You can always find another lunch counter, er, baker, florist
March 3, 2014

 
Share

I‘m fairly convinced by this point that Conservatives just don’t listen to themselves when they speak. How else do you explain Fox’s George Will or ABC guest pundit Rich Lowrey decrying yesterday the veto of Arizona’s noxious “(bigotry in the name of) Religious Freedom Act”, saying, “Hey, if a baker or florist refuses to cater your gay wedding, there are plenty of other bakers & florists. Just find one who will.” I’m certain there were plenty of other lunch counters those young black men could have patronized in 1960 as well. In fact, no one told those young men in Greensboro they couldn’t eat in that particular Woolworth’s. The establishment was perfectly happy to serve them in a booth, just not up front at the lunch counter where Farmer John might have to rub elbows with some Darkie. And Sen. Rand Paul was abundantly clear when he stated he believed the Federal government had no right to tell private establishments (like Woolworth’s) that they couldn’t discriminate based solely on skin color. And now, 54 years later, we are once again having the same fight with “Social Conservatives” (Democrats back then, Republicans today) that honesty believe that bigots should be allowed to oppress a group of people they hate if they claim it’s “in the name of God.”

I’m about as Done with people using “God” as an excuse to justify every hateful thing imaginable, as one can be. The greatest evil ever inflicted upon the world has to be “organized religion”… with a few notable exceptions like the late Mother Theressa and the current Pope Francis… but then, they are just “individuals”, while the church they represent doesn’t exactly have the best record… from protecting child-molesting priests, to codifying women’s subservience to men, and even this Pope still regards homosexuality a “sin”, so there’s that. When you look at just about every war in the Middle East, Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill (that was walked back to just “lifetime imprisonment”), on through to the Religious Right in this country fomenting hate towards every “Other” you can name: “Illegal Aliens” (that, by no coincidence, just happen to be Mexicans, not Canadians or Europeans), the (lazy, shiftless) Poor (begging for food stamps), “Thugs” (the new “N-word”), Women that use birth control… even their proclaimed “love” of Israel is a façade for their true motivation… ensuring that the “Armageddon” prophecy of an end-of-the-world conflict between Christian’s & Jews takes place… and they all call The Republican Party home.

And now it’s Teh Gays. “Law’s telling me I must treat you like a human being is a violation of my Religious right to be a bigot!”

I believe it all started when God kicked Adam & Eve out of The Garden of Eden because they didn’t comport with God’s idea of morality (the “serpent” that “enticed” Eve was Adam’s penis. The “forbidden fruit of knowledge” was “lust” and the discovery of “sex for pleasure”. That’s the version they don’t teach you in Bible class.)

Unfortunately for them, there wasn’t another “Garden” down the road that they could have patronized instead. So apparently being a judgmental bigot is next to Godliness.

During the Civil Rights struggle, bigots used religion to justify their bigotry back then as well. “The Almighty separated the races by putting them on different continents” they proclaimed in defense of segregation. Except that’s not true. China and Russia are on the same continent, yet those races couldn’t be more different. “Europe” is labeled a “continent” despite being (for the most part) physically connected to the same land mass as “Asia”. And European “Whites” were not native to North America, so arguably, bigots of European decent continuing to live in the United States were in violation of God’s desire to separate the races by continent. Oops!

Long long ago… way back in 2012… I remember Republican idiots having a conniption over “Sharia Law” and their (mistaken) belief that some Federal judges were allowing Muslims to violate Federal Law on the grounds that the Federal law violated their religious rights. This was just another example of “our Muz’lum prez’dent” slowly-but-surely allowing Islam to overtake the American judicial system.

And now, just one short year later, those very same people are rushing to the defense of “Sharia Law” and Muslim’s right to ignore Federal law based on their religious beliefs. I know, right? Whoda’thunkit?

If you’re looking for “consistency” from the Religious Right… what is WRONG with you? Have you been asleep these past two decades? You should know better by now. My advice to them: stop using religion to justify your bigotry. This fight has been fought before. Been there, done that. And when you say stupid things like, “Just find another wedding photographer”, ask your self, “Why should they have to?”
 


Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

RSS Please REGISTER to be notified by e-mail every time this Blog is updated! Firefox/IE users can use RSS for a browser link that lists the latest posts! RSS


 

Share

March 3, 2014 · Admin Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: fake scandals, General, Racism, Religion

One Response

  1. Grant in Texas - March 3, 2014

    Smaller regions don’t always present a choice. The rural county where I grew up had only 16,000 people with ONE professional photographer and ONE baker so to find someone in those businesses to provide services might mean traveling several counties over (and what if they were “religious” too?). The proposed Arizona law could have also denied mix race couples access to wedding caterers, too, if interracial marriage “offended” religious beliefs. Such marriage was supposedly found unConstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1967 Loving ruling, but some are still trying to prevent such unions, most recently in Louisiana. http://www.hammondstar.com/local_news/news/article_4a84c017-72fb-50aa-b8ae-238785cd11f3.html

Leave a Reply