It seems that Texas has become the first state to become a theocracy. On June 5th, Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation in a church school gymnasium amid shouts of “amen” from backers who just as well could have been attending a revival. Rev. Rod Parsley, a Columbus, OH televangelist, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, and Texas religious right leaders looked on, happy.
The Governor signed 2 bills. One further restricts late term abortions and requires written permission from parents when a minor requests an abortion and the other bill bans same sex marriage.
Perkins said he sees nothing wrong with signing legislation at a Christian school, and he pointed to a consistent theme of the bill-signing: Forces are at work to exclude the religious-minded from political and civic debate.
No, Tony, they aren’t. I should know because at our last meeting of the “Dark Forces” we decided not to exclude religious people from political and civic debate. Even though we are sick to death of hearing you and your kind spout off consistently about being a victim. It seems to me, listening to your own propaganda, that you got President Bush re-elected.
Which is it Tony? Are you a victim of these “Dark Forces” or are you in fact directing the policy of many state governments, the White House, and Congress. I think a reasonable person would see it as the later.
One also needs to question the overall competence of a Governor who would use such an “in your face” method to sign a couple of bills. It would take a mentally challenged person NOT to connect the dots on the location and the topic of the bills. A good politician is subtle when going for an obvious manipulation of a particular voting block.
In the same story telling about the bill signing had this as well:
It’s a gamble the governor seems willing to take. Last month, he spoke to about 500 pastors in Austin at a meeting of the Texas Restoration Project, which plans to register 300,000 new “values voters” in Texas and elect candidates who reflect their conservative views.
In the private meeting, Perry championed promotion of spiritual values on the public square.
“One of the great myths of our time is that you can’t legislate morality,” the governor told the ministers, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press by his campaign.
“If you can’t legislate morality, then you can neither lock criminals up nor let them go free. If you can’t legislate morality, you can neither recognize gay marriage nor prohibit it. If you can’t legislate morality, you can neither allow for prayer in school nor prevent it,” he said. “It is a ridiculous notion to say you can’t legislate morality. I say you can’t NOT legislate morality.”
If his statement doesn’t piss off us reasonable people then it might be funny, but far too many religious right folk and the people who sniff their ass, throw out this red herring as an indictment against seculars and other freethinkers.
First of all, none of us have said “you can’t legislate morality”. We may have said “you can’t legislate the Bible.”
Our laws are our collective morality as a society. What the right want and have wanted for over 30 years is to impose their revealed morality on everyone.
No one disputes that murder and stealing is wrong. We wouldn’t have a society if we didn’t all believe that, but it is something else to say abortion or gay marriage is immoral. A belief that is nothing more than a belief in one’s religion.
Abortion is more difficult because a potential human is involved, but gay marriage doesn’t physically harm anyone. We do understand that while child pornography is wrong (harm to the child), a guy getting porn off his Internet connection harms no one.
The religious right want to restrict our liberties. They want to know what you do in your bedroom. They want to restrict what you can read and see in the media. They don’t think you are good enough to make your own decisions about actions that harm no one and they don’t want you to have any input either.
