In today's paper, in the comment section, was a gay man's comment about the effects he and his husband had this year in filing their taxes. They were unable to use the computer program they had for their taxes because of their marriage. In California, you are considered a married couple, you file a joint return. But that isn't the case for the federal taxes and because of that, they had to pay to have their taxes done because the program wouldn't work for same-sex couples that are eligible for joint filing in the State but not the Federal government.
We too had a problem. Not exactly us, our tax lady, the gypsy, said she would have to tweak them for her program. I imagine she threw a gypsy curse at her program. We still haven't received the results from her work, she didn't know if we owed or would receive a refund.
Proposition Eight proponents did not want the court to allow same-sex marriages to start again while the case was being appealed, they reasoned it would cause chaos. Really, chaos, for who? It's just another bogus argument to keep gay and lesbian people from having equality. And the reason is they want to punish gays and lesbians for being who they are. To make life as hard on them as they possibly can so that they will turn straight. Seriously.
Christian bigots, which is what the right wing is vastly made of want to cause as much trouble for gays and lesbians, for woman who want an abortion, for anyone that does not adhere to their strict religious moral code. In the name of their god, Jesus. It doesn't matter if you believe in Christianity or not, they are not satisfied with restricting those that follow their religious convictions, which they have every right to do within the confines of their sect. But not for the rest of us that don't share their religious belief. Yet we must. We are forced to, which means this country is no different than Iran, Iraq, or any other Theocratic government.
And that is why the Right is so wrong. They brag about being defenders of freedom. Hardly, when you consider woman have no rights(according to them) over their own bodies. The Catholic church is more than willing to allow the death of a woman when to save it would require an abortion. They will kill the mother for their own religious belief. That is a lot of control over other human beings.
And the LGBT? There are Christian groups actively seeking to have us incarcerated and murdered. Such a loving god their Jesus is---NOT. Which is why, I wonder, how can anyone believe in this nonsense of religion? It is full of lies, deceit and treachery. It is not honest, or pure in any way, but used to control other people by the use of fear in a god waiting to punish. And that punishment will be meted out by the true believers, not the god, which is nonexistent. If there was one, then why isn't the god that doles out the punishment? It can't and there is a good reason why it can't.
IMO, faith and religion are at bipolar opposites. I struggle with my faith because there is a huge part of me that wants to believe in something or anything bigger than me (a two year old's faith that the grownups really do have it all together), but religion has almost beat that faith out of me. I've seen too much cruelty, condemnation and judgement on the part of Christians espousing their own particular dogma. Recently I watched the Lisa Ling documentary "pray the Gay away" and it was so disturbing.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any answers, but it never made any sense to me that a truly Omnipowerful and Omniscient God would create someone and then spend their entire lifetime beating them down (or having his "followers" do the work for Him) for being what He created them to be. Insanity.
This weekend, while planting the vegetable garden, a Jehovah Witness came knocking. It was the spiel about, how terrible things are now, and this was foretold what would happen before Jesus would return and "Don't I agree that these are terrible times."
ReplyDelete"No," I said, "These are not terrible times. Terrible times were a hundred years ago,and worse times were a hundred years before that. We have had an improve quality of life compared to any time in the past. And that's why I don't believe in religion because they all use fear to try and frighten people into believing there is a god.
"Oh, no. God is love," she said.
"Oh, yeah, then why the scare tactic right off the bat?"
She didn't have an answer.