let auntie punkwitch spin you a tale children. a tale of politics and the judicial system gone awry. a tale of a fundamentalist xian put in a place of too much power.
his name is judge roy moore. until the last elections here in alabama, he was simply a little penny ante circuit judge or at least a lowly little judge in any case. in said election, mr. moore was elected to the supreme court of the state of alabama as the chief justice. so what, you say? just a damn judge. ah, but there's more. prior to his promotion, judge moore had become quite famous at least around these parts for a lawsuit. he was fighting for the privilege to post the ten commandments in his courtroom. did he skip the separation of church and state at law school, you ask. no, he is simply a fundamentalist xian, which are plentiful here in our lovely state. okay, well he got said privilege. distressing enough to stop there, but that my friends is not where my little tale ends. oh no, not by a two and a half ton longshot.
the latest installment of this xian vs. logical rightminded citizen saga occurred only last week. judge moore and some of his cronies pitched in the necessary $5000 to have a two and a half ton replica of the ten commandments set in stone. well, he then had the audacity to place this eyesore in the center of the rotunda of the state supreme court. he went on to say in the following press conference (this was necessary, because until the actual christening or whatever no one knew it was coming), that he was the highest law in the state and he wanted it there. now, does this man have some serious steel-plated balls or what? most assuredly, if i crept to the state supreme court and placed copies of sacred texts from other religions around the same rotunda without asking, i would be arrested for vandalism or at least banned from state property on the premise that i am a subversive element (damn skippy i am officer, and proud of it). so why is it that this sawed off little oral roberts wanna-be can get away with this? he is xian, my friends, and therefore not only does he get to make the laws, he can bend and twist them into any pretzel-like shape that suits his fundamentalist needs. hence the xian eyesore in the rotunda. and they wonder why there are anarchists and anti-government movements.
what is the world coming to, y'all? everywhere i turn, i see people turning to this brand of psychotic exclusionism. the mobile paper is bitched at in the sound off column and letters to the editor for disagreeing with judge moore. more and more people seem to be of the mind that xianity is the one and only thing that should rule this country and the world and probably the cosmos. they base it on the grounds that our founding fathers were xian and this country was founded on "good, xian values". got news for ya. the founding fathers for the most part were deists...meaning that yes they believed in a god. but one who created the universe and then abandoned it, giving no divine inspriration and whatever else it is these people are assuming. so they are shot down on that one. what else do they base it on? that their book (the bible) says it is so. ummm...any book can pronounce itself the perfect and inspired truth of the universe, and that doesn't make it true. now, don't get me wrong. i believe that xians, fundamentalist and otherwise have an absolutely undeniable right to believe whatever it is that they want. everyone does, xians, atheists, deists, hindus, wiccans, muslims, jews, branch davidians, whatever it is that helps you through the night without goin freekin crazy. BUT they do NOT have the right to tell me that i am wrong for believing or not believing. they do NOT have the right to tell me that i must believe their nonsense in order to be a good human being. and they do NOT have the right to flood public institutions with the trappings of their crutch-like beliefs.
...thus spake the munkies and it was good.