do unto others

I do not hate the bible, nor do I hate Christians or their religion, but I cannot stand people who gloss over its parts that talk about loving one another and who focus instead on their faith's sinister aspects, such as those demanding that gays be killed (Leviticus 20:13 NAB) and prostitutes be banished (Leviticus 21:9 NAB), persecuted and murdered in the name of god YHWH, Christianity's supreme deity, greater even than Mary, or Yeshua. Matthew, a man who wrote long after the death of Yeshua (if he existed at all), says in the Christian bible's new testament, basically, that what people do to each other, they do to YHWH, their god. Put a different way, Matt is trying to tell people to do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.

Oh what a peaceful and happy world this would be if professed Christians would but hew to this code, treat others as they themselves would prefer to be treated, understand that America was not founded on their faith, mind their own business, and stop trying to ban gay marriage and a woman's right to the contents of her stomach. If we lived in such a world, we would have fewer doctors being killed by Christian extremists, fewer politicians currying the favor (Defense of Marriage) of homegrown Taliban-style Christians (dominionists), and, perhaps, lower levels of industrial pollution, self-neglect, laziness, and materialism. (I am merely speculating that an interpretation of the Christian bible based on a love for the natural world and a respect for the tender fragility of the human spirit, one rooted in humility and moderation and founded on the notion that the godhead resides within each and every one of us and not in a mythical palace in the clouds, that such an interpretation would trump the many of the current interpretations, those being very similar to the hard-line and murderous views espoused by Islamic terrorists who deny women's rights and destroy anything that violates their strict religious codes.) As things stand, however, today's more prominent Christian leaders – similar to their counterparts in al-Qaida and Hezbollah – preach hatred for the unusual, fear of all things strange, unwavering obedience to codes designed for a nomadic Bronze Age desert-people, and discrimination against anyone living a life other than one of gasoline-guzzling, television-watching, Jesus-praising lethargy. How do we convince the Christians to stop their assault on the Liberty of the rest of us Americans? How do we show them just how anti-American are their efforts to restrict the freedoms of women and gays? For a religion that prides itself on its dozens of so-called saints – persons discriminated against and killed because of their faith – Christianity has made a remarkable and shocking about-face; now, it is the Christians who discriminate against and persecute others for their beliefs; now, it is the Christians calling for our nation to be smothered by religious laws similar to those that might exist under a globe-spanning Islamic Caliphate.

If the efforts of today's Christians to force the rest of us to live by the rules of their god YWHW are what they see as doing unto others as they would have done unto themselves, perhaps we who do not share their faith should give them a taste of their own medicine and drive them bodily into the sea, fighting fire with fire; perhaps we should ban their rituals and costumes and force them to live in constant fear of repression, hatred, ridicule, and physical battery, much as they do to our homosexual fellow Americans. We non-Christians, though, are Liberty-loving individuals who mind our own business and who don't care if two men want to marry one another; having fought for centuries to bring about equality and justice, we shall not allow a few thousand bible-thumping lunatics to ruin the fun for everyone else – not on this whorphan's watch, at least. No, friend, we champions of freedom would never infringe upon the inalienable rights of other adults to enter into contracts or agreements that are to their liking. We keep our minds free and our heads on swivels, fighting religious oppression wherever it should rear its ugly head. Mahalo.

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