Religious Freedom, My Ass

It's about using political power to enforce Bronze Age hatred of women, gays and minorities.

Katha Pollitt at The Nation:

The right uses religion because that’s all it’s got: the secular arguments against LGBT rights are in history’s dustbin. And if the notion that the pill causes abortion wasn’t a religious tenet, it would have no traction, since it is false and known to be so. Religious freedom functions like a giant get-out-of-reality-free card: your belief cannot be judged, because it’s a belief. There are still states where parents can legally let their children die of curable diseases—as long as they have a religious reason to shun medical care. The difference between criminal child neglect and tragedy? Jesus.  

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act needs to be repealed, but it is hard to see where the political will is going to come from. Somehow the separation of church and state has come to mean blocking the state from protecting the civil rights of citizens and forcing it to support—and pay for—sectarianism, bigotry, superstition and bullying. I really doubt this is what Thomas Jefferson had in mind.

The freakazoids have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only way to ensure a secular government that values and protects the human and civil rights of everyone is to bar from public service anyone who takes marching orders from an invisible sky wizard.

Atheists only in elected office.