Fourth of July: Freedom from Religion?

I'll be the first one to say it: I am a Godless Heathen. I have been unchurched since my Army Days, when I heard my chaplains' urging to Smite the Foe and realized that their chaplains were doing the same and that if, as advertized, there was only One God then He had to be either a liar, more schizoid that Sybil, or have the manners and morals of a malign thug.

So I walked away from faith and have never regretted it.

Now here's a little bit of modern bibilical nastiness from those people who think that Jesus wants you to have a baby every time you and the Little Woman (or the Little Fella) slip off into the high grass for a "rest" (tip of the hat to my friend M.H. who e-mailed me the original news story).

I should add that the other thing I found... distasteful...about religion as dispensed in the montheistic flavor was the unescapable fact that if God is God (as the "shahada" states for muslims) and your prophet/savior is the only portal to God then anyone or anything that doesn't adhere to that God and savior and/or prophet is Wrong. Cast Out. An anathema before the Lord. Completely, utterly, totally Messed Up. Fucked in the Worst Way.

And, possibly because most of the people involved in founding and spreading these religions are guys, it's the gals who seem to wind up in that position. Like when someone was accused of witchcraft back in a less secular time. She (being, typically, a woman) would be bound and thrown into a handy pond. If she floated she was a witch, and would be "bound over to the secular arm" so that Jesus wouldn't be responsible for the stinky smells when her fat started to sizzle. If she sank, well, then she wasn't. She was dead, but at least you knew where she stood.

This spate of pharmacists claiming crippling moral wounds from having to dispense birth control pills to (ugh!) women is, to my mind, just the latest version of the "let's make sure that Jesus' (or Allah's) name helps keep our ladies' neat, pure and shuttin' up and doin' what we want" sect of Daddy's God Religion and as such is not surprising.

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But why for any reason a woman should have to live her life by the rules of a version religion she neither wants nor believes in is beyond me. And in particular, in a nation founded by revolutionaries sick and tired of the oppression of an extraterritorial potentate who, among other things, forced his version of the State Religion on them, the notion that citizens of that nation should expect and applaud this theocratic horseshit is sickening and wrong. And this is a feature, not a bug. Anyone reading this blog who thinks that the sort of person who believes that Americans should live by "God's Rules" (as stated by their God in their church) will stop when Roe v. Wade is overturned should think again and Google Griswold v. Connecticut.

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They want this:

I don't want our little Mei-mei growing up in that sort of nation, or our little Peeper growing up to expect her to. And if I have anything to say as a father, they won't.

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If this be feminism, let us make the most of it.