Wednesday, October 29, 2003

freedom from religion, please

it was Progressive Musings latest entry that sent me on this search. and a nasty one it was.  fd was musing on fred phelps' most recent assault on human decency, his unspeakably presumptuous plan to put an antimemorial into a public park in casper, wy, to "celebrate matthew shepard's entry into hell." (a note to la happy chica: phelps was carrying on his campaign of homophobic hatred long before this homophobic administration, but i agree the current atmosphere does nothing to check this violent madness) from his stronghold in topeka, ks, phelps and his followers routinely sally forth to picket and demonstrate at any major gay/lesbian event: conferences, conventions, yea, even funerals.  the motto of this man of the cloth is "god hates fags." yes, that's actually the name of his church website. you can visit this site and see for yourself a model of the obscene "antimemorial" they have in the works.  now in case you just got in from a planet in some far distant galaxy, you can go here to read about matthew shepard and a laundry list of other hate crimes, or here for more of the same. 

then, feeling sullied by being a resident of this planet perhaps, you could go visit the Freedom from Religion Foundation.  i don't think of myself as an atheist, but i find the Foundation's term "freethinker" a useful one.  their outline of the history of first amendment freedoms, the founding fathers, the constitution, separation of church and state, is concise and dispassionate.  i may print it out to use as a reference.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention, and thanks for the links to Phelps's website. I added the picture of the monument to my entry. But after visiting that website, I feel like I need a bath to wash the stink off.