The Funny Farm

Found In The Comments

^{Saturday, 26 Shivring 2007}

Many, many good comments have been popping up within my purview of late. Some often generate additional comments with the opinion that the comment itself is worthy of a blog post on its' own. I heartily agree with those sentiments, and I would like to point out a few of them to you from time to time.

This one was found in the comments over at Pandagon to a post written by Sheezlebub entitled Bigotry, thy name is fundamentalist: [slight spelling and grammtical corrections provided by the Funny Farm Editorial Staff]

You want to know what a 'hate crime' looks like? Telling someone that unless they surrender to your imaginary friend they will spend eternity on fire. THAT'S a hate crime. And when that hate crime is committed against children? That is straight up CHILD ABUSE! It's time to end tax breaks for those who commit HATE CRIMES against CHILDREN!

The Funny Farm officially seconds that emotion! Although it is strikingly similar to sentiments expressed by some of the more fervent evangelical christians when trying to get the catholic tax exemptions removed from the various statutes. While concurrently (and this is what really bothers us, O My Brothers - the mental gymnastics of doublethink being practiced in real life) insisting that the tax breaks for themselves evangelical christians need to stay in place due to their faith being the true one, and their rules being the ones that all should obey. It should also be clear to most by now that I'm of the opinion that it matters not whether you're talking about a madrassa, a catholic, evangelical, christian, judaic, hindi, or other (cough) private penitentiary school - none of them should be teaching that any religion is the one and only True Word Of The Most Almighty. If they have a religion class, it should embrace the teachings of as many faiths as possible and when and where (and why, when they get older) they share common beliefs. Sort of a 'this is what most organized religious people (of this type of faith) believe' about things. Most definitely the ten christian commandments would be part of such a discussion at one point - and why they are not universal to all religions (for starters). Along with the many and varied ways that humanity has found to find a way to believe in something to help them get by in tough times.

Then again, maybe it's a good thing that this discussion is theoretical only; I would have no idea how to convince others that my hypothetical religious studies class would have more merits and/or benefits than what is currently being taught on the subject.

[Editors' Note: this entry is cross-posted over at the American Street]

Posted by (: Tom :) at February 22, 2007 08:42 PM