PUH-lease! You walked them into the shop, pointed them to the baseball bats, handed them the money to buy them, and then walked out the door before the violence began. You’re an accomplice.

The tide of history is rising at our side. It is just a matter of time before we are free. Nothing will prevent it; nothing will deter it. It is far past time that the phrase, “Liberty and Justice for All”, means something in the USA. Soon it will, and all of the homophobes can go put keffiyehs on their heads and immigrate to Saudi Arabia if they want the law to impose their religious lunacy on those who do not wish to live their kind of hate-filled lives.

The horrors that are committed in the name of any alleged “god” makes one wonder if there is anything in any religion that is worthy of even the slightest degree of spiritual or emotional investment. Organized religions are either private clubs; political caucuses or lynch mobs. Far too many are simply a curse on humanity.

Someone once told me that it isn’t religion that does these things, it’s the people. To which I responded: Yeah, that’s kind of like the simple-minded mantra of the NRA which moronically claims, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” — as if no contributing relationship or association exists. Nope, sorry that wont wash anymore.

Furthermore, religions often provide a twisted justification for violence –they always have. This is especially true when you have people in the Protestant Evangelical Cults; in the Catholic Klan, and in the Muslim Mob who constantly belittle, persecute, and attack the hundreds of millions of Gays and Lesbians in this world. Anything that threatens their limited world view, based on their irrational obsession with superstition, must be controlled, altered or destroyed — according to them.

I ask all people of “faith” to give me one rational reason; just ONE carefully thought-out and intelligent justification for the maltreatment and the limitations on the civil rights of Gay and Lesbian citizens around the globe. But they can’t give you one.
That is why these hate-filled despots turn to the superstitious mandates of religion in order to justify their evil acts. None of the powerful, of any faith, can hold the moral high-ground — especially when self-styled “Christian” and militant Muslim leaders encourage and incite violent anti-social knee-jerk reactions in their adherents through their perpetually demeaning rhetoric and their pathological behavior towards Gay and Lesbian human beings.

As I’ve always said, religion is the last refuge for the scoundrel. It will always be that until people respect the humanity in their fellow man and woman, and not try to force people to be just like them. Nothing is more destructive to one’s sense of individuality and to the human spirit or to one’s pursuit of happiness than imposing one group’s beliefs on another — either through legislative action or through force of violence.

If the old maxim: “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right so say it”, could be amended to include, “I may not agree with the choice of what kind of non-related, adult human being you choose to love in a monogamous relationship, but I’ll defend your right to make that decision for yourself.” Then, if only people could mind their own business and not try to take away from others the rights they so easily take for granted for themselves….well, then it would be a safer and a more respectful world for millions more.

There is hardly a mole-hill of good that religion has done compared to the mountain of evil that most Abrahamic religions (extreme Orthodox Judaism, Fundamentalist Protestantism and current Catholic Christianity — as well as militant Islam) have directly and indirectly perpetuated by forcing their tenets on others who do not bend a knee willingly to these retrograde expressions of tribalism. Yet some people say that organized religions have performed some good functions. By comparison, yes, some people can legitimately admire Hitler because his socialist policies helped to get the German people out of the Great Depression. But do we forgive him for all of his atrocities because he did some good too? I think not.

Likewise, in light of all the bad that has been done in the “cause” of religion, wouldn’t we be better off without any of it? Just like we’re better off without Communism and Nazism. Wouldn’t humanity function better and grow more creatively and be more productive in a secular, rational society where the individuality is more encouraged than blind conformity to a herd mentality that make a virtue out of ignorance and superstition?

If you can’t be a good person and teach the ethics of right and wrong and proper social behavior to your children without beating some religious dogma into their heads, then you are a bad parent. Reliance on superstition is a poor substitute for reason. Religion most often relies on stifling curiosity about the natural world and about life’s great mysteries– and that makes religion very dangerous and extremely detrimental to human advancement.

Many religions have so much in common with communism and fascist regimes which have created similar cult messiahs, such as: Stalin, Mao, Jerry Falwell, Fidel Castro, Pat Robertson, Ronald Reagan, Ayatollah Khomeini, Adolf Hitler, James Dobson, Osama bin Laden, many former Popes, especially the current one, etc. And similar demands are made by them regarding mindless conformity for “the greater good” of society. In other words, to quash opposition to their despotic grip on power.

Communists, Fascists, Muslims and Christians all burned books when so-called “dangerous thoughts or ideas” were promulgated in them. Moreover, similiar brainless “religion-based” censorship often targets art and even music, and attempts to suppress all forms of non-conformity to their cults as well. It is so obvious that religion is antithetical to human development. It retards rather advances mankind. It is a millstone that we should no longer have to endure.

“Religion is the opiate of the people,” Karl Marx used to say. Too bad ol’ Karl substituted one form of totalitarianism and self-delusion for another. Although, regarding one thing he was right — it’s about time most of the planet heads to the Betty Ford clinic and gets detoxed off from organized religions of all persuasions. It would be a far, far better world if they did.

(c) “Bud” E. Lewis Evans