*sigh* - implicit assumptions remain, despite all evidence...

[acroyear]

evidence either in the specific individual (as you'll see), and evidence in the general. Being "religious" is not and should never e a magical panacea that suddenly allows one to either declare themselves nor be universally interpreted as being more moral than one who does not practice or believe.

We've had centuries of power abuse by the Catholics, scores of religious civil wars and strife throughout the planet (often among "Christians"), decades of revelations of violence, sex abuse, corruption, and hypocrisies among religious leaders and the political leaders who are supported by them, lies upon lies upon lies in the name of power or money, yet STILL the general populace and the courts (oh, especially the courts) put professed religious belief ahead of any actual evidence of (a)morality when making decisions that affect children's lives.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: New Ruling on Religion and Custody:

I've got a friend in New York who just went through this and I'm gathering all the legal documents to publicize that case. The outcome was beyond outrageous. The mother, who had full custody during the divorce and custody fight, lost custody because the father would make the child attend church while the mother would not.

This despite the fact that the father had multiple drunk driving arrests and even admitted under oath that he still drove with the child in the car after drinking. This also despite the fact that he had a history of violence, enough to warrant a personal protection order granted to the mother. But the judge felt that raising the child in a "Christian" environment trumped all of that.

Mitt Romney recently did a speech that absolutely disgusted me and pretty much anyone who believes that the Constitution was extremely specific in declaring that no religious test should be required for office.  In order to diffuse all the negativity he was (and still is) receiving over his Mormonism, he openly declared all atheists and agnostics to be the real enemies in order to win back support - the only way for "Christians" to stop hating (well, postpone it, really) other "Christians" is to declare that all "non-Christians" are the enemy.  And if you can't get away with openly declaring yourself anti-semitic or anti-islam (which they often are), you simply go for the one target that isn't "politically correct" and has no extended history of defending their rights.

Romney declared a new war of hate and that the media praised him for it, and that disgusts me.

Note: I'm not saying that Huckabee's stunt last week, where he said "I won't run this anti-Romney ad" loudly and publicly so that the media would run it for him and get his message out while his hands stay clean, was any better - it was simply more of the same hypocrisy and it strikes me as really odd that the media so lapped it up that they don't realize just how badly they are being abused and manipulated.

This pretty much sums it up for me...

*sigh*

By the way, Ron Paul is *hardly* any better - he doesn't support or accept evolution, is anti-immigrant and isolationist, and in the name of "freedom" would allow quack "medicine" to advertise and promote itself with impunity, and that's just the crap I can confirm...

Maybe later, I'll write up why none of the Democratic Party candidates are any better...