Getting Stoned

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Bob Dylan

Yesterday, Iranian President Ahmadinejad proclaimed there are "no homosexuals in Iran."

This may be true since Iranian law is governed by Islamic (Sharia) law -- or God's law as it is written in the Koran.

Since the Koran (like the Old Testament of the Bible) calls for the stoning to death of gays and lesbians – simply for BEING gay or lesbian, it should come as no surprise that Iranian gays and lesbians try to stay invisible.

And, it logically follows that, except for God himself, what is not visible does not exist!

In America, at this writing, LGBTQ people have the right to live. Of course we are still struggling for certain rights – for example, equality -- but we are able to walk around without the expectation of being stoned to death for being out and open.

That being said, it is important that we remain vigilant to the real threat that there IS a very strong movement in the US to shift our form of government from the secular to a Christian Nation governed by Biblical law.

President Bush has even instituted in his administration, a department of Faith Based Communities Initiatives (FBCI) to “level the playing field” so that religious organizations have equal access to Federal funds.

Never mind that the FBCI is in direct conflict with the Constitutional directive to maintain a separation between matters of State and Church.

The founders of our Republic had a good reason for their desire to create a wall between the function of government and religious belief:

“The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Nonconformists could expect no mercy and were executed as heretics.”

Today, the LGBTQ Community has good reason to fear the reemergence of a Christian Nation. If you haven’t read the Bible – especially the Old Testament – you may not know what is in store – not just for gays and lesbians – but for all Americans who eat pork, wear clothes made of different cloth, commit adultery, and experience other mundane and everyday happenings.

Ahmadinejad’s words should stand as a reminder that we must not take our role as citizens lightly.

Every one of us has much to lose when we do not act on our rights as citizens.

For decades, Americans have been dumbed-down to such an extent that we do not know and are not even taught, our civic and political history. Most Americans have never read the Constitution and therefore they are unaware of the rights and freedoms that are slipping away.

Those in power do not want us to understand our history. They prefer to “encase and concretize the human mind in an intellectual penitentiary” so that citizens will not know whether or when to rise up.

We are caught in a cycle of sound-bites and catch phrases that allow us to drift ever closer to a theocratic governing system.

We watch American Idol and are willing to lose our rights, liberties and freedoms as long as the government is doing so in an effort to “keep us safe.”

The questions that need to be asked are:

• Do you place a desire to be entertained and feelings of (false) security over liberty and freedom?
  

• If so, are you willing to go back to the stoned-age?