though it was represented as a discount.

Then the government lays down a whole lot of rules on them that they have to ignore them and just hope they fly under the radar and get away with doing what is enabling them to run their business. Following all those rules would require hiring an accountant or a lawyer, which they can't afford and would put them out of business anyway. This is where a lot of the Tea Party attitude comes from.

Having grown up with this, I can somewhat understand it. If you are a one-person operation or a family business in a small town, it is practically impossible to separate your personal attitudes from your business life. Moreover, it's your good community relations that's getting you business in the first place. On the down side, it's nearly impossible for strangers to get a job (when I came home from college for the summer, I couldn't get anything), and this "personalization" played out as strong racial segregation. There was a black section of town where black businesses hired black people. That section of town had its own black church. My father, who was white, was extremely proud to be the substitute minister for that church. (We were out-of-towners - apparently bringing the hippie pastoral care values).

The bottom line is: the only way this changes is through generational turnover. The people themselves (hopefully the millennials that are being educated under less blatantly racist circumstances now) have to undergo a personality change and discriminate less in their daily lives. Government rules can be enforced in large corporations and in big cities where its easier to spot repeat offenders, but in rural areas the argument is going to be "this is just how people are" and the businesses ARE the people!

This is yet another reason why I support the mincome. This kind of economy ties people trapped in these rural towns to local white elites that, in some cases, have community position that has been built up over the course of a couple of centuries. These are the people who join "Citizens Councils" to protect the power of white supremacy. Mincome for all gives everyone mobility and/or the ability to pursue their own small businesses, so they can at last say "frak you" to these pompous petty tyrants. What a great day that will be for AMERICAN liberty!

which has led to a sense of entitlement that they can force their beliefs on others. This distortion arises out of tribalism and insecurity.

In reality, their mandate only applies to speaking. They can speak in support of their religion, and the rest of us can speak our own beliefs. That's the full extent of it.

Anyone in America can believe anything they want, provided they do not try to impose their beliefs on others. The same applies to religious proscriptions, such as the one against eating shellfish. You can practice it for yourself, but cannot ban everyone from eating shellfish. If you don't believe in gay marriage, you are free to not enter into one. The exception is for generally accepted societal standards, such as not killing or stealing, which happen to align with two commandments, but which actually date back to Hammurabi.

It would be preferable if Christians would criticize others less and turn that criticism inward more. Perfect yourselves, then your example will draw others to be like you. But an imposition of religious morality is intolerable, unconstitutional, and places a false veneer of holiness over what amounts to mere obedience.

At the time it was written some of the states only allowed members of certain faiths/churches to vote. The concept was that everyone would be free to exercise their religion as they choose. In practice it becomes an issue when one persons choice conflicts with another's. Such as the conflict between one persons choice to say a prayer before a ballgame and anothers choice not to hear it.