Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Good First Amendment News

"A federal appeals court has handed down a ruling that a monument displaying the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse "has the primary effect of endorsing religion.""

Why yes, it does. The analysis of this ain't rocket surgery.

I have nothing against Christians (unless or if they are persecuting Pagans - or anyone else for that matter) or the ten commandments. They are, respectively, a religion and religious statements. A plaque of the ten commandments, from the Bible, belongs at the church where people believe and want to worship what has been written in the Bible, translated properly or not.

A small, yet significant victory over those who wish to force their beliefs on everyone else.

The first amendment does not include specifics regarding the separation of church and state, it protects religious freedom (among other things). Its intention is to keep government out of religion, keep a free press, right to free assembly ....... and more.

The argument (right wing radio) has been made that, therefore, a federal court has no business telling a lesser court that it may not have religious monuments placed on or about its (public) property. The argument (love it or leave it syndrome) has been made that the people of that town who do not want the ten commandments placed outside the door of their courthouse may simply leave town. Go somewhere else. Get out if you don't want one religion (possibly not your own) being endorsed over another.

To those who produce this type of (anti) (hateful) logic, I ask if that is how you would feel were we to place a Pagan symbol outside our courthouse. This would not appear to be endorsement of OUR religion?

Again, come on, it ain't brain science. Keep your religion in your personal lives and at your churches. Use it in your daily life to become a better, kinder, more loving and spiritually enlightened person.

But, please, keep your religion away from "justice for all."

Amen.



And in other, yet related, yet better, hugely more enlightened, humorous news:


Pastafarians Rule!





Click on the video below for a TERRIFIC, related story:





Note that the above does NOT hang outside the Hannibal, Missouri courthouse. Or any other, as far as I know.

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