Friday, September 24, 2010

Boo-hooing Christians in North Carolina


I have been hearing via email and on FB all the whining from a few fundamentalist Christians I know  about this story, and how they believe that the minority should stop standing in the way of what the majority want to do:
 
The Winston-Salem Journal reported on a situation in King, N.C., where a Christian flag had been included in a veterans’ memorial in the community’s Central Park. An Afghanistan war veteran wanted the city to remove the flag to, as he put it, “bring attention to the fact that regardless of the form of government, it had no right to impose any type of religious belief upon its population.”
On Aug. 11, Americans United wrote a letter to the city urging them to remove the flag. On Aug. 16, the North Carolina ACLU did the same.
City officials, after receiving the letters, consulted with their attorney who also agreed that flying the flag of one particular faith violates church-state separation and does not honor all veterans who have fought for our country. The decision was made to remove the flag.
That’s when the whining and boo-hooing started.
Since then, dozens of phone calls and e-mails have poured in from residents complaining about the move. More than 200 people attended a protest rally at the memorial on Monday night, hoping the council will reconsider. Another rally is in the works for next month, too.
The anonymous veteran who complained has also been personally attacked.
“What a coward,” someone commented on the Journal’s Web site. “He can face the Taliban but not American citizens who are probably his neighbors?”
It’s appalling to see how many misguided people have pounced on this veteran who not only bravely served this country, but has now also chosen to stand up for the Constitution. What’s worse, their comments prove that many know little about the principles our country is based on.
As the article states, and as we have had arguments about many times with fundamentalist Christians, they mistakenly believe that this country is officially a Christian country. They refuse to educate themselves and just believe what they want to believe, and while they can do that with their fictional god and Bible stories, they can’t just make stuff up about the Constitution and the principles on which this country was founded.
Many Americans seem to be confused and believe that because majority of Americans are Christians that means the United States is a Christian nation. Many seem to think that the majority should be able to vote and take away the rights of the minority. That’s simply not how it works.
Confused, or pig-headed? Maybe a little of both.

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