Ok, I stole the title for this post from a totally bitchin’ bumper sticker I spotted on a vechical at my last apartment, but it sums up my feeling on the subject quite nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I’m stealing it for use as the title of this post. There, the circle is closed.

Normally, I’m a pretty observant guy. When I moved to Colorado Springs back in August of Ought Six I had no idea I had entered the den of the beast. I was stumbling through life blissfully unaware that I could, at any moment, be molested into the ground by a swarm of foaming religious zealots. Yet I somehow managed to avoid becoming a salt’ed and holy-water’ed hole in the earth for an entire solar year. Imagine my surprise to learn – from Lisette, of all people – that Colorado Springs was home to the Universe Headquarters of the most rabid Christian missionary movement since Jimmy Swaggart conducted sermons from the men’s room stall at the Pasttime Bar and Grill. (Interesting story: myself and Gerry actually spent close to like six months living as shared-bathroom roomies in the old Jimmy Swaggart ministries dormitory when he went completely fucking broke and had to convert the things to “apartments”. Just shows to go that if a god does exist, He has a really assholey sense of humor.)

Focus On The Family is the moniker for a really, really big building (or maybe complex of buildings, the architectural plans I ordered depicting the location of the Boiler Room haven’t come in yet) in northern Colorado Springs that supposedly supports and directs the whole Convert The World campaign thingy. I have a few friends whose parents work at this place (and they’re all vehement non-Christians… I can’t begin to imagine why). Focus On The Family is where gay pedophile U.S. senators go to get quickie one-week absolutions so they can continue about their business as Perfectly Normal Senators again instead of, oh, I don’t know, going to fucking prison.

Apparently lots of people in the area worry that mere proximity to this place will start to have an insidious effect upon one’s brain waves or something. Apparently the people who frequent the Christian 7-Eleven have a reputation for bringing the slash-and-burn style of missionary mentality into other areas of their lives and interactions with others. Apparently people with a suspicious-to-hostile disposition towards religion in general (like, uh, myself) should be more worried about other people wearing FOTF t-shirts breaking into our homes Rainbow Six style, absconding with our children, and forcing them to, I don’t know, watch Fox News on one 56-inch TV and VeggieTales on another like 24-7. I only have two cats, myself, but I think the idea is that the catnappers (as is applicable in this hypothetical situation) would make them wear tiny kitty nun habits or something. Which would suck, seeing as how both my cats are males and Ptolemy is already leaning a little funny as it is.

But, to be perfectly honest here… I haven’t seen any of this sort of thing. And, being the religiously-vigilant guy I am, I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed. The most pervasive thing I’ve noticed around here (excepting, of course, fawning references to Good Works on the Fellatious Network for Conservatives) are, appropriately enough, FOTF bumper stickers. Religious bumper stickers are perfect for our society. They allow the person to tote around vaguely passive-aggressive missionary slogans with virtually no effort, freeing up their vocative prowess to break out the big guns (biblically speaking) in the event someone takes the bumper sticker seriously. The slogans themselves are depressingly predictable; “Jesus Is Lord”, “What Would Jesus Do?” (sometimes abbreviated WWJD?… you know, to hang with the younger crowd), “A Baby Isn’t A Choice” (as if THAT wasn’t a drastic Saturn V rocket trip away from any attempt at logic conjecture), “In Event Of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned!” (ha ha HA, asshole, Pride’s a SIN, you’ll be slummin’ in HELL, now!), “Have You Torched Your Heretic Today?” (for the truly honest ones), that kind of thing. So what interests me during particularly long red lights (and/or church parking lot tire-slashing expeditions… I believe that an omnipotent god could stop me in my tracks with a well-placed lightning bolt if He really wanted) is which other bumper stickers the religious one is in the company thereof. Mostly these are other religious materials or political campaign stickers for whichever Republican is running (oddly, I never see religion and Democrat side-by-side… or maybe not so oddly; the Dems seem less willing to shove their values on a person… which is not to say they don’t shove other things), but sometimes there’s something truly awesome and, I feel, indicative. Such as: “Jesus Loves Everyone” below a Confederate flag, or “Have You Read Your Bible Today?” right next to “Keep Honking, I’m Reloading My Gun!”, or even “God Bless America” nudging “Save The Whales, Bomb Iraq”. Loads of fun. You normally only get juxtaposition of this level in detective novels and psychopath-style slasher flicks. Or VeggieTales, for that matter… I’m pretty sure a VeggieTales episode where the cucumber reveals he’s been abducting his veggie buddies one by one and making a tossed salad in his basement would be an AWESOME season finale.

Yet the car on which I first spotted the “Focus On Your Own Damn Family” sticker had the most poignant bumper sticker collection I have yet witnessed… and there was only one other sticker to be seen: the stylized “Coexist” sticker. And that, in a vehicle, exactly encompasses my own perspective on religion. Cool Guy Barack Obama (I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but at least he makes an effort to explain the Why behind what he says) was recently criticized for saying that religious reasoning for laws (that force behavior upon the populace in general) should not be used by petitioners because using reasoning/justifications that do not follow from logical conjecture is irresponsible in a society that is founded upon logical conjecture. The Christians (radio, TV, pundits, etc.) jumped right the fuck down his throat for that… it seems they heard what he said as “Christians should not be allowed to participate in government because everyone in the country is not Christian” and they took offense/umbrage to the straw man thus created. (For future reference: straw burns very easily.) The point of the matter is that society is supposed (in huge quotation marks) to be derived from logic, which is generally accepted to be a common postulate point for all belief systems, and thus creates as fair a government (which affects everyone regardless of religion, etc.) for everyone as is humanly possible. IF a law is supported via religious justifications, THEN that law is inherently unfair (and, consequently, WRONG) even IF it gets the 50%+1 needed to become “The Right Thing To Do.” The reason we attempt (or should attempt) to use Reason instead of Religion is because we are a nation of many – often conflicting – religions and philosophies and our laws should reflect that fact. Law, in the original, Founding Fathers Democracy sense, was designed to be a departure from the rule of Kings and Church (read: Fear and Religion, respectively) in favor of the egalitarian rule of Reason.

What I perceive the single-line, unpunctuated bumper sticker “Focus On Your Own Damn Family” is intending to convey (besides flippancy) when placed in conjunction with the “Coexist” bumper sticker is this idea of keeping belief and value systems within the belief/value-system’s community so as not to create conflict by forcing (or attempting to force via law) those beliefs/values upon others. Consider, if you will: our beloved President tried, sometime during his first term, if I remember, to push a constitutional amendment through Congress that would outlaw the marriage of same-sex couples. My thoughts on polygamy aside for a moment… the only justification anyone could come up with that wasn’t dismissed as spurious (see also: bullshit) was that doing so would, and I quote, “Protect The Sanctity Of Marriage”. The prosecution calls your attention to the italicized word in the previous quotation. One cannot begin to characterize this lone piece of evidence as anything but a Religious Justification of the aforediscussed nature without looking like a complete evangelical lickspittle.

This same type of thing (“It should be a law ’cause God said so, a-hyuk”) drives many of the Controversial Issues that for some reason define our political concerns today. It seems to me (there’s that perspective thing again) that a responsible government – and, indeed, any responsible religious person – would address all issues, of practical concern or religious, by considering what would be best for the population as a whole when making laws that affect the whole. When doing so, it is of constitutional and moral imperative that only logical reasoning derived from the actual, real universe decide the most appropriate action. It then descends to the religions to decide how a particular issue is handled within the scope and ability of their own community to shape and enforce a particular portfolio of beliefs and values. To use the Gay Marriage example: the simplest and most responsible action would be to allow marriage between any individuals that wish to bind themselves together for legal purposes and create a clear distinction between a government-derived “legal union” and a religion-derived “marriage”. There, Sally Super and Mindy Hottie went down to the courthouse and signed a piece of paper and now Sally and Mindy Super-Hottie are considered from the government’s point of view to be a legal union, just exactly the same as Sarah and Sean Coincon are a legal union. The term “marriage”, being now exclusively in the domain of Religion, may now be granted (or not, as would seem to be the heavily bigoted case) at the leisure of the Church, who may (as it is perfectly within their purview) do so once the members in question fulfill whatever prerequisites and responsibilities the Church requires. If Sally and Mindy want to have a Catholic wedding (and be in a Catholic “marriage”) it is up to the Church to decide whether or not to grant Sally and Mindy that request. If, however, the Church wants to “Protect The Sanctity Of Marriage” and disallow the marriage of Sally and Mindy, then that also is the Church’s right to do so. Such a thing would/may lower the Super-Hotties’ prestige in the eyes of Catholics, but they would no longer be second-class members of the society in general. This is the path of democratic responsibility.

See how easy that was? All you have to do is create a distinction between Religion and State and… wait, that sounds familiar for some reason… oh yeah, the fucking First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. This technique can work with lots of hot button issues besides marriage. Take abortion. Allow it on a governmental level (although I don’t feel it should go unpunished in cases of open negligence… but that’s definitely a topic for another article. Here’s a hint.), especially when danger to the mother is a factor, but censor it (if so desired by the Church) on a religious level. This way, Pregnita can avoid being forced into a life of poverty (or raising a child in poverty, which is even worse… like chopping off a baby’s hand at birth) and the Church can just smile and excommunicate her ass. This makes things MUCH easier for the person having to make the difficult fucking decision in the first place AND gives Pregnita a whole new, clear perspective on how much the Church gave a damn about her all along.

The point of this article (and more than likely the point of the vast majority of civic-type articles I will write in the future) is that there’s a responsible way to handle these kinds of conflicts that results from adopting a broad and impartial perspective in one’s approach to problem-solving. Especially in matters of differing values and beliefs, the responsible course is to confine those values not derived logically from nature to the community willing to ascribe to those values willingly. Those values that are derived from nature (in particular, the survival and ascension of human beings as a species/social group) become the basis for societal norms (“laws”) and the question becomes one of how and how much. This is the meaning of coexistence: the ability to live side-by-side with peoples of different ways of life and not force your own way of life upon them. So Sayeth The Sean.

P.S. – From an I-plan-on-running-for-President perspective, this is exactly the way I plan on guiding the country. Each problem presented to me becomes a function of gathering as much information as I can (both objective and subjective; if we can’t have a Direct Democracy, a Presidential or Congressional Blog would be the next best thing), purposely disposing of my own preference (For example: I would prefer a nation where firearms are illegal for private ownership and everyone studied martial arts instead, but concentrating all the easy force in the hands of the police and military – and by extension, the government in general – would protect our citizens even while their Democracy was endangered. Remind me to throw down an article on THAT topic, too.), anticipating which solutions are most responsible, and choosing the course that does the most Good. Actually, this is exactly why I’m running for President: because there exists no politician that lacks an agenda, not to mention preferences, for the simple reason that they all have a platform. Their platform is comprised of their agendas/preferences; you can’t be a politician (you especially can’t be a GOP/Dem) without a platform from which to appeal to the masses. All I have is a philosophy… and mine is derived from my perspective of reality. So long as I continue to open myself to and absorb information (yes, to include plain-ol’ potentially-biased opinions) from whatever source I can, myself and those like me have a much better chance of doing a better and fairer job of guiding our nation. At least, that’s my perspective.

If I were a warrior poet, these would be my songs.