There is a proverbial ten ton gorilla in the proverbial room in America, an issue that sits right out in front of everyone that no one will talk about for fear, fear of harassment, fear of becoming a social pariah, even fear of intimidation and violence.
The issue is religious discrimination when it's perpetrated by the reigning majority religion of Christendom. Further at issue is the pubic media silence on the issue which is a direct result of said discrimination. News media and print outlets, aside from being largely staffed by members of the majority religion, fear reprisal from their Christian shareholders and backlash from religious lobbyist organizations who will strike furiously at any criticism of their own religion, even if that criticism is to condemn the mistreatment of everyone from gays to unbelievers that's taught by their sacred religious text and encouraged by more than a few modern day religious leaders.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12/living/pew...index.html
Then there's this...
http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/09/2...itutional/
In this little piece of political and religious propaganda tripe, Ted Cruz state's the he's a constitiutionalist and swear that the religious majority in america is being persecuted for the sake of actions taken by those in the middle east. First, if I had a public comment option at my disposal, I would point out that it is those who do not maintain blind belief in a religion and its religious leaders who are being persecuted here and now, in this country, by Christians.
For example, the eternally unmentioned and consistently ignored by the press and public, legal inequity and open, public, discrimination practiced by Cruz's own state of Texas.
"Texas, Article 1, Section 4:
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being."
Obviously, requiring a person running for office to "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being" IS a religious test for office. I SAY AGAIN, THE STATES CONSTITUTION VIOLATES THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION BECAUSE REQUIRING THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF ONE SUPREME BEING IS IN FACT A RELIGIOUS TEST FOR OFFICE. This Law is not an oxymoron, this law plainly mandates that the state will not discriminate against any religion as a test for office but will freely and openly discriminate against the minority that does not believe in religion itself. If the state of Texas were a public speaker in a packed auditorium, he would be saying "we're not discriminating against anyone, except that one guy standing in the corner".
Furthermore as too Cruz's claims of christian persecution, in this nation as opposed to some Muslim country halfway around the world, Christians perpetuate the vast majority of hate crimes, and are almost never the victims according to FBI hate crime statistics released and widely reported on just a few short months ago.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/02/20/...news-lies/
Not reported in the above article, but also reveled by these statistics is that fact that not only are protestant Christians responsible for the vast majority of religious hate crimes in this country, but Christians in general are also responsible for the vast majority hate crimes based on sexual orientation.
So right there, for two different and valid reasons, Ted Cruz is a hypocrite and a liar. And while its frustrating enough that the press, with its vast majority of christian stockholders who fury at one word of criticism for their churches, ignores these inequities, it's even more maddening that you have removed the public comments section from these articles so that an average citizen does not have a venue to speak where they might stand a chance of actually being heard.
When I was a child, my parents called me a Jehovah's witness too the schools I attended including those in the deep south after we moved there, and I suffered for it every single day. In the fifth grade I said that I didn't really believe a word of it, and the other kids declared me an atheist and i suffered more for that, including numerous assaults, and acts of discrimination not just by other students but also by the teachers, and by other kids parents and siblings which finally culminated in a bottle being thrown from a car window by a local teenager and striking me in the side of the head to give me a sever concussion and frankly, nearly kill me. That happened when I was twelve, and the teenager who threw the bottle was never charged with anything, largely because the police force of Bremen Georgia, the town where the incident occurred, managed to somehow loose the bottle from their evidence locker in less than twelve hours. These are the type of hate crimes and injustices your religion and its followers hide and cover for while maintaining publicly that their religion and its followers are morally superior.
Finally, the press and politicians in this country are bent on sweeping these attitudes and behaviors under the rug while claiming openly that the christian majority is not only infallible and blameless, but claiming falsely that the religious majority is being persecuted by the incredibly small religious minorities around them, minorities who are in reality being largely victimized by them. Not only is that propaganda nearly identical to the propaganda the nazi's spread about their victims, but the practice of preventing victims from speaking publicly and refusing to allow the facts about who's victimizing who to be stated publicly is nearly identical to their pre-holocaust agenda as well.
But the fact that every single nazi was a christian because the nazi required them to be christian to join their party, and the fact that every group of people, from the Jewish people to atheists, homosexuals and even Jehovah's witnesses, were a group people that was openly hated in the catholic church at that time, have also been swept under the proverbial rug for seventy years.
I suppose those of us who refuse to obey their plainly fictitious religion, will never see justice or equality because your religious leaders gain money and power from followers and have every interest in oppressing and forcing as many people as possible into their churches. and they plainly demonstrate that those religious leaders have bought injustice and prejudice from every single elected official in this country.
