GLAD TIDINGS (FOR NOW)

Lilian Ladele, the woman registrar who refused to officiate at the Civil Partnerships (marriage of gay people) due to her being a Xtian (using religion as an excuse for her bigotry), and who was subsequently fired by the authority for whom she worked, has lost her appeal for discrimination in the Court of Appeal. She is now going to appeal to the Supreme Court (yes we are becoming more and more American, we never had one of those until recently). Hopefully they will uphold the Court of Appeal who upheld the fact of her own bigotry and using religion to justify it is not on.

Perhaps it ought not to, but the fact that she is a woman and black, makes me feel more exasperated toward her. I just cannot understand how she cannot see the correlation between the discrimination she faces day to day with the discrimination she gives out day to day!

The Bible is used to justify racism and misogyny. It still is. And you will find passages in the Bible that will justify a racist or misogynistic stance. As for misogyny, the Bible makes it very clear that women are less than men and indeed are subjects of men and are to do their bidding and keep a low profile.They are to obey. It also speaks of the legitimacy of slave keeping, obeying the masters, and the need to keep the races apart.

Funny how most, if not all of that, is ignored. As is the wearing of polyester cotton and other mixed fibre cloth and the eating shell fish and anything cloven hoofed or strangled.

And yet people still use the Bible to justify the abuse of children and the abuse of homosexuals.

Clearly this has nothing to do with the Bible and religious belief but with the inner feelings and ideas of those who espouse the hatred.

Believe whatever you want to believe. You have that right. You do not have any right to ask that others respect your belief. I certainly don't. I find much of what stands for religious belief cretinous at best and evil at worst.

Here in the UK we have Sunday trading laws which control opening hours of shops because of the Church. How dare they? If they want to keep the Sabbath (which is Saturday anyway, duh!), let them. They have no right to force everyone else to.

We have anti cruelty regulations here which dictate how animals are slaughtered for food. Non Jews and non Muslims are not allowed by law to kill the way Kosher and Halal dictates because it is deemed cruel. And yet Kosher and Halal butchers are allowed to! How stupid is that? The law should apply to ALL or it really is an ass.

Any non Jew who circumcised a boy the way some Jewish ceremonies do, would be jailed for child abuse. Because it is a 'religious ceremony', they are immune from this charge. The circumcision of females is roundly condemned yet the same mutilation of a boy child is both ignored and encouraged. The major effect of circumcision for both sexes is the reduction of sexual pleasure and the main reason it is done.

Going back to the woman I first spoke of. I DO understand where she is coming from and others like her. She believes in a God of conditional love and has been taught that homosexuality is evil. She has also been taught that to question is likewise evil. She as been taught that if she does not believe as she believes, she will suffer eternal torment in the fires of hell, or at the very best eternity without Light. In effect, if she doesn't believe, she is evil herself and will be rejected both by her peers (those in her congregation) and God.

I know just how that feels. I know the terror one feels for doubting. I know how rejection feels when one finally finds the courage to start thinking for oneself, for daring to think that what one has been taught is wrong. I know what it costs. However, ultimately the cost of not following my own conscience was very much higher. I came to realise that a God of conditional love was an oxymoron. That the Pope and nuns and priests had no authority and later, that the Elders and preachers also had none. I came to see that the great Orators who could whip a congregation into a frenzy of speaking in tongues, whip up a passion so strong that people literally fell to their knees, were using the exact same techniques that Adolf Hitler did, to the same effect, and look where that led. One only has to watch and listen to see that these Orators will lead their people into the same evil. Georgetown?

NONE of these people know THE TRUTH. Not one person on this planet does. We cannot know Absolute Truth and no matter what garb the people wear, no matter what lofty position they hold, they are LYING when they say they do.

All the pomp and ceremonial majesty employed is thusly employed to FOOL us and it works! Not just the Roman Catholic Church, Not just the Pat Robertson's, Ian Paisly's, Billy Grahams. The Hindus, the Buddhists, the Muslims, they all have their ways of controlling and fooling you.

The Emperor really has no clothes and you will not perish for daring to say so or think so. Your suffering will come though not daring to think and for not freeing yourself from bondage.

Mark my words, if these people win, evil and tyranny will win. Back will come the burnings, the beheading, the tortures. We will be plunged back into the Dark Ages and it will be our fault. No one will be safe.

Think this is over top? They still behead adulterers in the ME. They still murder gays by law in the ME. In South Africa people were regularly burned alive for their so called wrong doing. By not recognizing the evil inherent in these fundamentalist ideas, by not seeing where it could lead, one plays into their hands.

One only has to see and hear the Westborough Baptist Church to know the evil they would heap on us all given the chance. You only have to hear televangelists to know where it will lead.

The only way to beat them is to be certain that YOU treat others the way you want to be treated yourself. Give the same love, compassion and acceptance to others that you want for you and yours. It really is that simple. Changing our world only requires that we change ourselves. It is the only thing we really can change.

WAKE UP! You are not weak. It isn't beyond you. You can do something that matters. You can change. You have nothing to fear.

Hate ideas but do not hate people.