Taliban or U.S. Christian Right, oppressing people is still wrong

So I was thinking about fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. Richard Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, made headlines Tuesday when he blasted the Democratic Party for comparing some aspects of America's Religious Right with the Taliban. I have to say that at least on some level, I agree with their sentiment.

For one, how can Southern Baptists condemn the Taliban's track record with women when they won't ordain women as ministers, and actually have written into their church code that women are to "graciously submit" to their husbands?

I imagine their excuse would be something like, "Well, we practice that because that is what God tells us to do in His Word." So what it boils down to is Baptists' oppression of women is excusable because it's part of their faith - which is exactly the same excuse the Taliban used for its more marked oppression.

It doesn't stop with women. Evangelical conservatives, as a voting bloc to be reckoned with, consistently oppose the rights of homosexuals to exist as equals with heterosexuals. They consistently seek to ban movies and books such as "Harry Potter" that they feel threaten their cultural stranglehold on religious and moral ideology. They consistently make asses of themselves by trying to blame our country's woes on "sin," such as when Jerry Falwell blamed Sept. 11 on homosexuals and women who receive abortions. And they consistently want special rights for their religion - prayer in school, Ten Commandments on courthouse lawns - while refusing to acknowledge the rights and liberties of people who disagree with them.

I know so many people who tell me our country was founded on Christianity. That is completely untrue. Yes, some of our Founding Fathers were Christians. But Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, as were Benjamin Franklin and later Abraham Lincoln. Our Constitution doesn't mention God once. Our country was founded on the idea that religion and government should operate quite independently of each other.

In fact, if the Patriots had really been all that Christian, they'd have never rebelled against England at all. Romans chapter 13 tells us God appoints all authority and that to resist that authority is a sin. If America were founded as a Christian nation, America would still be England.

So I am pretty damned sick and tired of Christians in this country whining about how bad they have it. I've never heard of anyone being tied to a fencepost and beaten to death for being Christian, but I've heard of it happening to gay people. I've never seen anyone protesting outside a high school when two Christian heterosexuals are voted best couple in the yearbook, but I've seen Fred Phelps and his God-Hates-Fags crowd protest outside a school in New Hampshire because two young lesbians received the honor. I've never known of an American Christian who had to deal with being called a Raghead or a Christ-killer, but I know of plenty of Muslims and Jews who've faced just that.

These things happen partly because the strong Christian majority in this country allows them to happen. And I'm over it.

Over Christmas, I heard one of my family members say we shouldn't let Muslims build mosques in America because "they won't let us build our churches over there." Well damn it, that's freedom. That's why immigrants got down on their hands and knees and kissed the ground at Ellis Island. People here can worship Jesus, Allah, Satan or a rock. They are guaranteed that right, and that's part of what makes this country beautiful - different ideas coexisting in peace.

Not all fundamentalists are petty, whining bigots. Some of them are well-meaning, loving people. But Richard Land and others like him would do well to note the following: they have the Defense of Marriage Act and Congressional protection of the Boy Scouts to validate their homophobia; they have blue laws so I can't buy beer on Sunday; they have "In God We Trust" on our money; they have an ineffectual, idiotic drug war. I'd say they've got it pretty good.

I'll be the first to say I'm a Christian and a Southern Baptist, at least in name. But I don't merely stand for Christian rights, gay rights, black rights, white rights or any other kind of minority interest, at the exclusion of others. I am a die-hard believer in equal human rights, and when they trash those rights, I won't bat an eye when I say yes, they are like the Taliban, and they ought to have the moral decency to stand up for all God's creatures and not just themselves.

Someday, long after they've pissed everyone else off by trying to silence them, the tides will turn, and they'll be in need. And then who will be there to stand up for them?