Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Who would Jesus vote for?

Quote Alan Keyes, Republican candidate for Illinois: "I think it's perfectly clear if you ask people are you going to vote against God or for the Democratic party they will stand with God,". Now aside from the gramatical error in that statement which makes it sound as though he's encouraging only devil-worshippers to vote for him, how scary is the US these days?

There are two issues here:

1) Would Jesus really have voted Republican? Clearly not. Firstly he made a big noise about how a rich man could not serve God, he didn't suggest top bracket tax cuts. He spent his life helping the poor and sick, not forcing them to work for a pathetic minimum wage. He also had these rules: the ten commandments, big stone tablets, etc and one of them said "THOU SHALT NOT KILL", but none of them said anything about pre-emptive invasion. Even after he had been wronged he said "turn the other cheek", not "carpet bomb civilians at will",...

2) Has anyone noticed that the first victim of fundamentalism, whatever the religion, is always women? Next up is banning abortion, banning the pill, the horror stories discussed earlier about "encouraging marriage".

We're all told, always, that we must have religious tolerance. In general I agree, but surely human rights have to come first. In a free society those who wish to observe religious practices still can, those that prefer not to have that freedom too. Meanwhile I should like to invite all and sundry to exercise their religious freedom with a wander over into one of the few global religions where women have completely equal and sometimes even senior status...wiccanism!

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