Comments on: Focus launches “religious liberty” ballot amendment in Colorado

By: SharonB

SharonB — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:18:00 +0000

Apparently the Christianists want special rights.
And, they want to jam it down everyone’s throats!

(See, hypocrisy in action.)

By: Darina

Darina — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:58:19 +0000

So will the government have to prove that it has “a compelling governmental interest” in preventing human sacrifice “motivated by a sincerely held religious belief”?

By: Priya Lynn

Priya Lynn — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:24:49 +0000

Timothy said “Fortunately for believers, atheists find it more important to define relgious beliefs in a way that excludes them than to actually take advantage of equal application of the law.”.

I wouldn’t lie in order to take advantage of a law.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 01:21:13 +0000

Doesn’t it, amongst other things, legalise polygamy for those faiths that practise it?

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:58:17 +0000

Blake, I think you just pissed off Mary Baker Eddy. he he

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:57:16 +0000

Fortunately for believers, atheists find it more important to define relgious beliefs in a way that excludes them than to actually take advantage of equal application of the law. Kinda sad, but hey we offered.

By: James Brunk

James Brunk — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:40:41 +0000

The language in the bill is taken indirectly from an existing federal law Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act . Public Law 106-274. IT is the exact same standard that the courts apply to prisoners when considering their relgious free exercise cases. These people are a lot smarter than you think… Read about the law, passed in 200 here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Land_Use_and_Institutionalized_Persons_Act

By: Regan DuCasse

Regan DuCasse — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:10:20 +0000

Again, fundamentalists are mashing up religious freedom with religious AUTHORITY.
One’s religious freedom is based on a standard that cannot interfere with the free will, association and equal rights and access of others.
This is a response STRICTLY to homosexuality and gay people. There has been little, or none similar responses to anyone else who could and does meet the religious standards these people think they are upholding.
At least with Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods at least, they isolate into their own enclaves and neighborhoods. Christians will not do that. They won’t go to their own corners and put up signs or information that can tell anyone else to either stay away or be welcome.
In other words, they don’t give gay people or anyone else the option of AVOIDING them either.

It’s another way of having the cake and eating it too, special rights without any restrictions or sacrifices on THEIR part.
But expecting a group like gay people to BE sacrificed TO that belief.

When NO other citizens have to be.
Gays and lesbians are a universal part of all human life and always have been.
Religion is a CONSTRUCT of various cultures, that’s changed in language, format, levels of inclusion or not over the centuries.
Whereas, gay people obviously are a CONSTANT and unchanging fact of all human life with no choice in existing or integrating into all human life.

So, the deference, when it comes to gov’t protections SHOULD be gay people and NOT the religious.
Who have also shown over the years, to use religion as an abusive means of control and power with tragic and destructive results.
In other words, believers are projecting THEIR religious identity on gay people inappropriately.

And no one gay is trying to gain anything over and above what isn’t already tolerated by believers all the time.
I’ve done it before, but I can cite the main religious taboos that are forbidden or considered directly contaminant of one’s religious purity or value.
Contraception (which is why the main objection is non procreative sex), autopsy (it’s considered gross indecency and unnatural to cut up a dead body), and organ and blood donation. More of the same, that using another person’s body parts contaminates, or cutting up a body that’s dead to the purpose of the living or taking anything from the living is again, grossly indecent.

But we all know that these banned or taboo aspects of life, are essential and have been to the health and well being of not just individuals, but all mankind and mankind’s progress.
So whatever religious taboos people object to when it comes to homosexuality, they need to get OVER IT the way they have all the other issues and respect it.
When it’s all said and done, trying to enforce old world religious taboos in a 21st century we ALL live in and benefit from, is wrong anyway.
Besides, do you hear Jehovah’s Witnesses who reject blood donation, complaining that their religious freedom is compromised because of the Red Cross blood banks or anyone else’s access to such intervention?
Are they trying to KEEP others from using blood for that reason, or have the gov’t shut down blood banks?

No.

So the reasoning behind religious objections to gay equality is so much BS and that’s why. As is interfering the the law abiding and responsible behavior gay people are engaging in.

It’s ALWAYS wrong to expect OTHERS to be sacrificed to someone else’s religious choice. There is all the freedom NECESSARY to be religious, beyond that, it’s NOT a religious reason, but a spiteful one.

By: Blake

Blake — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:58:09 +0000

Pryia, would a First Church of Christ-Atheist suffice?

There’s nothing quite like repression to build those bonds & kick-start a new religion.

By: Priya Lynn

Priya Lynn — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:27:08 +0000

By all means, do so Ben.