Reply #196: We're so inured to the "slippery slope"...

[jmowreader]

sometimes we think that every little mention of Jesus is the end of the world.

Let's see here...the Utah State Troopers Association (which is full of Mormons) is memorializing nine fallen members of the Utah Highway Patrol (also full of Mormons) on a roadway in the state of Utah (which, as you probably guessed, is full of Mormons). And they're doing it in a way one would expect Mormons to--by erecting crosses.

There's no tractor beam on those crosses. If an atheist drives past the display, no strange force is going to leap out and drag him to church.

Let's focus on the REAL church-state problems, of which there are many. Our little dictator is attempting to turn America into a theocracy. He's attempting to hand control of the social safety net over to the most extreme fundamentalists in the US. Remember the fucking chaplain in Iraq who had the only bathing water in the country, and he'd let you use it if you agreed to be baptized? Well, there's fundies even more extreme than that guy, and Bush wants them in charge of our welfare system. He wants them in charge of our government. He'd be more than pleased to remove that line in the Constitution that prohibits religious tests.

I believe it's possible to accommodate "God as we know him" in the public space without turning the US into a church. That's where we need to go.