Paradise Preoccupied

I live on an island. That is my only excuse for being caught off guard by the preposterous news that a fundamental function of America’s founding fathers is under attack.

The separation of church and state is about as basic as it gets as far as making and keeping the USA a sane and livable nation, so the information in this piece in the NYTimes Mag is like a ball-peen to the brain case:

To conservative Christians, there is no separation of church and state, and there never was. The concept, they say, is a modern secular fiction.

The fact that headway … although that seems completely the wrong word to use juxtaposed against such brainlessness … is being made in efforts to remove the vital barrier between gods and government is testament (Like that one?) to just how stupid people can be.

I know. I know. Using words like ‘stupid’ shows no brilliance on my part and I should attempt to wax eloquent when referring to those so determined to limit … ban even, if at all possible … thinking, but, sorry, they piss me off, and stupid fits so well.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the poperific dude’s take on the UK’s efforts to take the “in” out of religious intolerance …

The effect of the government’s proposals, he said, in an address to Catholic bishops in Britain, has been to impose “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.

… and mentioned the dangers of slopping religion all over governing:

… freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs” is an old saw that has cut deeply over the centuries since religion was invented, excusing everything from mass exterminations to female genital mutilation, serving up the Kool-Aid in one form or another and forcing millions to stop with the thinking stuff and take a big ole swig.

A couple of days later, I picked up The 19th Wife, a novel based on fact by David Ebershoff woven around the true story of Ann Eliza Young, one of the many wives of Brigham Young, prophet for profit of Momons and a staunch and paunchy advocate and practicer of polygamy with more than 50 women tethered to his bits and hundreds of children spawned … the guy the university is named in honor of who is well-revered to this day amongst the Latter Day Saints, as they like to call themselves.

Have been forced to sit through hundreds of hours of LDS claptrap as a child … this after hundreds of hours of Catholic claptrap … I am more than familiar with the tale of the golden books and magic sunglasses that delivered the message of the Moron angel to Mr. Smith, eventually leading thousands of those with thoughts of something to gain to Utah in much the same way Jim Jones got San Francisco folks to head for South America and for many of the same reasons.

Ann Eliza’s tale is rife with horrid consequences of life under a government controlled by a “faith” where abuse of all flavors is considered part and parcel, so condoned, then … eventually, when forced into the light of day by those who passed on the Kool-Aid … concealed, excused, apologized for, and finally condemned.

Today’s news brings reports on decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests … and it’s about time.

An investigation last year revealed that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law while many fellow clerics turned a blind eye. A separate report in Ireland released months earlier documented decades of sexual, physical and psychological abuse in Catholic-run schools, workhouses and orphanages.

The popester is reportedly “”disturbed and distressed” by the report and shares the “outrage, betrayal and shame” felt by Irish people … but still insistent, as we saw in the article last week, that government should keeps hands off.

Yeah. Right.

Does anyone think that any religion would come clean on anything if there were no secular government to grab it by its over-starched lapels and shake?

The days of religion running nations should be as far behind us as the possibility of owning other humans … but we all know many countries have a faith-shod foot on the controls and slavery happens every day in our world. The trick is to keep from backsliding in places that have moved beyond these archaic, abusive methods of ‘leadership’.

“Secular” … Latin saecularis, from saeculum ‘generation, age,’ used to mean ‘the world’ (as opposed to the Church)