Having solved all of the problems facing the country, the House of Representatives today will debate whether or not they like Christmas. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has introduced a resolution in the House saying Christmas and Christians are important. This just pandering to the Bill O'Reilly war-on-Christmas crowd and a transparent attempt to get some Democrats on record as opposing Christmas, something no one will do. Unfortunately, while most of it is just silly, the resolution has some land mines in it that make it more dangerous than the run of the mill feel-good measure.

Let's look at the full text.

                 

Approximately three out of four Americans identify as Christian (77% in 2001, according to a survey by the Barna Group). Phrases inscribed on the U.S. currency or recited in oaths in American classrooms and courtrooms have led some to claim that  "America is a Christian nation".  Christian nationalists and revisionists are reinterpreting the original intent of America's founding documents, to illustrate that America's wall of separation was built to protect churches from state intervention, and not the other way around.  But my object here is not to engage the revisionists. This task has been accomplished admirably elsewhere.  My purpose is to outline discrepancies between the Christian worldview and that of modern liberal democracies, of which America arguably was (until the current administration) the quintessential example.  

[Crossposted from DailyKos]

So, we're watching a Republican presidential candidate fall all over himself to out-do JFK on separating his religion, only we find Romney leaves us muddled... like tapioca pudding...as LithiumCola noted:

Romney: minute 7:26 -- There are some who would have a Presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines.

Wait.

Romney: minute 7:33 -- To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution.

Hold on... I'm confused.  Lemme rewind.

 

No need to rewind. We know what happens when religion trumps law.

It's a Recipe for Trouble to Allow Government and Religion to Mix says Gore.

This Thursday, at the George H.W. bush presidential Library in College Station Texas, Mitt Romney will deliver a much anticipated speech on religion in an effort to calm evangelical misgivings about his Mormon faith without scaring off moderately religious and secular voters.

Hi everybody.  I'm posting this diary because I need a bit of help with something.

This began as a comment to Fred Clarkson's post on Boston Archbishop O'Malley's attack on the Democratic Party but got so long that I decided to write a whole post.

So says the American Family Association as they search for signs of hatred against Christians. UPDATED 11/14/07

When I first started researching George Bush's background in 2000 after he announced his intention to run for president, I of course read all about the famous conversation between Billy Graham and George W that supposedly resulted in W's conversion to born-again evangelical Christianity. It was stressed over and over again that W was a Methodist. But then I noticed something odd.

Guest front pager Massmarrier is the proprietor of the blog Marry in Massachusetts, from which this post is adapted. This is an excellent example of how a little research can make for some great reporting and clear-eyed media criticism. -- FC

Into the void, C.J. Doyle bellows, "Follow me!"

Neither on the battlefield of his mind nor even at the buffet table does anyone seem to stir. Is there in fact a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts?

The Lakeland Ledger reports that the group "Florida4Marriage" has collected 597,000 signatures and only needs 13,000 more to have their amendment put up for a vote. In this same article the organization, headed by John Stemberger, expects the amendment to achieve the 60% vote needed to pass.

What is also mentioned in the article is that Florida signed on with the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, and that gay marriage is already unlawful in this state.  It seems that the actual outcome of this act would be the possibility of lawsuits against "domestic partnerships" and the denial of rights to people living in committed relationships but not marriage.

I've known people who were committed to each other, but who could not marry for different reasons.  The most glaring case is a couple I used to know, where the woman depended on Social Security for the medicines needed to keep her alive.  If she got married, she'd loose Social Security- loose the medicines- and thus marriage would have killed her.   So she and the person she loved lived together. (They wanted to marry, but couldn't, and were hounded by the local AoG church- which learned about their situation- because they were "living in sin"!)

John Stemberger calls these facts "scare tactics", but the reality is the same.  What they will accomplish is harming people who don't need any more misery.

These people are so set on controlling everyone else.  What gets me is that people don't see through them to the reality- they want the right to control every aspect of the lives of everyone else, and to push their religious and cultural viewpoint on the community around them.

And need I say that they also are demanding the right to demonize human beings (LGBT people) for being different?

If they achieve this goal, how long will it be before they start demonizing others?  

(Oh, that's right- they already do... liberals, non-dominionists, and non-christians!  And dare I mention socialists, anarchists, communists, and anyone who doesn't buy into free-market capitalism? )

The Christmas Wars of 2007 are flaring up again.  Christianist groups want you to take money away from retailers who acknowledge non-Christians and give it to them!

Yesterday, on the USF campus, a fundamentalist preacher was involved in a bit of a fracas.  It appears that he lunged at a young woman with a clenched fist, and then stuck his finger in her face.  She called the cops, and the "evangelist" (and his team) left.  The jackleg preacher involved may face charges for his actions.

These people regularly insult and offend students.  I've been there when they were using "canned-air" horns that could be heard in the classrooms and offices in the nearby buildings.  (In that incident, one of them blasted me right in the ear as I walked by.  I had to go to the clinic and the side of my head was numb for hours.)

They have repeatedly called the young women on campus "whores" and "sluts", and get really irate when they see Muslims and LGBT people.  Their language should be classified as hate speech- they tell people they are damned to hell all the time.

One day I even got one of them so angry that he was screaming- loud enough to be heard past a building and over 150 yards away.  He'd been carrying a sign saying "Let me tell you why you deserve to go to HELL!!!" which I found absolutely offensive.

They disrupt education, I've regularly dealt with students who were driven away from Christ because of their antics, and they dishonor the faith they claim to represent.  I hope that the school bans them (but doesn't do a blanket ban on Christian groups because of them!  There ARE some decent (non-dominionist) Christian groups on campus!)

I also hope that the young woman goes through with her charges.  These people are almost as bad as Phelps.

Link to school newspaper article: http://media.www.usforacle.com/media/storage/paper880/news/2007/1 1/01/News/Campus.Evangelists.May.Face.Charges-3071235.shtml?reffe ature=textemailedition