Until the "religious viewpoint" on anything is dismissed, we will never have real progress.

[Zorra]

44. Great post. This is very important.

I believe that there is a huge difference between "religious" people who have a genuine understanding of love, who I would call spiritual, and not religious, and those that blindly follow some religious dogma written in a book that they use as justification for the boiling hatred that arises from the fear, confusion, shallowness, and corruption of their essential consciousness. These latter selectively use scriptural verse that they believe supports and jusitifies the seething rage of hatred that exists in the darkness of their being, and thereby justifies the unwarranted harm, pain, and destruction that they wantonly inflict upon innocent others in the name of their particular "deity".

They totally disregard other scriptural verse that is contrary to their need to justify, express, and manifest their demented hatred.

I know some wonderful tolerant, loving, giving, sincere people who practice a faith. Awesome folks, very...Loving. They are also horrified by those who use religion as a means to manifest evil and hatred.

And then there are the demented, deluded authoritarian fundamentalists, whose entire existence revolves around their hatred of others. These are very sad, and dangerous creatures. They are without genuine, effective conscience, and if not restricted by reasonable laws, they would ruthlessly take control, through violent means, over those of us who believe in being tolerant of others, and have a "live and let live" attitude towards others.

Reasonable laws are the only way that we can ethically contain these unfortunate people from causing wanton destruction upon individuals and/or societies, because they are completely intolerant of people they view as different from themselves, and do not consider or recognize the fact that harmless, innocent others have a natural right to be different from them.

So, I totally agree with you, cleanhippie.

"

Believers on the left who say "I do this because of my religious views" empower those on the right who say "I do this because of my religious views." Only by taking the common view of "because its the right thing to do" and removing religion completely from the equation will progress be made.

"Religion is not something upon which policy or public values should ever be based on, because by doing so, it legitimizes those that also use religion to oppress and vilify."

Separation of Church and State is crucial to the recognition and preservation of human rights and justice in our society, and we should do everything in our power to insure that Church and State remain completely separate.

Religion has brought unparalleled and unfathomable death, destruction, and psychological and emotional torment to millions of completely innocent human beings throughout history, and continues to do so today.

The widespead, unwarranted, immoral persecution of LGBT persons throughout the world is a crystal clear current illustration of the great harm that religious people cause to innocent human beings.

And this is why we all must insist that religious people be prevented, by law, from being able to harm LGBT folks, or any other innocent group of people, in any way.

Because, in their religious zeal fueled by their crippling fear and burning hatred, they will work diligently and relentlessly to cause harm to LGBT persons, or any other group that they choose to hate, and this could even eventually turn into genocide under certain circumstances, if these insane people are not called out and firmly held in check by law. It has happened all too often in the past.

They have no remorse, because they believe that the harm that they so righteously and gleefully inflict upon others is the will of their god. They can justify any harm they do to others by writing it off as "god's will". After all, it says so right there in the book, in the particular chapter and verse they have selected to justify their mean lttle selves.

Right now they are using the system to harm us, as exemplified by the recent passage of the fascist amendment in North Carolina, legitimizing the unwarranted oppression of LGBT persons by the religious.

We need to call upon our Federal Government to stop this insanity. The LGBT community is basically defenseless as a minority struggling to withstand the onslaught of hate rained down upon us by this insane, hostile, religious majority that exists in many states.

Peace, Love, Light, Freedom, Health, Happiness, and Equality to all.

(If some of what I have written here seems harsh, well, I wrote it that way in the hope that any religious bigot who might read this would recognize themselves in the descriptions of the deadly monster, and upon reflection would have a change of heart, and work on becoming a reasonable, tolerant human being)