The next time, there will be Hell to pay

I haven't blogged much (or enough) lately, partly because so much crap has been going down and my ADHD makes it hard to focus: ISIS (or ISIL, or whatever; Al Shabaab; Boko Haram; the Republicans; and so on...

Maybe I'll eventually get around to some of these, but for now I've been thinking about the "religious freedom restoration acts" or whatever they're called. Can't we agree that it's a tad nonsensical to imagine that stories told by Iron Age Middle Eastern goat-herders should be taken as a guide to living in the 21st century? The authors of the Bible, etc., simply did not have either the scope or depth of knowledge of human nature that we now possess. Give these poor, long-dead people a rest, for Vishnu's sake!

And, perhaps, can we agree that the raison d'etre of these acts is bogus.  Business people claim that that by providing goods and/or services to homosexuals, they are violating their religious principles.  Say again?  They act as though they are being coerced into homosexual acts or getting gay-married.  No!  They are business people being asked to not discriminate among the people who come to them for their goods and services.  That's not making them gay, that's good business!  What is the matter with these people?

And while we're on the subject, we know that this is really about "Christian freedom," not any other religious freedom.  The Christians, we hear (no need for citations) feel oppressed, bullied.  There's a "war on Christianity."  I don't see how how they come to that conclusion.  If anything, the (some) Christians have been bullying everyone else ever since the nation was founded (and before that, too).  I personally have spent a lifetime, now almost 70 years, being bullied by Christians.  Bullied into reciting the Lord's Prayer, bullied into saying or pretending to say grace at the table, bullied into moments of silence while we thank the Christian god for something or other.

I recall a visit to our house by a family a couple of years ago.  The father considered himself to be a preacher.  As they were getting ready to leave, he asked us to join hands while he thanked God for our opportunity to visit together.  I felt bullied in my own home, but I let it go out of politeness, or at least that's what I told myself.  But I was seething with anger inside, and I wanted to say something along the lines of "How dare you come into someone else's home and presume that they share your religious beliefs and behaviors?"

I was as I say "polite" this time.  No more.  No more being bullied.  The next time, there will be Hell to pay...