GOP’s Christian Hysteria Attacks U.S. Principle of Freedom From Religion

by Leslie Bennetts Mar 6, 2012 1:00 PM EST
Christian conservatives like Rick Santorum and Orrin Hatch claim to be defending Americans’ freedom of religion, but they’re trampling on a diverse nation’s fundamental right to be free of any state-sanctioned religion and its dictates.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/05/gop-s-christian-hysteria-attacks-u-s-principle-of-freedom-from-religion.html



Hypocrites always love the fig leaf, and the Republican radicals crusading against women’s reproductive rights have been shrewd enough to cloak their real goal with pious claims that they’re just defending America’s freedom of religion.

But since the issues currently making headlines include the power to deny insurance coverage for birth control to non-Catholics, the rights of the religious are hardly the most worrisome issue we face, no matter how strident the disingenuous claims of the GOP’s anti-woman warriors.

To a growing segment of the American electorate, a much greater concern than the freedom of religion is the freedom from religion.

Every election year generates a new round of sanctimonious baloney from conservative Christians who purport to speak for every American in defining what the United States is all about. Whether explicit or implicit, the presumption underlying their pronouncements is the idea that America is a Judeo-Christian country whose actions and policies should be guided by the religious doctrines deriving from that tradition.

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