RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE? YOU TALKING TO ME?

"Imagine no religion...it's easy if you try." It's getting harder by the day in a land ruled by theocrats.

On a political discussion list I'm on, one meathead posted yesterday some diatribe about how America was founded on religion, that on top of the Washington Monument, visible only from above, is a huge inscription "Laus Deo"--honor God or something like that. That 92% of Americans support the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. That religious inscriptions honoring God abound in our early statuary and public monument. And thus the separation of church and state is just the usual liberal...oh, need I go on. We were entreated, in typical internet bombast, to spread this religious screed to everyone we know. I wrote back:

"It's exactly because of this intertwining of church and state that the "separation" has evolved through decades of Supreme Court decisions since the monument was built and most of those inscriptions were written. As a country we recognized the need to expand upon the original amendment to prevent theocrats from creating the tyranny of the majority. We now cherish separation such that discussions about "under God" are critical to the continuance of religious freedom--and freedom from religion--whatever the outcome.

Similarly, there was nothing explicitly stated about privacy in the constitution, either, yet that concept has evolved through Supreme Court decisions to be one of the most valued aspects of our system, even if now threatened by the Patriot Act I and proposed #2.

And of course the constitution as written only allowed rich white men with property to vote. All hail the sacred writ.

It took centuries of judicial activism to create the body of law that now underpins this republic, and which we desecrate every day--especially this administration. And yes, judicial activism, that very concept that right-wingers condemn when they don't like a court decision, but which is as necessary to the creation of a free state as the first amendment. (We are reminded of Bush's unimaginable temerity and hypocrisy in his State of the Union comments about judicial activism, which of course is the reason he was standing at that podium at all.)

It doesn't matter how pious or religious you are. Who cares? That's your choice, your business. You have no God-given right to judge others who choose a different path. When you do, as you always do, you betray God, as you do this democracy. I swear these people wouldn't understand Christianity if it bit them on ass. If Christ were here today, any doubt who would do the crucifying this time?

You want to pray, acknowledge God, in a public forum, do it, but do it silently and privately. Anything else is just a thinly disguised equivalent of the antecedents of Taliban fundamentalism, or Islamic Sharia Law. How dare anyone impose their religious values or traditions on anyone else, anywhere, anytime!"

Then today The Boston Globe printed a column titled "Intolerance spans the religious divide" by Cathy Young--A contributing editor at Reason magazine (the magazine of "Free minds and free markets"--e.g., libertarian), who makes her own religion out of trying to always look at both sides of an issue while ending up chastising everyone. She seemed to think the left had gone too far criticizing Bush's public religiosity: "I happen to agree that on many occasions, President Bush has gone too far in injecting religion in his political rhetoric. But it is equally true that his critics have used and misused his faith to impugn his policies." Oh, Bush-wa.
Here's the URL for the column:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/26/intolerance_spans_the_religious_divide/

I wrote this letter to the editor in response. They didn't print it. Too much bombast, I guess.

To The Editor, Boston Globe:

Cathy Young seems to have made an illogical leap in her column on religious intolerance (January 26).
At one point she states that "I happen to agree that on many occasions, President Bush has gone too far in injecting religion in his political rhetoric." But she closes with "Lack of religious devotion should not be a basis for a smear. But neither should religious belief -- and the truth is that the intolerance of the religious right can be fully matched by that of the secular left."

While the column fails to make a compelling case to support the closing contention, any intolerance that does exist on the left is not of religion per se, but of that injection of religion where it doesn't belong.

Simply, those who try to inject religion into politics or public policy, according to our constitution, do not deserve tolerance. In fact, in defense of the constitution, it is our duty as citizens to restrain any person or institution from such behavior. We are guaranteed not only freedom of religion, but freedom from religion.

President Bush and the religious right can be as religious as they want. If they kept it to themselves, it wouldn't be anybody's business but their own. But they don't, and what Young misrepresents as intolerance is their just reward.