Florida School District Discovers Religious Pluralism is not possible - BarbWire.com

If we want absolute religious freedom, then everything, which can be claimed as a religion, has to be allowed. But this is not what these people want. Pluralists do not want to expose their children to every religion. In order to stop religious pluralism, the atheist has only to bring out the provocative material: Those things we do not want our children exposed to. When that happens, the pluralist caves.

This gives the atheist what he wants, the void of religion. However, he does not realize that the worship of man is a religion. Humanism is the worst religion of all. It leads to the death of the object worshiped in the name of that object’s elevation. It is the rejection of man for the idea of man. The idea of “what he can be,” leads to the murder of those who do not fit that mold.

Until we recognize that the idea of pluralism is empty and unattainable, we will continue to be silenced by such tactics. We have to hold to the truth once again. Not every idea is valid. Because it is absurd to demand that all ideas or beliefs are equal, it leads to the absurd. Only truth from Scripture is valid and can save us from such absurdity.


Florida School District Discovers Religious Pluralism is not possible - BarbWire.com

An unexpected win for religious freedom – LGBTQ Nation

Religious Freedom Day, the most significant national Day that few had ever heard of, emerged from the shadows this year. There were no picnics or fireworks or speeches by elected officials — and the press largely ignored it. But so much happened just below the national radar. We may have witnessed the first stirrings of a renewed movement for the rights of individual conscience.

It is too early to say whether it was a turning point in our history — but just might have been.

At a time when the Christian Right is making religious freedom the centerpiece of its political program, many of us are beginning to stand up and say that religious freedom is not just for the few.

This year, for the first time, organizations that embrace LGBTQ equality and reproductive justice decided to seize the day — joining with religious and secular agencies and advocates of separation of church and state to commemorate Religious Freedom Day.

Instead of leaving the narrative to the likes of Tony Perkins and the Alliance Defending Freedom who bogusly claim that religious freedom means the right of Christians of the right sort to discriminate, this Religious Freedom Day, many of the rest of us began to tell the story of how religious freedom is a great progressive value – and why it is for everyone and not just a few.

An unexpected win for religious freedom – LGBTQ Nation

Seize the Day! (Well, what if we did?) | Political Research Associates

I recently wrote that the Christian Right does not want us to think about Religious Freedom Day, which commemorates the enactment of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786. The bill is widely regarded as the taproot of how the founding generation sought to reconcile the relationship between religion and government.

The enactment of the bill has been celebrated annually, mostly via presidential proclamation, since 1993.

And when I say that the Christian Right does not want “us” to think about it, I mean everyone who is not the Christian Right and their allies, and especially not LGBTQ people and the otherwise “insufficiently Christian.” I think that is why the Christian Right is mostly so eerily quiet about it, even though religious freedom is so central to their political program.

But what if we did?

What if we seized this day to think dynamically about the religious freedoms we take for granted at our peril; freedom that is in danger of being redefined beyond recognition. What if we decided to seize this day to consider our best values as a nation and advance the cause of equal rights for all?

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The Constitution, framed according to “The Virginia Plan,” drafted primarily by Madison, contains no mention of God or Christianity. In fact, the final text’s only mention of religion is in the proscription of “religious tests for public office,” found in Article 6.

In other words — Jefferson’s words— one’s religious identity, or lack thereof, has no bearing on one’s “civil capacities.”

Seize the Day! (Well, what if we did?) | Political Research Associates