Dan Conaway Writes About Our New Pharisees

From the church of Nashville:

If you believe that religion should dictate law, then stand and repeat after me.

It is only necessary for me to believe in something in order to deny you anything.

If I believe that only those people who believe what I do should have a hamburger, I will not serve others a hamburger. Or anything else.

If I believe that only those people who believe what I do should have a couch, I will not sell others a couch. Or anything else.

If I believe that only those people who believe what I do are people, I will not treat others like people. But something else.

If I believe that only those people who believe what I do can be loved, I will not allow others to be loved. Only to be hated.

If I believe that a horn grows out of a horse’s head and makes that horse a unicorn, then I will deny the civil rights of anyone who doesn’t believe that and make myself a horse’s ass. And I will make that law.

Amen.

Note, brothers and sisters of the legislative gavel, since the Pharisees and Jesus were Jewish, they’ll differ with you on points of religion. Jesus, I believe, is going to differ with you on virtually every point.

I also believe when legislators impose religion on law, they mean their religion. They would be shocked if a Hindu denied them their steak or an Orthodox Jew or Seventh-Day Adventist their barbecue, enraged if a Buddhist would deny their carry permit or the Amish their SUV, stunned if an atheist told them who they could marry, and – most of all – inconsolable if so-called Christian law would be replaced with sharia law.

And since I believe that, I deny you the basis in law or in common sense to dictate anything to the citizens of Tennessee based on yours or anyone’s religion. But I really don’t have to; I have a Constitution that already does.

So just stop for God’s sake.

Stop paying attention to the pandering of small people to small minds for their own political gain. Stop giving credence to incredulous sanctimony, credibility to incredible hypocrisy.

Stop being silent when mean-spirited, self-serving legislation screams for condemnation, and make sure that the authors of such legislation are remembered for it and can’t slink away from the ugliness of it.

Brian Kelsey proposed a bill that is both unconstitutional and unconscionable and then tried to hide from it. While my religion requires that we forgive him, our conscience requires that we never forget what he did.

So it is written.

In my book, Jesus is about love and others before self. I’ll leave it to you what laws like this are about.