When Religion and Liberty Meet. Kaboom!
Well, it’s Arizona. Something about the dry air, I suspect.
I want you to meet Arizona Republican State Senator Sylvia Allen, who is very concerned about morality. Frighteningly concerned.
She bemoans the fact that we cannot force people in America to attend church.
Appropriately, the bill being discussed is one that would allow people to carry weapons into public buildings. I suspect she wants to be the enforcer of the church-or-die branch of the Women’s Missionary Union.
Thanks to Alan for the heads up.
All I gotta do is move north 10 miles and I’m in her district. Gerrymandering carved out a square of Navajo County so that the Mormons there didn’t have to be part of a safely Democratic legislative district, because Navajo Reservation- Democrats. Just a square. Right out of the lower (white) part of Navajo County. And then, 40 miles north, back in LD-7 at the county seat of Holbrook. It’s an issue about local nepotism, really. She brings legislation to get her family members out of trouble. Srsly.
1Clearly, she is another Legislator who either has never read or understood the Bill of Rights.
Sigh.
2I do attend the church of my choice every Sunday.
It is called my bed, and I praise Life, god, and the Universe for every moment I get to stay in it.
3Next step, to enforce tithing.
4Hey Mrs. Free-Dumb, what about my right to be FREE of your dumb?
5What always fascinates me is that people like her never seem to care about persuading someone to change his/her beliefs, but only in forcing everyone to pretend they believe. I suspect she is so shaky in her own beliefs that she feels the need for some kind of constant, universal support–even if it’s phony.
6Senator Allen might have interviewed before submitting this bill adult former students of private schools which required daily or weekly religious practice. She might have discovered how much not praying and not worshipping is going on when one is forced to do so.
Besides I would have guessed Senator Allen would have been opposed to religious law. Or is she opposed to religious law only when it’s not Christianity?
7Fundamental principle: religion does not equal morality. In most cases it is the exact opposite.
8Now, let’s all remember why this nation was founded, FREEDOM OF AND FROM RELIGION, and of course carrying weapons everywhere is just what the good book says. NOT!
Who votes for these people? I swear sometimes I think we’d be better off if we just split the country and let these Constitution-ignorant godbotherers set up their own laws for themselves and let the rest of us live our own lives rationally.
9I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me spending the time in my local mosque, would she?
10Can she spell ACLU or CUSCS? I really hope to never learn about state legislatures inasmuch as mine is camped out in Richmond in between memorials to Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis’s house where the Yankees caught up with him. Somewhere in these organisms there has to be at least one lawyer who has actually taken one course in constitutional law. I am going to rely 1. on JJ to let us know if this fiasco ever gets the Governor’s signature and 2. how quick the damn thing ends up in court.
11I just keep thinking about the song line…. don’t know much about history. On the Gohmert scale she has got to be 9.9 out of 10.
12I sure plan never to go to her church, wherever it is. I like mine just fine and she can keep her hands out of it.
13Cake or DEATH!
(google it, kids)
14I think she needs mandatory church time….you know where they handle poisonous snakes.
15@Katy
16Reading the comments on Daily Kos someone quoted they attended the “Church of the Inner Spring” which the people around them construed as being Christian…that made me laugh.
Personally I have been a founding member of “The Church of the Tahitian Babes”, figuring out more than 20+ years ago that if I was going to belong to a church, it needed to be one I would enjoy attending! It is not in conflict with being Jewish, since “TCOTTB” meets on Saturday nights after dusk to go dancing then sleeps in on Sunday.
All are welcome–even if you are too tired to go dancing! We are non discriminatory and always available for a good time!
Perhaps they could institute the Church of the Holy Bomb from the second Planet of the Apes movie – the one where Charlton Heston blew up the planet with the last nuclear weapon. I think John Bolton’s a member. Also, I believe the NRA considers gun shows the equivalent of church – and there’s always the Church of the Pigskin from the NFL.
Seriously, though – they consider mandatory voting a symptom of impending dictatorship, then they propose something like this. One wonders whether someone should ask Sylvia Allen why she’s attempting to implement Sharia Law… and when she counters that she wanted to make attending some Christian church mandatory, ask her whether her Tea Party classes on strict Constitutional interpretation mentioned the Establishment Clause.
17She’s not even considering Jews, Muslims, and Seventh-Day Adventists if she wants everybody to go to church on Sunday. I have to admit that I don’t know much about Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Ba’hai, or Jain attendance at temple.
There are several big churches down the road from us that were built on land that used to be forested. I would have had a much more profound religious experience in those forests than in the churches. (And if they’re all supposed to be worshiping the same god, why do they need to keep destroying forests to build so many different churches within a mile of each other?)
18Amen! Rhea … a forest is a living cathedral to the God that created it, yet holier-then-thou folks cut that cathedral down to make churches for folks who only go occasionally or for appearances sake!
19My drumming circle meets at a church, I’m all set.
20Church attendance used to be mandatory in America.
There is a myth that the Puritans came to America for religious freedom. Wrong. They came for freedom to practice their particular flavor of religion and they made sure everyone else practiced it too. Quakers and other dissenters were kicked out.
They established a theocracy and it lasted until increased immigration built a large enough population that the majority wouldn’t put up with their nonsense.
The fundamentalists want to return us to the theocracy of the 1600s, up to and including witch hunts (and burnings), fines, imprisonment and/or exile for non-believers. I’m not a great fan of the modern world, but in some way we have progressed from 1620, much to the chagrin of some RWNJs.
21“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. “
22hah! daChipster is another Eddie Izzard fan 🙂
23Maybe target practice before & after services?
24Rhea, in my (small, <20K people) hometown there are two Catholic churches on adjacent blocks because the French didn't want the Irish in attendance. A mile apart might make sense.
25Won’t help glf, that self righteous old broad knows the Gospel about as well as she knows the Constitution!
26I bemoan the fact that we cannot force people in America to stop being pseudo-religious zealots.
27I’m a quaker, I have many jewish friends and a smattering of muslim, and buddhist friends. We do not belong to churches we go to our meetings, temples, mosques or nowhere. Does she propose we all haul our butts into a our choice of someone else’s religious house? How about thems that goes to Church of Satan?
28Hey, guys, if she gets that law passed, we could all go underground. Lots more folks would be radical if they were told they couldn’t be. I told them in Abilene they should make it illegal to go to chapel or church, and bingo, all the kids would say, “Oh yeah? Try and stop me.”
29Forcing people to be stoopid kinda offsets the purpose of education.
30The more that ignorant, bigoted legislators “mandate” laws pertaining to religion, the more imperative it becomes to repeal laws that offer tax breaks to religious entities. I imagine that getting a bill from Federal and State governments for their fair share of the tab for running said governments would get the point across.
31This is an example of Repug small government out of our lives…..
32It’s not the dry air. It’s the soggy brains.
33Rattlesnakes are on strike. They claim wingnuts give sidewinders a bad name. That rattling noise you hear is the sound of pea brains bouncing around empty skulls which is more frightening that a rattler’s rattle.
Rattlers also claim wingnut speech contains more venom that snakes are allowed to possess at one time,so there’s that to strike about.
Personally,I wish they lash out at wingnuts and strike them where it hurts and far enough away from anti-venom to do the world some good. Then we could all agree to love us some rattlers.
34I cleaned house on Sunday.. You know, cleanliness is next to Godliness and all that. When I get done with Spring Cleaning, I should be a candidate for sainthood.
35Ms Phipps,let me be the judge of sainthood. Can you cook goulash?
Ms Mandatory Church Attendance was on HLN this morning. Gonna be a big star in her own mind.
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