Briefly Furious.

[timepiececlock]

Sometimes I get upset when I realize that there's people out there that I just can not agree with, whose basic world view is so profoundly different from my own that we simply will not mesh and I frequently want nothing more than to blast them off to Saturn, far away from me, my country, and all my descendants & their friends.

No, I'm not talking about other religions like Islam verus Christianity. No, what's currently got me in a huff is Christianity versus the US government.

I was reading an interesting article in today's Mercury newspaper about women in power, and how influencial women like Hilary Clinton and Martha Stewart have to be seen as "victims" for us to like them, and before that they're villified. It thought it was a good article. It didn't bring up Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewelet Packard, who I see as a "villain." I never had a villianous view of Hilary, but Fiorina got my dad and the parents of my classmates and half the people in the South Bay laid off, so she qualifies as villian status. It'd be the same if she was a man.

Anyway, the article talked about the increasing number of women in politics, and accpetance of their positions of power. They described off-hand an organization called Concerned Women For America, whom they quoted for "vowing" to bring "biblical principles into all levels of public policy."

I jumped out of my chair, leaned close over the table and read it again to make sure I hadn't misread. I would have thrown a rant right there if there'd been anyone around to hear it.

I hate the idea that there's organizations of 500,000 people whose statement of purpose is in direct opposition to everything eblazoned on the American Constitution and the life words and work of the people who founded a nation that I've been in love with practically since the I was old enough to say "It's a free country" and know what that meant. Which would have been approximately two years old.

I want to send them to Saturn. I want a big Send The Traitorous Freaks To Saturn Button, that I can press and feel at ease knowing that public institutions are gloriously free of God's interference.

Every once in a while I see something like this that sets me off. My parents mostly let me talk on and on when it happens and nod appropriately. I want them here so they can nod and agree with the Saturn Plan.

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Nope. None. In private schools there can be, to varying degrees depending on the school, but public school does not allow any religious teaching. We learn about some religions-- for instance, we learned classical and Norse mythology in middle school, and in 10th grade World History my class had a unit on world religions, where we learned about Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Sihks, Bhuddism and Hinduism. (pardon my horribl spelling there.)

There's even a lot of contoversy over the the pledge of alegiance that you'd take every morning in school:

I pledge allegience to the flag of the United States of America, once nation, under God,
indivisible, for liberty and justice for all.

The "under God" part was added during the Cold War, god knows why. There's people campaigning that forcing students to take the pledge is unconstitutional because of that phrase. I deliberately stopped saying that part of the pledge some time around 5th grade.

High schools are allowed to have Christian Clubs (or other religious clubs), provided that they don't meet during class times.

My High School had a good sized Christian club, and occaisionally they'd meet and make a prayer circle in the middle of the quad (one day there was about 50 people). Sometimes people would mock them. I wanted to (when they had their head down and were totally silent, it was seriously tempting), but there were people I liked in the club so I quashed my childish impulses.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

:sighs: I'd love that. In my school, we had prayers and a hymn in the morning, and RE (religion) once or twice a week. Note that we never studied *any* religion other than Christianity. The Protestant branch of Christianity, at that.

There were literally three atheists and non-Christians in my yeargroup of 100, including myself. In my final year I threw a *fucking hissy fit* in my RE class because the teacher called me an idiot for believing in nonsensical things like atoms and evolution (I didn't care that she was teaching creationism. I did care that she was making up scientific facts and presenting them as truth). Good thing I didn't point out I was Pagan.

My school was very very extreme (although the vast majority of people here are churchgoers). I've spoken to people who went to convent schools in this country that were nowhere near as religiously psychotic as my state school. It still bugs me, though.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Are you in England? *grin* I have an icon I made on a whim that says "disestablishmentarianism" if you want it.

There were literally three atheists and non-Christians in my yeargroup of 100, including myself

That seems so odd to me. I know most of my classmates were christian, and my friends and aquaintances knew I was an atheist, but it was never really something that was a big deal. I don't even know what all my high school friends believed in. I know my best friend's a Catholic who pretends to not want to be but probably still believes in God even if she doesn't like anything else about it. I had a friend who was Mormon that I talked to several times about religion; we both liked friendly debate. He couldn't understand why I didn't want spirituality in my life, and I couldn't make him understand that I had faith in the human race and myself and that was all I needed.

In my final year I threw a *fucking hissy fit* in my RE class because the teacher called me an idiot for believing in nonsensical things like atoms and evolution (I didn't care that she was teaching creationism. I did care that she was making up scientific facts and presenting them as truth).

Wow. See, this is the kind of thing I read about and see in movies. Some communities in the deep South are lobbying to get both creationism and evolution taught in schools, but the problem always comes up that Creationism is relgion and since they can't teach EVERY religion, they shouldn't teach any. It's still a touchy issue in many places in the US, but legally it shouldn't happen. I've never had a prayer in school.

I did argue with my 7th - 9th grade girl scout leader about going to church on Sundays when we took a three-week trip in my final year with her troop. She said that GS are a private organization and if I don't want to go to church, I don't have to go on the trip. So I went. Twice with the Christian group and once with the Catholic group. A few times I thought about walking out, but it was summer in Southern California, and frankly it was easier playing with the hymn books and doodling than sitting out in the hot sun and pissing everyone off.