Jesus never preached hate.
He never advocated violence towards his enemies. In fact, quite the opposite,
his central message was love. It doesn’t make sense to me how so many
so-called
christians can behave with so much hate
toward non-christians and anyone else who believes something different than they
do.

The Philadelphia Five, several
christians who were arrested for harassing gays at OutFest in October [read the
official press release] should be ashamed of themselves. The existence
of gay people doesn’t hurt them and they should act like adults and dedicate
their time to more altruistic and less negative
pursuits.

Another of these
ignorant, too much time on their hands christian groups thinks the popular
children’s character SpongeBob is gay. That is absurd, of course.
First of all, he’s asexual because he’s a character that children are supposed
to relate to. Had he actually been sexual then they would have erupted with the
inappropriateness of it. The
so-called
christians complain about the ‘tolerance
pledge’ including a reference to asking people to respect the sexual identity of
others along with their abilities, beliefs, culture and race as “crossing a
moral line.” But it is a good thing. Isn’t the golden rule about treating others
with respect so they will return that
respect?

It seems so easy for these
so-called
christians to persecute gay people and
spend millions of dollars calling in every political favor possible to ban gay
marriage in every state’s constitution. They’ve been quite successful. But never
before have amendments restricted civil rights in lieu of granting
them.

It’s a very dangerous road to
lead a country of freedom of rights toward religious restriction of them. The
reason the early US colonists left Great Britain was to obtain religious
freedom. The so-called
christians don’t see they are recreating
the environment that caused the need for this
country.

Why do all these
conservative groups now seem to have free reign over deciding our laws? It may
have something to do with the fact that all these
so-called
christians elected one of their own in
November 2004.

George W. Bush is
exactly the kind of leader they require. One who publicly supports hate and
prejudice in the name of Jesus, uh I mean, freedom and is too ignorant and small
minded to see the truth of the world around
him.

It’s troublesome because when
laws or groups of the population disagree with these
so-called christians
groups they get the all republican
congress, senate and soon the Supreme Court to side with them and write hate and
discrimination back into the law books. The Second Bush Reich dictating
morality, legality, freedom and justice is a frightening
horror.

Whenever any of Jesus’
actual teachings get in their way they happily quote the Old Testament screaming
from hilltops that the bible clearly says that it violates God’s law. These
groups use the fear of a hell in the afterlife to keep their control of people.
Other people rise up and W’s government labels them radicals and poof they can
be made to disappear until after the war on terror can be won - which is never
but that discussion is for another
day.

To allow christians or anyone
else to meet regularly and profess their faith doesn’t affect me. If you’d like
to do that, please go ahead. It does become a problem when they use the name of
freedom to impose their lifestyle and frameworks of misconceptions on the laws
of this country, when they use it to invade other countries or conveniently
decide the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to their
captives.

America cannot continue
to bully everyone and everything to its will. We live on one planet and when we
destroy it - there isn’t anywhere else for us to go. I wish I could beam up to
the Enterprise and go very far from here but that is
just not technically possible today.

Modern civilization must work
differently. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the
way.”

If all these
so-called christians
would actually live the words Jesus Christ
taught, they would learn to treat others as they wished to be treated, love
their enemies and that the greatest virtue is not faith or hope but
love.