religious right

Once again, proving I have no active social life, I have spent my holiday weekend creating another project where I can rant.

It all started when someone posted an article about a term called “Secular Left” that conservatives and the religious right are now using in their name calling program for those who disagree with them.

In the article called Sticks and Stones and the “Secular Left”, author David Benjamin comments about the first time he heard the term while watching “Meet the Press” on May 8th. Conservative talking head Mary Matalin used the term in describing the opposition during the manufactured filibuster crises over Bush’s judicial nominees.

Benjamin wrote:

“Civil liberties,” a term that embraces such basic American prerogatives as privacy, consumer rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and, yes, freedom of religion, are seen today as the purchased privileges of a “liberal elite.” This distortion is the linguistic legacy of the same American right wing that now cubbyholes its foes as the “secular Left,” and seems happy to gather at the river under the big (revival) tent of the religious Right.
“Secular Left.” Yeah, maybe it’s just a couple of words. But it’s coming from the people who today, in American politics, get to make up all the words, and then make everybody else repeat them endlessly, like “Hallelujah,” and “Praise the Lord.” And the only opposition is a tongue-tied cluster of Democrat/ liberal/ progressives whose only articulate utterance in the political and semantic struggle of the last decade has been a strangled bleat that sounds a lot like “Uncle!”

I agree with him and I decided to do something about it.

Using a portion of my meager salary I purchased the domain secularleft.us and put up a blog to defend not only secular humanists, and atheists, but also anyone with a secular bent who disagrees with the conservatives and their buddies the religious right on matters of church vs. state.

Opening today http://www.secularleft.us will be a counterpoint to the shrill sounds of the right. I intend to expose the lies and myths they express about those who choose the secular path and I don’t plan to be nice about it.

Today’s entry deals with the ruling the US Supreme court made today regarding religious practices in prison.

Feel free to stop by for a visit.

Secular Left

In case you lived in a cave the past couple of weeks, some major civil disobedience has been going on in the city of San Francisco.

It seems the Mayor wants to marry gay couples even though there is a state law against marriage of same-sex couples. For the past couple of weeks, the city has been issuing marriage licenses and performing civil ceremonies for all gay couples who want one. Hundreds have lined up at city hall for the chance to thumb their noses at what they believe is an unjust law.

Civil disobedience is a time honored way to bring attention to unjust laws and actions. US history is full of risk takers. And it is a risk because while the attention is generated, the people who openly defy the law do get punished. Sometimes the law is then changed but that happens after many are put in jail and fined.

Hearing the complaints from the political and religious conservatives, one would think the Earth was about to imploded because of the Mayor’s action.

One such shrill outrage comes from the founder of the American Family Association, Donald E. Wildmon, who through his Onemilliondads.com project sent the following e-mail on 2/19:

Anarchy is breaking loose across America

I know. The headline seems extreme. But the question isn’t if it is extreme, but is it true?

In San Francisco, the mayor has disobeyed the law and issued “marriage” licenses to homosexual couples. In Massachusetts, the state Supreme Court has ordered another branch of government “the Legislature” to pass a law making homosexual “marriage” legal.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has said he has no problem with breaking the law and is willing to issue “marriage” licenses to homosexuals. Who will be the next official willing to break the law?

It is time to contact your U.S. Representative and two U.S. Senators demanding that they act on this issue. Anarchy cannot and must not be allowed.

All have defied laws on the books prohibiting homosexual “marriages.” They have shown a total disregard for the law. They have refused to allow the people (that’s you) a voice or a vote on this issue. They consider themselves above the law.

Within weeks there will be lawsuits across the nation to force individual states (and you) to recognize these illegal “marriages.”

Unfortunately the same AFA group that is outraged that the city of San Francisco is breaking the law, saw nothing wrong when Judge Roy Moore defied a federal court order to remove a 10 Commandments monument he had placed in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

Of course Conservatives also can be hypocrites when it comes to politics.

The Republican party and their apologists drone on about how President Bush’s dubious military service record is not important to his present duties. They say that “the American people” want to move on.

That type of response was missing when the President was Bill Clinton. They harped on how Clinton “dodged the draft” by going to Oxford in the UK. They complained he got special treatment. It is hypocritical of them now to ask people to ignore Bush’s special treatment especially because one of the leading Democratic candidates running for the office has a more distinguished service record. 3 purple hearts always beats flight training in the Champagne unit of the Texas National Guard.

Then there is the whole Iraq mess.

President Bush is ignoring calls to answer for his dubious reasons for invading Iraq. Republicans drone on about how Saddam was removed from power and that is far more important than how we did it.

Really?

Well they weren’t so forgiving when President Clinton bombed Sudan and Afghanistan and when the GOP tried to impeach him for lying about adultery.

President Clinton was the most investigated President in recent memory and now when Bush is in trouble for a worse infraction, lying to the public about why we had to invade Iraq in 2003, they want to deflect the needed investigation until after the elections.

How convenient.

Only 9 months left until there is a chance to clean house……

Tag: religious right

New blog about the Secular Left

The political and religious Right are a bunch of hypocrites