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Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go.

The Pilgrims did not come to this continent because of a universal principal of religious freedom or to inadvertanly plant the seed for a country tolerant of all religions where people could exercise them freely. They came to get away from everyone else so they would not be bothered by other people living by other religions.

They were officially Separatists, a name that does not in any way even hint at universalities, and describes a negative action or attitude. It was only the colony’s first on-land governor, William Bradford, whom referred to his group as pilgrims impkying they were going to a better place blessd by God.

Their lack of tolerance was illustrated immediately upon arrival by only allowing Separatists to sign the Mayflower Compact and benefit in any way from it while others had no choice but to be subjected to it, being able to live in the colony, but not benefit from its anticipated, but not forthcoming, commercial colonial enterprise profits, provided they did so according to the religious beliefs of the sect.

Well, okay, maybe not the Pilgrims, but certainly the Puritans held to the greater principle of universal religious freedom and a place to exercise it. Except, by the time they had started coming over here, the Puritans with Cromwell and all were pretty much in charge of the country and the religion of it, so there was no one they had to escape from to freely exercise their religion. They were, at the time, the religion.

If the founding of the country was, indeed, based on the principal of religious freedom, the Puritans would not have been so harsh to Quakers and other non-puritans, like those heathen Indians.

The Pilgrims did not come here for religious freedom unless it was theirs alone. The same with the Puritans.

However, over the years as politics melded to religion came into play creating a power structure, the best conditions in the country were unfairly divided between those in power and those not, and religion was a good unifying force for deciding who will get what with the advantage of having its own ultimatum for the faithful, “Obey now for a few years, or suffer later forever.”

Although originally hating each other, the various sects of Christianity saw that if they worked in unity, publicly putting aside their festering hatreds, Baptist vs Catholic for example, and claim that, because of the selfless Pilgrims, this is a Christian Country, this guarantees the right to behave however you want as long as you attach it to religion, but the right one at that.

Of course, this called for a little cross pollination, so the Judeo-Christian canard was invented to broaden the religious foundation claim to include anyone who believed in the God of that tradition, while ensuring that their role was one of convenience, more for the purpose of a reference to increase numbers with little respect for the actual beliefs of these fringe religious allies.

Numbers count for good statistcs

While claiming many actions that result in discrimination are based on religious freedom, it is obvious from such things as the Muslim Ban under Trump that there is a limit to who gets that freedom.

When my mother was attending Brookline High School in that section of Boston back in the 1930s there was a major fire that destroyed a large part of the building rendering it unusable. Brookline had at the time a very large Jewish community and one big Jewish Synagogue with a community center there offered space for use as classrooms. It bothered my mother that every morning after reporting to class the opening activities of each school day began with announcements, the Pledge of Allegiance and, what my mother saw as not a very polite way of thanking the Jewish community for their help, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer recited in a Jewish setting with Jews in the classrooms and other Jews going about the business of the community center.

She said she realized at that point that there was something wrong with this as it was one thing to force the Jewish students to stand in a public school classroom as those around them prayed to the Christian God in the name of the majority religion, but a totally other thing when you do this on their property that they had offered to ease a burden.  If the Jews could adjust to the Christian prayer at schools they had to attend by law, the Christians could have adjusted to not saying the prayer until the school building was repaired and everyone returned to the status quo.

She saw her fellow Christians made very bad house guests.

This was a Christian practice that had become part of the unthinking fabric of schools.

Although a faithful but reasonable Catholic all her life, she never got over the assumption that one religion was the acceptable one to whom all others are just tolerations until they are needed.

Like with Black people and politicians.

Finally, as the claims of religious freedom become more strident and clearly only applicable to mainstream “Christianity”, other religions are calling out the religious freedom crowd for their selectivity as those laws being proposed to protect religious freedom favor Christianity while ignoring all other religions and making civil law answerable to one sect’s beliefs.

In the name of universal religious freedom, the exceptions from following existing laws and proposed “Biblically” based new ones, those promoting such laws see only through the lens of their own Christian upbringing and in practice clearly illustrate that, as with the Pilgrims, religious freedom is not universal but selective.

While evangelists started their crusade to make this a Christian nation, a quick review of the last 40 or 50 years will reveal how bizarre in retrospect what they got people to believe actually was and have built on that foundation to continue more overtly, most Americans wondered why, if there really were any good Muslims, they weren’t speaking out and working against the fundamentalist terrorists in  both their more open physical attacks or the quiet insinuating of Sharia law into legislation and adjudication. The silence implied there could not be good Muslims.

Where are the good Christians speaking up now when people’s Creator endowed rights as humans and their civil rights guaranteed in the Constitution are being attacked in the name of one interpretation of a religion whose number of denominations and sects shows clearly that even within itself, Christianity is not a monolithic entity. If it were, there would be one church and one version of the Bible. The Good Christians and religious people of all religions should be speaking up unless, of course, the silence implies there aren’t any.

In the name of the free exercise of one’s religious beliefs, Florida’s new abortion law bans most abortions after 15 weeks with no exceptions for cases of incest, rape, or human trafficking.  

After all, from a Christian standpoint, this is moral, so it applies to all.

Actually, this is religious tyranny- this imposing of Christian morality and Christian dogma on non-Christians- and someone is speaking out.

Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, a synagogue in Boynton Beach, Florida, has filed a lawsuit because the law is based on the assumption that a right-wing Christian demand for forced birth is universal morality when it is one religion’s belief and while subjugating the citizens of their community to a sectarian legal code.

The feared universal application of Sharia.

According to the lawsuit, the Florida law violates Jewish religious belief that an abortion is required to protect the health and mental or physical well-being of the woman.

Under certain Jewish beliefs, the fetus is a part of the mother and not a separate entity until first breath and a separate life begins.

The Florida law may contain certain exemptions, but these are not enough to allow the free exercise of the Jewish faith as the exceptions, as is the whole law, are based on the Christian religion making such a law a violation of the First Amendment as it favors one religion by codifying its beliefs and limits the free exercise of the Jewish faith or more widely any religion that does not share them.

The discussion about abortion involves strong theological disagreement among different faiths. Each religion’s adherents can follow or ignore their denominations beliefs and deal with the consequences, but having the state settle the religious debate by imposing the Christian theological view on all citizens through legislation so those who dissent from a church’s teaching face whatever its practices on earth and its threats in the afterlife along with punishments and fines in this existence.

It is legislated religious compliance.

As a civil country based on the Constitution, not the Bible, our laws should be religiously neutral without basis in religion.

Now we know there are some good religious people because at least one Jewish congregation has spoken up, so we have the Judeo part covered at least.

Now we need the Christian part to step up and tell its radical theocrats to knock it off.

Forcing Christianity on all a state’s citizens is un-American and un-Constitutional.

And at least one religious congregation is willing to say so.

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Drag Queen Story Hour, when a Drag Queen reads a children’s book to children in the public space of a public library in full view and hearing of anyone near where the reading takes place, was begun in 2015 by author and activist Michelle Tea in San Francisco because in all the story hours she brought her own child to, there were no books that included anyone like her daughter’s mother.

Although children may glean the lesson about diversity that such a reading might bring about by example of behavior, these readings are not like those sermonizing moments that ensue if you accidentally let a Jehovah witness, Mormon missionary, or itinerant preacher into your house, or just can’t get pass the street preacher so you can run into the store he is standing in front of to buy something simple and non-controversial like a container of milk

The book is one chosen from the children’s section of the library and, being as they are advertised in advance and take place where all such readings to children by adults take place, no one is forced to attend the reading just as no one is forced to attend when it is a pastor or police officer who does a reading.

There is no disco ball, flashing lights, or lip-synching. As far as many kids are concerned it is just a lady in a shiny dress reading just like the fire fighter had done the last time and they are just as interested in the personal sex lives (something most don’t even know is a thing) of the former as the latter.

At least that is what most people expect and receive at such an event because that is what they are.

However, in examining for the causes of the winter failures with the state’s independent electric power grid and school shootings, Texas politicians have seen that all other explanations of the causes of either or both pale in comparison to a Drag Queen reading Make Way for Ducklings.

And they are determined to act.

Within days of the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, Representative Bryan Slaton, congressman from East Texas, announce he intended to “file legislation protecting kids from drag shows and other inappropriate displays as soon as the next legislative session begins.”

During the first weekend of Pride, there had been a number of libraries that held a Drag Queen Story Hour and Slaton sees these as “underage Texas children being subjected to inappropriate sexual content by adults,” referring to this as “part of a disturbing trend in which perverted adults are obsessed with sexualizing young children.”

There is no willfully uninformed rash judgment there.

Although not listing any, his office issued a statement that it “is currently researching our options but we believe there are several ways to ban this type of garbage.”

Stating that you intend to investigate perverted adults distributing garbage removes the pretense of impartiality of any investigation.

After Uvalde, conservatives sent around a viral meme and claimed that the shooter there was Transgender based on nothing more than a picture of a Trans woman who lived many states away and had no idea she was being identified as the shooter.  
 
Rather than deal with the availability of guns that he had increased by signing open-carry and non-registration or training bills, Governor Greg Abbott jumped to mental illness as the cause of shootings while ignoring, as he referred to the shooter as mentally ill, that the shooter was able to buy a weapon and multiple rounds legally in Texas for immediate use because of laws Abbot signed.

Ted Cruz totally rejected gun control at the NRA Convention held just days after the shooting at Robb Elementary school and as funerals for the victims began, mocking the other Republicans that backed out of the event out of empathy and good taste.

A few weeks before midterm primary election in February, Governor Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate families of transgender children receiving gender-affirming medical treatment claiming it is child abuse

His party needed votes and a monster under the bed to get them.

Slaton supports that idea and has announced that he will continue his fight to make sex-change therapies on minors “child abuse”.

These actions are so transparent that Harris County Civil Attorney Christian Menefee stated he will not follow the governor’s transgender investigation directives, as this could cause real harm.

As he explained,

“A main goal, I believe, is to make these families fearful of making decisions they believe to be in the best interest of their kids. And that helps achieve some of the outcome of what they’re trying to do. And when folks continue to amplify those positions, it just continues to put those families in fear.” 

In Texas, Mass shootings will stop when Drag Queens are all rounded up so people can own as many guns as they so choose, hoping to be able to find one in the dark of winter when the grid fails, and the lights go out.

In the 1990s there had been 97 shootings at schools with Columbine being the big shocker.

From 2000 to 2009 there were over 90 school related shootings.

From 2010 to the month before the first Drag Queen Story Hour in June 2015, there were over 80 school related shootings.

In the 25 years preceding Drag Queen Story Hour, before the first Drag Queen opened a book and began to read to children, their own among them, there had already been 267 school related shootings.

This is not the best example of cause and effect for the representative to base ruining people’s lives on.

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