In the wake of the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in - which I suspect will someday be viewed as being in the same league as the Court's infamous Dred Scott decision in the 19th century - the Christofascists are showing their true colors and making it painfully clear that they hold the right to freedom of religion to be vested only in themselves. Their attitude to those of other faiths? Basically, go f*ck yourself. For a good example of this mindset and contempt for the constitutional rights of others, look no farther than Al Bedrosian (pictured above), who sits on the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, and who is a Christofascist. As The Raw Story reports, Bedrosian believes that only Christians (and uber far right ones at that) have the right to lead prayers at public meetings and that allowing non-Christian denominations to similarly conduct such prayers "violates his rights." It goes without saying that Bedrosian is a Republican. Here are highlights from The Raw Story piece:
A group that lost its U.S. Supreme Court case over prayer at public meetings said recent comments by a Virginia elected official illustrate the risk of allowing such sectarian invocations.
“The freedom of religion doesn’t mean that every religion has to be heard,” said Al Bedrosian, who sits on the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors. “If we allow everything, where do you draw the line?”
The Republican said Monday, after the high court ruled 5-4 that legislative prayer did not violate the constitutional prohibition on government establishment of religion, that he would not vote to allow non-Christians to deliver invocations.
“I think America, pretty much from Founding Fathers on, I think we have to say more or less that we’re a Christian nation with Christian ideology,” Bedrosian said. “If we’re a Christian nation, then I would say that we need to move toward our Christian heritage.”
Those remarks echoed statements he made several years ago in an editorial published in the Roanoke Times, where he described freedom of religion as a “hoax” and claimed “the global warming crowd worships the environment as god, the abortionist has the death of unborn babies as their god, and the homosexuals have sexual freedom as their god.”
“The real battle is keeping the name of Jesus as Lord,” Bedrosian wrote in 2007. “The name Jesus is what makes us a Christian people and a Christian nation. This is why we must continue our heritage as a Christian nation and remove all other gods.”
That’s what Bedrosian intends to do in his position as county supervisor, saying he would reject any request by any non-Christian adherent to deliver a religious or secular invocation.
“I would say no,” Bedrosian said. “That does not infringe on their freedom of religion. The truth is you’re trying to infringe on my right, because I don’t believe that.”
For non-Virginians, Roanoke County surrounds the independent cities of Roanoke and Salem in Southwest Virginia, a region that even today is plagued by a mindset not too far removed from that of the locals in the 1972 movie Deliverance. The city of Roanoke is a bright center of liberalism and rationalism - if that term can be applied to any part of Southwest Virginia - while it would be too flattering to refer to the surrounding area as "bumfuck backward." It is little surprise that the region is racked by high unemployment and that few new and/or progressive businesses will locate there.
Stated another way, most residents of Southwest Virginia vote staunchly Republican even though the Virginia GOP screws them over endlessly. In fact, many would be beneficiaries of Medicaid expansion would be in Southwest Virginia, yet the cretins and racists follow the GOP's dog whistle race baiting and vote against their own best interests. time and time again
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