Please, America...

...listen to this story. THINK. Do you really want Bishops, or any other religious figure, dictating public policy?

Perhaps you simply don't care enough that churches are leading and financing the fight to keep gay marriage illegal. Perhaps you believe that abortion is immoral, and that it is therefore only right that every effort be made to make it illegal as well. Perhaps you are not in favor of stem cell research that will very likely save the lives of many of your descendants. Perhaps you do not think it is important that there are religious people who do not want your children to think critically - that it is much more important for them to blindly believe in nonsense like "Intelligent Design."

But don't you realize that this is not where the religious will stop.

How will you feel when the authorities decide that YOU are immoral. Marriage is a divine mandate, and divorce is unacceptable. Women should submit to their husbands. These are also beliefs that many religious people still hold. Do not, for a minute think that your own rights cannot be abrogated. Where, in the constitution does it say that women were created equal? It certainly does not say so in the bible. Divorce? An aberration

Birth control? You know the church does not approve of that, either. Can you seriously believe that life was simpler, or better fifty years ago?

Did you know that women had equal rights in Southern France prior to the 11th century, but that the crusades obliterated almost an entire population there, only to enforce the church's and the Northern French King's power there? Did you know that they had a thriving culture of equality and peaceful co-existence with their arab neighbors in Spain and Africa? A peaceful, thriving, enlightened society in the "dark ages." It was the church, and the government that destroyed that.

Did you know that all of the philosophical, artistic and scientific discoveries of the ancient world were almost erased, and would have been had the arabs not controlled a large part of the ancient world?

This is called history, and it is a history that our founding fathers wanted to avoid. You can pretend that the political right is just that, right, but you are treading a very dangerous path, and it can and will turn on you to bite your ass.

Don't listen to me. I am nobody. I know that I am not nearly good enough a writer to convince you.

Read... think... learn... have faith if you must, but not in the churches. Have faith in each other. Let gays marry. Let people have control of their own bodies and their own destinies. It was said somewhere that what you sow, you shall reap. Life is funny that way.

Please, America. Do something.