LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

If you are a Unitarian Universalist, or an atheist, or God forbid a Pagan of any sort, the federal government does not want to deal with you in any way, shape or form.

If you wish to gain non-profit status as a religious group, or utilize the 'faith based' funds that are available, you will be turned down. If you want to start a low power FM radio station that might cater to the alternative or diverse elements in your community, the tinest Christian church can doom your application to failure.

Even if you are Christian, if you're not the 'right' kind of faith, you will be turned away from gaining any of the funds or priveleges that certain evangelical sects can scoop up at will.

Most people are not aware of the slow, but steady takeover of positions of power and influence by people who cleave to the neoconservative religious right. They started with the school boards and city councils, and have worked their way up the chain to places like state comptrollers, and federal commissions. They have gone unopposed because of a combination of ignorance and apathy from those who could vote against them, and slid in on the power of lock-stepped blocs of carefully coached churchgoers.

Relegating the neoconservatives to the cultural sidelines or dismissing them as a lunatic fringe has enabled them to take over our country. The slow creep of their theocratic and restrictive governance has placed a stranglehold on many freedoms, and has deeply chilled the ability for anyone to criticize or protest this administration in any form, no matter how innocuous that protest might be.

Our country is being stripped of its unique heritage by the very people it was created to protect. We do still have some means to recover from this all-out assault on our freedom, but it will take a long time to remove these now-entrenched elements from power. The first step is to wake up and smell the smoke of our democracy going down in flames- and vote.

Sunfell