Religious Persecution

It’s time for America to honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Prior to the concept of a single God and the creation of holy texts, condemnations against same-sex sexuality were relatively rare.

History determines how we frame current events.

Reports say the conservative Muslim country has stopped issuing visas to transgender people.

“These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now.”

Those of us living in the South are very aware of the multi-generational religious oppression and abuse that many LGBTQ people face coming from our Christian families, churches, and communities. For many LGBTQ people living here our hopes, dreams, and fears are the product of generations of religious traditions and expectations. We know that the religious oppression …

Turn on any cable news show and you’ll hear conservatives, particularly the Religious Right, giving long tirades about religious freedom and how the Left is seeking to strip it away from good God-fearing Americans. But if you watch how the Religious Right works in court, you know that it’s actually the other way around. Religious freedom has been a strongly held belief in America since the very beginning…

RICHLAND HILLS, Texas — The American Humanist Association, an atheist rights advocacy organization, has sent a complaint letter to a Texas school district, claiming that administrators violated a student’s First Amendment rights when they suspended him for tearing Bible pages in school.

Conservative political activist and author Alan Keyes returned to “Dr. Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt’s “Pray In Jesus Name” program on Thursday where he made the case that there can be no such thing as a “right to homosexuality” because all rights come from God, and God has said that homosexuality is an abomination.

A recent town hall meeting sponsored by the Maryland Family Alliance, a coalition working to defeat Maryland’s marriage equality law, has inflamed the gay marriage debate on news that a local pastor declared that LGBT people and their supporters are “worthy of death.”

Never forget that the bible was used to justify the Crusades, the Inquisition, and burn heretics. It has been misused to persecute Jews, support Hitler, and fuel the Holocaust. In American history, the bible was used to promote the genocide of millions of native people, promote and justify racial slavery and more recently to fight integration, sustain Jim Crow, and deny millions their basic human rights.

There has been so much effort put into overcoming the religious authoritarian control over human societies and individuals. … Our achievements towards the freedom to live our lives in natural harmony with each other, without being persecuted for whom we love or wish to marry, is threatened in many cultures, by ignorance…