Some years ago in an e-mail list about Humanism, I made the argument that religion indoctrinates children to carry on the faith to the next generation. At that time, some on the list took me to task for using the word “indoctrinate” as if the parents and religious leaders were doing something criminal. I think religious training is child abuse just like when parents try to maintain that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny are real. The recent documentary “Jesus Camp” proves my point if in a more hyper way.
Category: Politics
May 5th was the so-called National Day of Prayer. It is an ad hoc “day” sponsored by the religious right front group Focus on the Family to misinform us all about the erroneous claims that fundamentalist Christians are being persecuted in the United States. President Bush made a public spectacle of the “event” but President Obama only continued the proclamation part. That is a good sign, but there are other reasons to drop the National Day of Prayer.
A religious right front group that is against same sex marriage is going to air a commercial that not only has actors giving fake personal stories but the stories have nothing to do with same sex marriage. The group, the National Organization for Marriage, instead is smearing gays by using made up problems. The Human Rights Campaign found the audition tapes and responds to the fake ad.
Once again, President Obama gave support to the secular focus of our republic, where people of many religions and no religion can live and be free. At his stop in Turkey, another country founded on seperation of church and state, the President made his comments during a press conference.
During the campaign President Barack Obama promised to change how the federal government gave money to religious groups. While he did change the title of the office created under President Bush, he has yet to remove the rules and regulations that allowed religious groups to discriminate when getting federal grant money.
Secular Left shouldn’t ignore respect
Having a blog can be very interesting sometimes, specially when a post is linked to worldwide and you get tons of visits. When a post of mine sees a lot of hits I follow the referral and see what it was that sparked the interest. Most times it doesn’t bother me because it is a positive link – someone liked what I wrote. This time it was negative because another person made claims about some people called “secular far left” and linked to a category on my blog implying I spoke for these people. I needed to respond.