God, Guns, and Kids
May. 20th, 2004 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomIf anyone -- best friend, S.O., sweet old grandma, anyone -- tells you at some point today how wonderful and important it is give your life over to God, show 'em this:
Y'know, between this, gay marriage, abortion rights, denial of communion, general political ass-kissing, and all the other intrusions into the workings of government, maybe we should create Margaret Atwood's Republic of Gilead. I suggest roping off a few states -- say, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas south of Little Rock (basically, everything between the Georgia border and the Mississippi river) and letting all the fundies go there and play. Contrary to the Bush Administration's ravings, containment does work. And then the rest of us can get on with our goddamned lives, with the smallest chance of rationality rather than abject stupidity in the name of Big Invisible Superhero In The Sky.
A Nashville church that's fighting to keep from registering its daily child ''camp'' as a state-licensed day-care center posts armed guards on the church grounds, which is raising alarms for state human services officials.Armed guards around kids? So they don't have to register with the state as a day-care center?!?
The church also defied a court order yesterday and continued with its day camp, which accommodates more than 150 children up to age 5.
Priest Lake Community Baptist Church officials say that the guards carry their weapons legally and that the state is trying to force an ''atheist'' view on the congregation by requiring it to register as a day-care provider.
State officials say that under the law, any child-care provider cannot have any weapons around children.
''We have no intention or want to go and get a license,'' church spokesman Charles Bennett told reporters yesterday. Bennett is a deacon with the church whose 4-year-old son attends the day camp. ''We would more than comply with whatever the DHS has to offer as it relates to safety and child welfare. These are our kids; that's the thing that they seem to forget. These are our kids. If there's a safety concern there, believe me, as a parent I would be the first one to be concerned.''
Y'know, between this, gay marriage, abortion rights, denial of communion, general political ass-kissing, and all the other intrusions into the workings of government, maybe we should create Margaret Atwood's Republic of Gilead. I suggest roping off a few states -- say, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas south of Little Rock (basically, everything between the Georgia border and the Mississippi river) and letting all the fundies go there and play. Contrary to the Bush Administration's ravings, containment does work. And then the rest of us can get on with our goddamned lives, with the smallest chance of rationality rather than abject stupidity in the name of Big Invisible Superhero In The Sky.
