'Merica

 'Merica! Where we can say and do whateva we want!

My Facebook feed gets flooded with all sorts of quotes, rants, and proclamations of love for food, family, and God. Facebook does allow me to filter the feeds from anyone I'd rather not see. I don't use the filter because this seems like overkill to me since I do enjoy seeing updates, photos, and connecting with loved ones I don't have time to see. The bombardments of memes and praises for Jesus doesn't phase me one bit. What does concern me are the individuals who share jokes and memes without understanding the message of what is being shared (or if the do understand, they're so completely detached from reality they fail to grasp the inhumanity of the message). Take this meme for example where someone posted the results of what is supposed to be a nuclear strike on Mecca (I think) saying that the problem was "solved". I won't go into how many MORE global problems that would bring up (social, economic, culural, environmental, etc.) but you get the idea.

So when I come across something like this I try to point out why this is morally wrong. I try not to do it in a smug "holier than thou" manner but simply pointing out that the individual might need to reevaluate sharing what they shared. Depending on your Facebook settings these images and jokes can be seen by friends, family, coworkers and companies looking to hire you. You may think the content is funny, and you ABSOLUTELY have the freedom to share it, but do you really have to act on an impulse simply because you are free to do so? Some fundamentalist groups believe it is their right to stand up for their beliefs by publicly condemning gays, and when they are prevented from partaking in their hate speech they play the "We're being persecuted" card. In the end you'll just end up looking foolish trying to protect your pride and beliefs.

I believe we should focus more on how we should utilize our freedoms to improve the quality of life for our global neighbors than abuse those freedoms for our own selfish reasons. But we are talking about Facebook, it is the home for egocentrics.

Hobby Lobby's Hurt Feelings

I know this is a bit outdated but here's another gem brought to you by On Knees for Jesus. Hobby Lobby filed a lawsuit against the government over the health care mandate because they don't want to provide abortion inducing drugs in their health care plan. Hopefully you won't lose too many customers from this.



Hobby Lobby, I know you feel that providing coverage for something which goes against your beliefs is important to you. In the end you WILL be providing abortion drugs to your employees one way or another. If you don't provide it in your health care plan you'll provide it through the paycheck you give to your employees. Either way you, the company, are paying for abortions (and probably a mess of other things you'd rather not know about). That is unless you see fit to monitor what your employees do with their paycheck. I believe abortion should be a minor issue. As a civilization with contraceptive technology why aren't we promoting pregnancy prevention instead of terminating them? People are going to have sex, especially teenagers, so why not give them the means to have safe sex? Using contraceptives will not condemn your soul AND you can choose when you and your mate are ready to have a baby. If the religious right focused more on birth control the abortion issue will be disappear on its own. But of course every group needs something easy to rally behind, Christians against poverty and homelessness seems too much like hard. You can't handle a Bible with dirty hands.

Religious Hostility

Thanks to On Knees for Jesus for posting this recent video on Romney and the Religious Right I stumbled upon an interesting survey on religious hostility.



Towards the end Tony Perkins mentioned a survey on the rise of religious hostility stating there have been over 600 recent cases of religious hostility. Here's the link to the website where you can download the report but I wouldn't bother. First, you have to give them your name and email to gain access to the report (I gave them an email address I use for junk mail) and I'm sure I'm on a email database somewhere. Second,  a large portion of religious hostility cases are by far cases of disputes over religious displays during Christmas...err the holidays, zoning disputes, religion in school, or cases of hurt feelings. The cases range over the last decade which would put them on average of 60 a year, hardly an onslaught of religious hostility (To clarify the report was just a listing of cases and did not graph the "rise" of religious hostility cases. I like graphs.) . I downloaded it primarily for my own curiosity and I found a few interesting cases. I was a bit surprised that the Family Research Council and the Liberty Institute (both conservative Christian groups) would include non-Christian suits but lo and behold they did. There aren't many in the report and most are zoning or workplace related which to me suggests they were included to fill out the numbers. Here are a few of my favorites.
 

Jewish Police Officer Filed Employment Discrimination Claim After Run-in With
Mel Gibson
http://religionclause.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-01-16T07:10:00-
05:00&max-results=20&start=620&by-date=false
A Jewish police officer claims Mel Gibson verbally abused him because of his religion,
and then the officer’s superiors forced him to delete the anti-Semitic statements from his
report. The officer claims he was later ostracized and denied promotion because of the
incident.

Oh Mel, how can we forget your drunken tirade.

Despite City Approval, Court Orders Construction of Tennessee Mosque to Stop
http://www.wsmv.com/story/18646518/murfreesboro-mosque-stopped-by-judge
The Murfreesboro Islamic Center was within three months of completion when a
chancellor court ruled that not enough public notice was given before the zoning
commission approved construction. The Plaintiffs have been fighting the mosque’s
construction, fearing that it is a “sharia compliant” organization. The county has the
option of reapproving the building as long as it gives proper notice of the public meeting.
As of now, the mosque has not been reapproved.

They omitted that "the plaintiffs" were local Christians fighting to keep Muslims out of their town. 1000 points for religious liberty when the mosque was finally able to open their doors.

Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland, Inc. v. Montgomery County Public Schools,
373 F.3d 589 (4th Cir. 2004)
The Montgomery County Public Schools refused to allow Child Evangelism Fellowship
(CEF) to participate in the district’s take-home flyer forum to distribute flyers about the
Good News Club, citing fears about the separation of church and state. A lawsuit had to
be filed to end the religious discrimination.

I mentioned this one in particular because my son recently started Kindergarten and was sent home with one of these flyers. I considered mentioning something to the school but..meh, we live in the Bible Belt. We have Christian radio, tv, billboards, a church on every corner, it's not worth ruffling a few Christian feathers for a tiny flyer I can simply ignore. And that is the point I'm trying to make. There are some legitimate cases of infringement on religious freedom but I wouldn't label the cases contained in this report as hostility. Someone burning down a house of worship or gunning down worshipers is hostility, not squabbles over zoning and building permits. And if you still feel your religious liberty is threatened you can  talk it over and compare your plight with that of a non-Christian neighbor. And in the event that a non-Christian neighbor can not be readily found you can take this neat online survey. With Halloween and Christmas around the corner I'm sure there will be a surge in religious hostility cases.  I wonder how much moneys I can get from city hall for not properly displaying baby Jesus waving the American flag?