Flaming the homo-sex-obsessed Lou Sheldon (PhotoShoppery: mine)
Joseph L Conn, at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, alerts us to the fact that ramblin’ gamblin’ Lucky Louie Sheldon has spawned a brand new, half-baked idea just in time for Thanksgiving. Conn is always a smart read but doubly enjoyable when he roasts a turkey like arch-homo-hater Reverend Lou Sheldon, of the Traditional Values Coalition.
From Americans United:
Thankful For Theocracy?: TVC’s Sheldon Tries To Make Thanksgiving A Vehicle For Bigotry
What is it with Religious Right zealots and holidays?
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Now, the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition has set his sights on Thanksgiving as a propaganda and fund-raising vehicle. In his most recent e-mail appeal, Sheldon urges pastors — and the rest of us — to declare Nov. 23 “America’s Christian Heritage Sunday.”
The bombastic California preacher wants sermons on “America’s Christian founding” and church bulletin inserts that insist America was “founded because of prayer.” He takes the project one step further and seeks government endorsement of the occasion, urging his troops to contact local mayors and city councils for resolutions in honor of the special day.
Sheldon regurgitates a lot of the usual “Christian nation” baloney to bolster his case. Much of it is outright false; all of it is so wrenched from historical context that it should be regarded as fiction.
America was founded for a lot of reasons: imperial expansion by European powers, the hunt for wealth by adventurers of all stripes and the search by some for religious freedom. Many colonists came here just because they wanted a better life.
Predictably, Sheldon excoriates the Supreme Court for endorsing the secular humanists’ “perverted doctrine of ‘separation of church and state.’”
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The Constitution even protects the right of fundamentalist prevaricators like Sheldon to make a nice living spreading historical lies, pushing divisive and hateful religious and political extremism and engaging in ethically dubious but lucrative conduct. (Remember “Lucky Louie’s” role in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal?)
Here’s an idea for America’s clergy. Instead of joining Sheldon’s misguided crusade, why not preach a sermon this weekend praising church-state separation and the role that beneficent principle has played in giving each of us religious liberty?
The freedom to believe as we wish, or not to believe at all, is something to be truly thankful for, this week and every week.
At his website, Lucky Louie claims:
… it was Thomas Jefferson, the one many falsely claim urged the separation of the Church from the state, who proclaimed:
“God who gave us life, gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?”
What Jefferson, the politician, might have said in public, given the conventions of his time, is quite different from what Jefferson, who enthusiastically embraced the Age of Enlightenment, said in his 1778 letter to Peter Carr:
Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
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