Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

After All These Years

This many years in, Rudy and I seldom get each other gifts for birthdays or anniversaries.  We have much of what we want, pretty much all of what we need.  So for his birthday today, I wanted to do something that money cannot buy, and that is much more lasting:  Remember.

 

Oh, For The Love Of God...

"... but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

United States Constitution, Article VI, Clause III

Seems pretty clear, concise, to the point.  Nothing murky or questionable about the words' intent.  The authors of the Constitution were pretty damned straight about it - religion, or the lack thereof, is not a requirement to hold office.

Someone needs to bring the GOP up to speed.

As happens every election cycle, in the public wooing that takes place for conservative religious, especially evangelical, voters - Republican candidates literally attempt to "outGod" one another. 

"I was an alter boy all through childhood!"

"Look at me!  I have favorite Bible verses I can recite from memory!"

"Well, piss off, I had a private audience with the Pope!"

"Eat me - I am fluent in Liberty University-ese."

"Step off, you apostle wannabe.  JESUS TOLD ME TO RUN FOR OFFICE."

Sigh - there's always that one.  Jesus, suspiciously, always validates what the speaker thinks, feels, believes, is trying to sell. 

But that Jesus is a cagey one with a serious sense of humor.  Huckabee, Santorum, Bachmann, Palin, Bush, Cruz - the list is long - have all been "told" to run; that they are the savior of the century.  I wonder if Jesus laughs as hard as I do when their campaigns fall apart and they withdraw from a race in which so many obviously disagree with Master J.

Silly me, that's when they blame it on Satan being at work in the world.  That shifty old Satan, always gumming up the works (and providing a convenient skirt to hide behind - see Josh Duggar - his dick and libido were not to blame for his problems.  Satan was just constantly afflicting him with a boner).

Throughout this election cycle, we see the Republican cadre constantly touting their religious bona fides - Bush, Carson, Cruz, Rubio, even Trump - which is about as laughable as one can get when it comes to piety and sacrifice.  Trump is all about giving.  To himself.  If ever anyone had a God complex, here's your poster boy.

Today things reached a ridiculous level when the Pope, of all papal (sorry, had to), chimed in about Trump and his affinity for force funded wall building (looking at you Mexico).  While taking reporters' questions on a flight back from Mexico today, the Pope said of Trump, "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian."

Shots fired.

Trump, the oh-so-devout Christian (pardon me whilst I gag), ran to the nearest microphone (and Twitter, of course America's favorite mean girl ran to Twitter) and rambled:

Dear lord, where to begin?

The ISIS?  Sorry, Donald, but extremisms, in all forms, are ideologies.  So your wetdreams about carpet bombing an ideology are best left to your maids to wash in the morning.  Oh, and I highly doubt the Pope prays for you to be President.  He kind of made that pretty clear today.

Speaking with the Mexican government about you?  Sunshine, you look bad all on your own.  ALL AROUND THE WORLD.  Step out of the bubble in which your party resides, and take note of how you are universally derided by heads of state everywhere. 

As for questioning your level or brand of Christianity?  Pssst, Don, anyone my age or older came up with you through the years and you have never been caught darkening a cathedral's doors, unless it was to get married ... once.  Ivana:  Marble Collegiate Church (her insistence won out); After that?  Marla: Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel; Melania: your property in Florida, Mar-a-lago.  And news flash - me, him, her, them, even the Pope can question anything we want to, especially when all evidence is to the contrary of the bullshit being portrayed.

Now, let's get to the real meat of your victimy tome: this whole notion of how you will insure Christianity will no longer be "consistently attacked and weakened."

Reminding Christians, or any religious followers of any stripe, that their chosen faith cannot dictate to the rest of us, is not an attack.  (If it is, your party is nothing but a continual barrage of verbal diarrhea bombs at Islam.)  It is a plain statement that YOU do not choose for ALL.  And keeping Christianity in its place - churches and private lives - is not weakening it.  It is again reminding it, and its adherents, that it has no place in our (intended) secular governance.

I do not care who you worship, what you worship, how you worship - in a forest, in a mosque, in a temple, in your home, choosing from the nearly 6,000 currently active menu items - YOU do not get to tell ME I have to do it with you, or your way.  Just as I cannot demand YOU practice what I believe.  See how that works?

(Incidentally, this is why so many people are running far from your side of the aisle.  Religion, especially as used by a party that wants to control, deny, and inflict harm on others, has no appeal.  Why?  Because equality means something to us.  It means EVERYONE.  Not your version in which it only applies to those just like you.  We are not afraid of LGBT - everyone on the spectrum - being protected, sharing in this country's rights. We want that.  We are not threatened by two men falling in love and getting married.  Ted Cruz, marriage equality is not "unprecedented persecution" of you and your ilk.  Frankly, that kind of language is just sad - and why you will never be anywhere near the Oval unless on a tour.  We understand what transgender means.  You believe it means perverts wanting to peek at your junk in the wrong bathroom.  We embrace ALL lives, yes, but we understand why Black Lives Matter.  Religion has zero to do with being a decent human being.  And in your hands, it is constantly shown to be a dangerous weapon, a cudgel, a threat to people everywhere who don't fall in line with your narrow views.)

Which brings us back to this whole GOPer led Godapalooza.  SHUT UP.  Your religion has no bearing here.  We face real problems, real hardships, real dangers in this REAL world.  Your belief in an invisible deity, an end-of-days, the constantly revamped stories in a Bronze Age storybook - they are not the answers to the REAL ISSUES FACED IN THIS WORLD - many of them currently festering because of ideologues like yourself who view a theoCRAZY as the answer.

It is people like Cruz, et al, who scare me.  They are so intent on bringing about that end times they covet, that they truly have no business being in any position of leadership, or decision making, or launch codes.

"... but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

The founding fathers were clear.  But the more you people up the ante, masturbate to visions of Dominion, and race to the media altar to outdo, out preach, outrageous one another - perhaps it should be a disqualifier.