How about freedom from religion?

It’s time to end religious slavery, discrimination, racism, and sexual violence

Religions have authorized slavery for thousands of years. It still exists in many corners of the world and is outlawed in few countries.

Religions have allowed men to marry several women at one time, which is now a crime called bigamy in some countries. Remember: Osama bin Laden had four wives.

Churches in our South taught that blacks were inferior to whites and pushed for Jim Crow laws to make sure blacks were kept “in their place.”

Religions have been and are currently organized into sex cults so that young females are “married” as maidens to older men. This happened in Minnesota not too long ago.

Religions tell parents that God will directly cure all of the ills of their children so they don’t take them to medical clinics and doctors. So the children die.

Religions in Uganda recognize that the blood sacrifice of children brings you good luck in the future.

There has been a bill introduced in Congress that will indicate LGBTQ people are actually born perfect and do not require medical attention. It’s a bill that would ban the practice of “conversion therapy,” treatments that for centuries were supposed to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

There is no medical condition known as being gay. Here are some of the treatments used by conversion therapists to turn gays into straights:

(1) electric shock treatments, used to induce nausea, vomiting, and paralysis when patients have “same-sex erotic” thoughts; (2) gays are sometimes prescribed a rubber band to wear on their wrists and to snap it hard if they are attracted to someone of the same sex; and (3) Some psychiatrists employed by conversion centers believe that over the course of four to eight years they can change sexual preferences with group therapy, claiming they change unusual dress habits, treat gays for neuroses and hostilities, and are able to teach them how to date women. (I guess lesbians are not a problem!)

As late as 1965 Time Magazine ran a major story with the headline “Homosexuals Can Be Cured.” The idea that homosexuality was a mental illness came from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952. The Association changed the manual in 1973 and homosexuality defined as an illness was removed. Seven states and the District of Columbia have banned conversion therapy so far.

Ardis probably had a gay friend

So far, Ardis at 4.4 million years is the oldest female humanoid ever discovered in the human birthplace of Africa. No doubt she had gay friends back then.

About 10% of the 368,000 babies born out of the 441,000 pregnancies each day in 2017 will most likely turn out to be gay. About 73,000 miscarriages occur somewhere in the world each day, even if God created Eve from Adam.

I think it’s hilarious that our Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to come up with gay recognition criteria in 1980. The conclusion: “One of the most common mistakes made by the average person is the conviction that he can recognize a homosexual on sight. This is similar to recognizing a communist. There is no way to spot a homosexual. Very few employees come to work wearing eye makeup or My Sin. The homosexual subject is usually regarded as an above-average employee. His work habits are good; he is punctual, responsive to authority, cooperative, friendly, a credit to the organization.” Gee, that sounds like almost any person in society, doesn’t it?

We still have the Roman Catholic Church and many of the Protestant churches teach that often Satan enters the baby at birth and does his dirty work, even if God checked out the fetus in the womb and blessed it ( that’s according to some Bible passages).

Were these gays and lesbians under Satan’s control? As Fox News would say, we present facts, you decide: Lawrence of Arabia. British hero—St. Augustine, Catholic philosopher—Greg Louganis, Olympic champion diver—Billie Jean King, tennis champion—Dick Button, Olympic champion skater—Emily Dickinson, poet—Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling painter—Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney’s same-sex daughter—Plato, Greek philosopher—Florence Nightingale, battlefield nurse—Machiavelli, politician—Margaret Mead, anthropologist—Ludwig Beethoven, composer—Baron Friedrich William von Steuben, George Washington’s military advisor and friend—Walt Whitman, poet and nurse—Leonardo Da Vinci, sculptor, artist, designer, painter, and genius—James Baldwin, black writer—Sally Ride, American astronaut—Alexander the Great, world dominator—Frederick Chopin, composer—Elton John, musician—Greta Garbo, actress—and millions of other fantastic, talented, first-class humans.

The job of scientists: find the truth

All sciences depend upon many error-checking mechanisms, and most scientific truths are not great flashes of intuition or the discoveries of geniuses. Most scientific truths emerge slowly, by consensus of many. Science is about the unbiased search for truth, according to the president of the National Academy of Sciences Marcia McNutt.

Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson says observations and measurements are the important elements in determining a scientific truth. He adds: “politics is not a foundation on which you base your science. Science is a foundation on which you base your politics.”

Scientists were marching all over the country on April 29 because King Donald and the Republicans are basing their science on politics, not scientific truths. Religions promote the idea that God created lead for man’s use, but it took a number of scientists to determine that lead is a very harmful substance, particularly to children. Ask Flint, Michigan residents.

The earth is covered with glaciers, volcanoes, and tectonic plates shifting and sliding around. After extensive research, scientists are able to predict to some extent when volcanoes will explode and when the plates slide into earthquakes. Our weather forecasts are based on many fields of science.

Of major areas of trust in our developed society, scientists top the trust level at 40%, the Supreme Court at 26%, religions at 20%, bankers at 14%, the executive branch at 12%, media and press at 8%, and, at the bottom, Congress at 6%.

Odds are, there was a gay apostle

Because of religions and the literal translations of Bible passages, we have created a rigid world based on the male and female genders. But of the 12 apostles, one or two were most likely gay.

Medical scientists have now been able to identify about 60 different genders among the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. As an example, intersex people within the LGBTQ umbrella have many variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, and genitals of a different nature than straights.

Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical male and female bodies. Some people have intersex traits at birth, while in others, traits do not show up until puberty. In many cases chromosomal intersex variations are not physically apparent.

Because of religious interpretations we have actually been living in the sexual Dark Ages for millions of years. Only in the last two decades has much of this sex “stuff” come to light. But some of this “stuff” has been “noticed” for two thousand years. In the First Century BC the Greek historian Siculus wrote of Hermaphroditus because “he was born with a physical body which is a combination that of a man and that of a woman.” That was the first written definition of intersex. In the 17th Century an English hermaphrodite could inherit either as a man or woman “according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile.” The Victorians in the 19th Century were concerned about people who were born with both ovarian and testicular tissue, but religions still recognized only two genders.

A recent Bible critic sums up the feelings of many people who have dropped out of churches and religions: “The Bible with those teachings is so outdated with today’s norms and laws, but then again we are also talking about the same book that says raping a woman is okay and teaches that women are property to be bought and sold.”

Transgenders have had a lot of local publicity lately because their biological sex has little relationship with what their “internal sense” tells them. Why does a three-year-old girl think she is really a boy? What is between the legs does not always match what is in the brain—and the brain always wins.

Only species that have no physical sex exhibit no homosexual tendencies

Good old Norwegian Lutheran scientists, supposedly left untainted by Satan, have concluded after extensive study that over 1,500 animal species closely related to us homo sapiens practice homosexuality. They had an exhibition about ten years ago in Oslo under the auspices of the Norwegian Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo.

They decided to reveal their findings after examining 1,500 animal species and not finding a single one that did not practice homosexuality. They researched everything from mammals to crabs and worms. About 5% of geese and ducks are same-sex couples for life, often raising the offspring of “heterosexual” birds that lay eggs in their nest.

One of our closest relatives, that is, if you accept the science of Darwin’s evolution, is the chimpanzee. Chimps are bisexual, using sex to calm the storms of violence that hit a chimp group now and then. Male lions strengthen their bonds and loyalty among themselves by having sex with one another. Homosexual acts are very common among dolphins and killer whales.

For those who believe the Bible that says same-sex sex is a dastardly sin instead of believing the sciences of genetics and biology that says it is normal in the lives of all humans and animals, what do you do with a member of your family who belongs to one of the 60 genders identified as of now?

I think it’s ironic that there is little doubt that there are more gay priests and bishops in the Roman Catholic Church on a percentage basis than there is in the regular population. The same-sex scandals in the Vatican itself telegraph that.

On the Protestant side of the religious ledger the 13 million-strong United Methodist Church is in a big dispute over the election of several gay bishops in the United States.

There’s a real religious kerfuffle over the election of Karen Oliveto of Denver as a bishop responsible for 400 congregations in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. Those states are not exactly overrun with sinning liberals. Oliveto has been married to a woman for years and was elected on the 17th ballot from a field of nine so-called straight candidates on a 88-0 vote. Conservatives are yelling “schism”!

Methodist ministers have a history of conducting same-sex marriages. Over 150 Methodist ministers have come out recently and it’s rumored another 30 will do so soon.

For all of those who say they hate the sin of homosexuality but love the sinner, I say, get real. Move into the 21st Century. The scientific facts are irrefutable.