HR 888: Is there really nothing else to do, Congress?

[QueenAdrock]

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-888

"HR 888: Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as `American Religious History Week' for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith."

I wonder if Athiests will be allowed to celebrate their rejection of god and religion that week, or if they'll be dragged into the streets and beaten in Jesus's name.

Seriously, THIS is what is being introduced to the House floor? There's nothing better to focus on? Give me a fucking break.

[Documad]

Jesus Christ, what a crock of shit.

[Schmeltz]

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-888

I wonder if Athiests will be allowed to celebrate their rejection of god and religion that week, or if they'll be dragged into the streets and beaten in Jesus's name.

I'm going to guess Door #2, given that the text of that bill is essentially an open and explicit demand to acknowledge Christianity as a formal institution of the State. I mean it's not even a thinly veiled attempt, it's right out there. They're really not giving their colleagues or their constituents a lot of credit. On the other hand, it occurs to me that there's probably a significant proportion of Americans who genuinely feel that Christian religious texts already constitute a dominant presence in American national imagery and should therefore be more directly incorporated into the country's formal political structure. So it's hardly a surprise to see this kind of thing crop up in the legislative process.

Honestly it's exactly as you said: it's an insubstantial shill job, a selective and exclusive body of decontextualized information with the singular goal of promoting a specific ideological agenda. It's the kind of legislation you'd expect from a theocracy like Saudi Arabia, the exact antithesis of the liberal Western civic tradition. So the real question is: does it have a shot at actually becoming law or will it be shot down? It's like they're trying to slip it under the radar while attention is focused on the Presidential race and the Super Bowl. Are Representatives actually going to fall for it?

[kaiser soze]

So the U.S. fights the Taliban so we can become them over here

This is a fucking waste of time, money, paper, air and most of all our rights

Separation of Church and State or we will be living in a theocracy seeking to violate the rights of those who do not fall within the religious vision of the "majority"

[QueenAdrock]

Separation of Church and State? That sounds like Commie talk to me!

I hate when people argue that this country was founded on Christianity. It was also founded on the fact that they wanted everyone to have guaranteed freedoms and believed people should be able to believe/say/think what they wanted. And plus, why even bother to argue that our forefathers who founded this country were Christian? Does that mean that they intended everyone to live here to be the same way, and believe how they did? It seems like evangelical rhetoric which is used to justify ignoring religious freedom and tolerance and allow them to put the 10 commandments in every public building (simply because THEY believe their religion is true and everyone should adhere to their wants). I don't see what it matters what our forefathers believed in, because in the here and now, America stands on the principles of tolerance and freedom - at least, that's what we say we believe in. That to me says that people can decide to worship (or not) anything they see fit. Saying that the forefathers meant for this country to be a "Christian Nation" is just bullshit; if they wanted it to be that way, how come it wasn't written into the fucking Constitution, declaring the US to be a Christian state? It's total crap, something that they're trying to interpret in their own narrow-minded way so they can try to force others to believe the same way. America is supposed to be a melting pot and if you're so Christian you should try to act more Christ-like and exhibit tolerance and love, as opposed to an iron fist of believing what you do or being outcast and shunned for not doing so.

Sorry, but this shit pisses me off.

[King PSYZ]

In my lifetime I've only met a very small number of Christian Christians.

[roosta]

What would Jesus do?

[Bob]

i agree that it's a stupid, divisive, poorly timed bill, and that thousands of people should be ashamed that it was ever submitted, but i'm not sure i understand how passing it would make america a theocracy?

[Schmeltz]

Passage of that bill would be at the very least a popular precedent for the direct legal enshrinement of specific religious texts as the basis for formal legislation. When legislation is informed by fundamentalist religious dogma instead of an active process of ideological renewal, you have a theocracy. In the Western civic tradition religious ideology is a cultural entity separated from the machinery of state, both because of the qualitative intellectual superiority of scientific investigation and the need for the dissemination of channels of discourse across readily available channels, a crucial ingredient of responsible democracy. This bill represents a cultural tradition much more comparable to those of countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, where specifically selected and interpreted religious texts form the basis of a heavily authoritarian (Draconian is probably a better word) relationship between the coercive element of the state and a hapless and deprived citizenry.

It's not so much that it would immediately cause America to become an iron-fisted theocracy, but it's tragic that such a proposal can still find currency in a society as diverse and manifold as America's. It just doesn't make any sense.

[King PSYZ]

America as a society is fairly disperse and varried, Amercian government is generally old white males with a handfull of exceptions and so we get bills like this...