ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

For years the United States has stood for religious and ethnic tolerance. We began only part way there, and have moved further in that direction as the years and centuries have passed; UNTIL NOW.

In watching the Republican candidates for president jockey for position, the rhetoric has continued to move farther from the real issues facing the US and the world, and more toward a theocracy. Each candidate seems to be attempting to convince the people that they are more Christian than the others and it has reached the point when listening to them, I have begun to wonder if they want to re-write the Constitution to begin, “We, the Christian People.”

Where do they leave room for others? Where can Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others, including Atheists and Agnostics fit in? The answer seems to be that they don’t. This is the first time in American history where this has ever become a political issue, and it should raise the hackles, if not the fears of all people, Christian and others alike. There is no room in American politics for religious rhetoric. There is no room for politicians whose goal seems to be exclusive rather than inclusive.

Whether I choose to believe in a god, and what I call that god and how I worship him is no one else’s business than mine. For the purposes of my citizenship, I am neither Christian not Jew, Muslim not Atheist. I am, first and foremost, an American, and do not want someone else’s religious views imposed upon me through political decisions. We are electing a President, not an Ayatollah. We are, and of right ought to be, “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Let’s leave Christ to the churches and God to the preachers. Let’s keep prayer where it belongs, and the teaching and morality of religion in our hearts and minds, but out of the voting booth or the government, and return our great nation to “We The People.”