Tag: religious freedoms

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

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A recent discussion between friends had me pondering a well-worn topic covering the Westboro Baptist Church.  While I am loath to give this repugnant organization any more lines in the massive universe of online and paper text I feel that the notion they were positing was not the best course of action.

It is the standard argument that crops up each time there is a tragedy and these vultures, nay ghouls, crawl out from their miserable crypt and threaten the world with their mere presence.  The subsequent ballyhoo over these vile, barely passing for, human beings feed into their hopes of either 1) spreading their woefully misguided message of monumentally ignorant hate with little understanding of their source material, or 2) getting someone worked up enough to do something irrational enough to warrant a lawsuit that will fill what has to be dwindling coffers.

However, I believe, and have argued, that the desire by the masses to simply ignore these individuals, or to refer to them in some offhand way that does not recognize them directly (such as ‘they who shall not be named’) does not retract from their capacity to continue these repulsive acts.  If anything, I believe it encourages them.

They are not deterred by legions on Facebook or twitter from referring to them as ‘those wackos’, but those who attend these services and stand in direct opposition of them and their message.  The Patriot riders who lined military funeral processions and revved their bikes so loudly that the WBC packed their things and left because they could not be heard.  The hundreds of students who mass against a planned protest on a college campus to face off against the WBC when they came to picket, or more likely celebrate, the death of a gay student.

Our society has picked up this notion that an evil ignored dies on the vine of ignominy.  We forget that terrible thoughts and hideous acts must be met with thoughts and actions in opposite.  Where there is truly misguided hate and disgust, there must be compassion.  Where praise of violence against the soldiers or against the children, there must be the solemn respect for the deceased and those still suffering from the loss.

The quote above is from one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett.  I won’t go into his fiction, and how it should be read by all who can spare the time, but I want to point out that in this scenario we are the darkness.

We contain the ever-present capacity for humanity to care, to feel, and to have compassion in times of our own suffering as well as the suffering of others.  The WBC may think they will get there first, that they will be the loudest voice, but the light, as is not often stated, only illuminates the area around it, leaving the rest into darkness.  Is it not too much to hope that the darkness is not the evil of the universe, but that which is all-encompassing.  That compassion for the injured, physically and mentally, the wounded, and the deceased fills the void that their ‘light’ would so like to dispel.

In that vein, should that light die, to turn a phrase on Dylan Thomas, I doubt there will be many that rage against it, but until it fails, until the abomination that is the WBC is stripped of its undeserved title as a ‘religious’ institution, and crushed under the heel of both judge, jury, and social executioner it should not be forgotten.  No evil that is forgotten dies.  No evil that is unchallenged shrinks.  if history has taught us anything, it is that.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

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A curious note was passed my way regarding a recent court decision to prohibit the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from holding a pre-meeting prayer that included the name Jesus.  Couple that with the knee-jerk reaction from some state representatives in North Carolina who submitted a resolution to establish a state religion, and it’s another spin on the ‘religious freedom’ movement.

Going back to Virgina first, The article regarding the court decision can be found here and the ACLU has it’s own take here.  In short, the County Board of Supervisors had deviated from the religious neutral prayer that most government organizations insist upon at the beginning of meetings for a clearly identifiable Christian one.  This raised the hackles of one Mrs. Barbara Hudson, and she informed the Board that what they were doing was unconstitutional…which it is.  The board more or less told her to shove off, and, true to form, the ACLU became involved.  Mediation failed, and ‘lo the Judiciary is brought in to lay the smack down.

A similar incident occurred in North Carolina, in the district the that is represented by the state congressman that presented the resolution.  The judicial response to the prayer is what inspired these two representatives, one of which wears the tea party badge with honor, to file this amazingly unconstitutional piece of legislation.

The ground level I’m getting to is this: They were informed that it was unconstitutional, and when informed of such they didn’t bother to research their position nor did they take it under consideration.  They blew the challenge off for self-indignant or self-righteous reasons, failed to come to a compromise in court mandated mediation (a simple acquiescence would have sufficed), and in the end cost the taxpayers significant time and energy better spent addressing the issues of their respective county as well as the thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees that will be assessed after the dust has finally settled.

The need, not desire but flat-out need, to invoke God at public government events also makes me wonder, as I have many times before, about the personal relationship with God that the believers are suppose to have, but seem very eager to show off in public.  My understanding was that it was a deeply personal, one-on-one kind of relationship.  One that cannot be impressed upon by the government, and, through that same clause, cannot be impressed upon others.

The comments on other articles claiming this is another attack on religious freedom by the Judiciary, the resolution goes on to itemize how these decisions are just that, but here’s the thing; the government, any government beholden to the Constitution of the United States America, cannot endorse any religion. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution overrides state Constitutions and local legislatures.  Its not an attack on religion when those affected are asking that the rules that apply to the situation be enforced accordingly.  Somewhere along the line those who are pushing for “religious freedom” forgot what it was about.

The Representatives from North Carolina, short on civics lessons or long on sleeping in class, fail to realize that the federal government does have a say in what the states do.  The power of the states lies in their people and the states capacity to represent themselves at the federal level.  They rage about judicial oversight with regards to these, and many other social matters (and religion is a social matter), but fail to recall that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to balance each other.  Should the legislative, or we’ll say the most representative body of the electorate, get a wild hair up it’s ass, it is up to the Judiciary (since the executive cannot directly interfere on state affairs) to apply the law as it is interpreted.

Does that mean that the “majority” might get a black eye supporting specific causes, yes.  I’d point to school integration, inter-racial marriage, interstate commerce, property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, and several thousand other decisions made by the Judicial branch that have in some respects hindered the majority from being a collective dick to a select group of people, but also protecting the body politic from those in both the state and federal realms from doing long-lasting harm.

There isn’t a gun being held to their heads saying that they must worship Allah, Amaterasu, or Cthulhu because there are explicit protections prohibiting the government from enforcing a state religion. That protection, however, does not guarantee that a specific religion will remain in the majority over the existence of a nation, or that the majority religion receives any special privileges or protections because it has the most, or most influential, followers.  It appears that those that normally decry religious freedom forget that the government is designed to protect not only those practicing a religion from government interference, but also to protect those of us who don’t share their beliefs from being steamrolled by the them.