Opinion Columnists

Greetings on this fine Sunday!

Yeah, just so's you all know... I spent most of the morning drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

I've made jokes about my local paper, and called it the Star and Sickle.

Well, My friend Tim (who coined the term Star and Sickle) isn't the only "conservative/Republican" that has had issues with our little Twin Cities daily Rag. In order for the Star and Trib to appear more balanced, and fair in it's coverage. They hired a new columnist named Katherine Kersten. And here's my issue with this whole thing.

Look, I know that I'm a bleeding heart liberal. But I'd like to think that I cover items and stories and give people a chance to disagree with me. I'm all about dialogue. I'll argue and heck, spit at someone who disagrees with me, but they're allowed their view-point (no matter how wrong they are ;-} ) and I hope that by creating a dialogue, we, as humans, can come to some sort of, I don't know... Not agreement, 'cause that may never happen, but... Something. I feel that if we all talk enough, perhaps we won't end up shooting each other in the future. I know... Silly hope, anyhoo...

My issue with the hiring of Katherine Kersten, a very Right-winged Republican Christian Conservative of the HIGHEST order, is that she doesn't foster a "balance" at the Star Tribune... She creates strife for basically all of humanity.

A column that she wrote a few days ago: "North of the border, gay marriage spurs social revolution" she takes a decidedly "gay marriage is evil, gay people are evil, gays are destroying our culture" sort of viewpoint. Now... Now...

Look, I'm not even going to go off on how fucking insane this woman is. I mean, for crying out loud! Get off your bloody high-christian-horse and just calm the hell down!

What I am going to say, is that if a newspaper has a decidedly "liberal" bent to it, do you really need to get someone who is absolutely raving-teeth-knashing-bloody-minded NUTS to try to balance your paper out? Do you really?

It really does come down to one particular thing.

Religion.

Sorry... But it does. The reason the US was so great, for so long, is that we had the separation of Church and State in our constitution. And lately, 98% of our problems are due to the Christian-Right movement in the US.

Environment? Fuck it, it's the end times Jesus is coming, use as much petrol as you want.
Gays? The bible says their evil... Punish them, oh, and masturbation is also bad, how many follow that rule?
Iraq? - Bush said it, "Crusade." He took it back, after his buddies noticed the problem, but he DID say it.
Abortion? - It's murder, you're killing babies, you, you... Baby KILLER!
Free Speech - It's only free if you belong to an Evangelical FREE Church.
Evolution? - I don't even want to go there, thank you Kansas for showing us all just how insane Americans are.

I could keep going...

The issues back when I was a kid, was the slightly "socialist" Democrats fighting for labour and social programmes. And the Rich "government is bad" Republicans that wanted to cut programmes and taxes in equal proportion.

Now... The Christian-Right has destroyed that balance. Somehow, in my country, where there's meant to be a separation between Church and State, there are conservative Christians running our government, and making decisions based on Christian Biblical Teachings.

I beg everyone that isn't a religious nut... If a politician talks about "his or her faith" do NOT vote for that person. I don't care if they go to church or not, or if they believe, or not; it shouldn't have anything to do with running for public office.

I beg all religious nuts... Stop trying to legislate a MORAL teaching based on a document that is thousands of years old and that is only prescribed to by a very, very small, yet FUCKING loud constituency in my country.

Thank you.

-- A non-Christian, non-religious, but somehow still moral human being.
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