Randall Terry is back. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, he’s the founder of the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue which terrorized abortion/reproductive health clinics during the late 1980s and early ‘90s. As the following article from Americans United states, Terry is an “ardent theocrat, a foe of church-state separation and an all-around rotten guy.”

A Terry comment from 1993 encapsulates his “Christian” worldview.

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you,” he said. “I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this county. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

And now he has brought his “Xian luv” to the 2008 Democratic convention:

According to news accounts, Terry and 12 others were arrested yesterday outside the Democratic Convention in Denver. His press release in advance of the event said he and other “Catholic and Evangelical Christians will peacefully ‘break the law’ to protest the slaughter of the innocent by abortion, and to call on fellow Christians to reject the Obama/Biden ‘Ticket of Death.’”

Pro-lifer activists like this asshat call on their fellow god botherers to protest abortion, but they never say what they will do for that child once they force the women to have these babies. What about the child after it’s born to a mother who cannot take care of it? What about the child who is born to an drug user? What about the child who would be born with fetal alcohol syndrome? What about the child who is born into some other dire circumstances because pro-lifers forced their mothers to have them? Few of these activists say what they will do for the child once it is born and no longer an infant (if it survives that long). We don’t see this kind of religious activism to call for help for the homeless, those who live in poverty, drug addicts, and others who live in desperate situations.

Relatives of mine are pro-life. They are adamant about their anti-abortion stance and believe that abortion is never an option. They will vote for the government to take away legalized abortions. Yet what do they do to help children who are born into poverty and poor environments? They moved to a beautiful and isolated island off the coast of Alaska where they believe their “God is blessing them” while they spew out their rules they wish everyone else to live by. They did not take their “work” to the inner cities and other areas where there is the greatest need.

For every religious fuckwit that bites the dust (as in Karen’s post below), others refuse to die even though most of American wants them to STFU: Nightmare On Theocracy Street: America Wants Randall Terry To Get Lost

In the following video, Terry sounds eerily like Scientologist whackadoo Tom Cruise

Randall Terry Gets Owned

I never thought I would see the day with the Democrats transforming the Democratic National Convention into an interfaith church service. I am greatly disappointed.

DENVER - At the first official event Sunday of the Democratic National Convention, a choir belted out a gospel song and was followed by a rabbi reciting a Torah reading about forgiveness and the future.

Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun who wrote “Dead Man Walking,” assailed the death penalty and the use of torture.

Young Muslim women in headscarves sat near older African-American women in their finest Sunday hats.

Four years ago, such a scene would have been unthinkable at a Democratic National Convention. In 2004, there was one interfaith lunch at the Democratic gala in Boston.

But that same year, “values voters” helped re-elect President Bush, giving Democrats of faith the opening they needed to make party leaders listen to them.

The result was on display at Sunday’s interfaith service, staged in a theater inside the Colorado Convention Center, and will be evident throughout the convention agenda and on the sidelines.

There will be four “faith caucus” meetings, blessings to open and close each night, and panels and parties run by Democratic-leaning religious advocacy groups that didn’t even exist in 2004 — not to mention protests from religious groups and leaders opposed to the Democratic platform.

And of course no atheist, agnostic or secular humanist on the list of speakers. If the intention was to show diversity amongst the Democratic party and unity of people from all walks of life, then that should include everyone. Unfortunately, to the believers, Democrats or otherwise, a coalition that supports nontheistic views is not welcome. But those who value the separation of church and state still made their voices heard:

In June, the Madison,Wis.-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, a 12,000-member watchdog group for the separation of church and state, erected a billboard near the Colorado Convention Center that proclaimed “Imagine No Religion.” In early August the sign was changed to “Keep Religion Out of Politics.”

During the convention, the foundation will fund mobile billboards asking for church-state separation and broadcasting its view that religion is divisive.

“Faith does not unite us,” Freedom co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said. “And this is a time when we should be in unity behind our secular government.”

Most liberals here still support Obama and the Democratic party despite the religious mumbo jumbo he believes in and that is interjected into politics from both sides now to pander to the evangelicals, but we must continue to make our voices heard that separation of church and state must be upheld and to keep our secular government from slipping towards a theocracy.

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE

While our focus has been on the attempts of cretinists creationists here in the U.S., Answers in Genesis followers are on a mission to integrate their ID crap in public school curricula in Britain and France. It is not enough for them to teach their mythology in their churches and in their homes, and it’s not enough to work on fucking up their own country, they want to drag all people back to the dark ages with them.

These people still don’t have a clue or refuse to accept what scientific theory is. It does not mean “to guess” or to make shit up. For our fundie lurkers…once again:

From Wikipedia, In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation. For the scientist, “theory” is not in any way an antonym of “fact”. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theories commonly used to describe and explain this behavior are Newton’s theory of universal gravitation (see also gravitation), and the general theory of relativity.

I found a rebuttal site to Answers in Genesis called NO Answers in Genesis. Creationists, please go there and READ, if you can. No god will strike you dead if you do.

says Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Church and State.

I don’t see what good it will do for the American people to again hear the candidates spout pious platitudes about their favorite Bible verses or how devout they are.

“Candidates should appeal to the voters based on their qualifications for office and their stands on the issues, not their religious beliefs,” Lynn said.

I agree with Lynn that we have heard enough about the religious views of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama and let’s get on to the real issues. Looking back at the ” Rick Warren Bible drill” I say now that that is over, let’s get on with debating and discussing the things without the distraction of personal religious convictions. We’re a country of diverse people, not an evangelical congregation.

“This event continues the campaign spiral into religious matters. Americans want to hear the candidates’ views on important issues such as constitutional rights, public education, the Iraq War and the economy.”

The Sunday after the forum was held, Warren told his congregation:

“I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, ‘I don’t need God,’ ” Warren said. “They’re saying, ‘I’m totally self-sufficient by [myself].’ And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It’s too big a job.”

So, no matter how intelligent, level-headed, fair, and moral an atheist is, he is saying that an atheist cannot do as good of a job because an atheist does not have an imaginary “co-pilot”. And no one disputed that.

And Warren left out the fact that President can’t do his job with just the help of his/her imaginary friend. The President has advisors, committees, military generals, and other experts who help him do his job. No sky daddy comes in and sits in at meetings and offers any advice. God is only involved when a president wants to use it as justification to invade a country, etc. If he says that God told him to do it, then the people cannot argue with that, right?

After Obama-McCain forum, Rick Warren sermon focuses on character

. . . because “someone did that 2,000 years ago ”

GOP Rep. To Environmentalists: Jesus Already Saved The Planet

We like to keep track of the, er, intriguing sayings of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, the Christian Right champion from Minnesota. But this latest is really out there — Bachmann says we don’t need pesky environmentalists like Nancy Pelosi around, because Jesus already saved the planet!

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

Wow.

Other recent Bachmannisms include the claim that there isn’t actually any wildlife in the areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where she wants more drilling, and the allegation that Democrats want high gas prices so as to force people to move into “inner cities” and “the urban core.”

Michele Bachmann Accuses Pelosi of “Global Warming Fanaticism”

It seems that for hating pornography so much, Christians sure spend a lot of time and energy thinking about it (and more than just thinking about it in many cases) and overly-obsessed about what legal activities adults do in their free time and what they purchase with their own money. Vjack from Atheist Revolution once again brings attention to another bit of interesting news, this time about Christian Morality Police in Indiana who have nothing better to do in life than to camp out in front of a porn store and take photos of the patrons who go there, and also taking photos of their license plates numbers…AND posting them online! What sad lives they lead if this is all they have to do all day. With all the problems in the world, starving children, poverty, and people in need, this is what they choose to do with their time. Maybe they are trying to catch their own spouses or pastors going there? (Probably quite a few have been caught.)

I love the suggestion one person had that the patrons should have a little fun with these paranoid morons by dressing up as priests and nuns when they visit the store. And love the shirt that vjack says he would wear. LOL!

I just saw this at Americans United for Church and State:

LINK: Farrakhan’s Flub: Nation Of Islam Minister Attacks Religious Neutrality In Schools

According to Minister Louis Farrakhan, church-state separation is responsible for the education problems in America.

Hundreds packed a South Side Chicago church on Sunday to hear Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, speak on the “Educational Challenge: A New Paradigm for the 21st Century.” According to the Chicago Sun-Times, community activists and religious leaders met to find solutions for America’s “plighted education system.”

And Farrakhan’s solution? Inject religion into the public schools.

These god botherers will never understand what separation of church and state means.

The Bush administration is pushing its religious agenda by limiting reproductive freedom.

Prescription for Controversy: Bush Endorses Move To Curtail Access To Birth Control

In the final months of his administration, Bush is trying to force through a draft regulation that will “deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions,” the Washington Post reported yesterday. In other words, if a pharmacist doesn’t want to fill a birth control prescription, he doesn’t have to.

Advocates of this regulation, of course most coming from religiously-based organizations, are painting this as an anti-discrimination measure - ensuring that people who oppose contraceptives and abortion do not have to go against their religion in order to work for a hospital or health care entity. The report cites to “numerous cases in which health-care workers had to violate their consciences by providing birth control pills and other controversial medicine and conducting controversial procedures.

This concern over discrimination and religious liberty is the Religious Right’s continual strategy to push its very narrow viewpoint on the rest of the country. But this time it is quite clear, even to medical experts and scientists, where this regulation stems from.

As Sandhya Bathija from AU says “Let’s hope pressure from Congress puts an end to what is hopefully one of the last of Bush’s ridiculous “faith-based” schemes.”