Ante Pavkovic, Kathy Pavkovic, and Kristen Sugar were all arrested in the chambers of the United States Senate as that chamber was violated by a false Hindu god. The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ. This would never have been allowed by our Founding Fathers.
"Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood. They stood on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! There were three in the audience with the courage to stand and proclaim, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' They were immediately removed from the chambers, arrested, and are in jail now. God bless those who stand for Jesus as we know that He stands for them." Rev. Flip Benham, Director, Operation Save America/Operation Rescue
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Gruntled : Although I've not seen an actual news story on this, I would suspect that the people arrested were not members of Congress, but spectators from the Gallery that started shouting when the Hindu prayer was being said.
And I wish it were possible to get it through fundies thick heads that the US is not a Christian nation and that the Founding Fathers were not a raving bunch of lunatic Jesus freaks like they (fundies) are.
"Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood"
Hmmm, didn't our Founding Fathers put Freedom of Religion in the Bill of Rights? Or did someone just forget that little piece of history? Or does it not fit in their warped sense of how the Government is supposed to work?
Hey, why don't they just do away with the opening prayer anyway? Then we would really have separation of church and state - but the Fundies would find fault in that - somehow.
Fundies - can't live with them and aren't allowed to shoot them. Darn. ;)
Well, let's read the words of one of the US's founding fathers:
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
Does it sound like he stood on the gospel of Jesus Christ? Not to me, it doesn't.
On the contrary, all the senators had the backbone to stand as our founding fathers stood, which is to affirm that the US is a country that gives equal treatment to all religions, and affords no special status or privilege to Christianity. None of the senators had the cowardice to be intimidated by a few bigoted religious nuts.
PS, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" comes from the Old Testament and was never said by Jesus.
The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ.
Afraid he can't take fair competition, fundster?
As far as I know general public is let into the senate, so they could observe the decisions being made, not to let them stage protests, which create disarray. However, it would be shocking and very worrying, if senators were arrested for speaking out (or even shouting) in the senate. Clearly it cannot be the case.
Where is the separation of church and state here? This is why they need to make a cleaner break - just ban all official prayer within government agencies. Solves everything. No one can get offended. Use some kind of pledge instead.
And guess what? Hindus are just as convinced that your God is false. So who's right? Oh yeah, it's all faith-based, and so neither of you can say you KNOW you're right. You may FEEL it, but you don't know, and everyone feels that same conviction.
Time for a new award:
THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT
I'm all for peaceful protest. That said, these 3 people sound like unmitigated jackasses. Of all the things that are wrong in the world, they want to holler about a Hindu prayer?
Do these feckwits not realise that Hinduism is considerably older than Christianity and that it is the dominant religion in the world's largest democracy?
Do they realise that India is the world's largest democracy?
Do they even realise that India exists, and if they do, that Sitting Bull wasn't born there?
Probably not.......
"Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood.
I love this statement. It presupposes that all the senators secretly agreed with the angry fundies, but were too yellow to do anything about it.
Bull. Shit.
Fundies need to learn that sometimes, people disagree with them. Yes, people in power. Yes, fundies, sometimes you are, in fact, wrong.
I was re-reading Paine's "Common Sense" this morning and found a very interesting, and appropriate, statement at the end. This particular edition of CS is the second (or third) and contains a response to a Quaker correspondent citing the "divine right of kings", etc. Contextually his argument centered on the impiety of rebellion, from the inevitably pacifist stance of the Quakers.
Paine [a former Quaker himself] took issue with the man's attempt to censor his voice by religious argument, and he proceeded to make clear that people who relied simply upon prayer for social remediation, deserved to wear the tyrant's yoke; that such a yoked creature had no business applying this yoke to stifle another's healthy spirit. To mix metaphors, a sheep has no goddamn place, telling the hunting dog how to act.
--Thomas Paine, Feb 14 1776
[http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/comsn10.txt ]
"The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ."
Can't your omnipotent God take care of that "god of Hinduism" if that's important to him?
"Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood. They stood on the Gospel of Jesus Christ!"
Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Franklin never stood "on the Gospel of Jesus Christ." I imagine Thomas Paine only stood on the Gospel as a step stool to reach something on a high shelf.
I'm pretty sure Hindu gods trump Bible god in the "one true" department as they're far, far older.
I mean, if any of them did exist that is.
"He who lies down with dogs, arises with fleas." If any of those hypocrites, liars, Nazis, and thugs from Operation Save America/Operation Rescue speak for you, you must be slime and feces. They believe that any lie they tell or any law they break to force their warped version of religio-nazism and female subjugation down your throat is absolved by their narrow(to others that they disagree with) and bigotted Pauline God.
@PhantasyElementz:
Actually, Hinduism sees other religions including Christianity, as simply different paths to the same goal. As they see it, different religions are just different ways of looking at God.
Well, considering that Jefferson owned a Koran (the very same one that Keith Ellison used), I don't think he would have been that upset at the thought of a non-Christian prayer being said in public.
And actually I was proud that not one senator kowtowed to those religious nutjobs. Hopefully it won't be the last time.
@Mudflappus
Come again? They're stupid, and belligerent, to be sure, but hardly worthy of death. Ridicule, sure, but not death.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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