I’ve had it with being bullied by bigots hiding behind cutouts of gods made in their own image. Enough already.

Burn witches for God. Kill heathens for God. Let people die of Aids for God. And so on and on and on and on. The latest was that God is so huffy about having his picture taken, it was worth killing people over it.

Enough with pretending that these so-called religions pre-empt every other value, from free speech to life itself. To hell with them. Let them go back where they came from.

God is no excuse for killing people. Anyone who pretends so, is not religious. God is no excuse for destroying women. Or for throwing acid in their faces, or for pretending they’re half-human. God is no excuse for letting children starve, while forcing women to produce starving children. God is no excuse for ANY suffering inflicted by one human being on another.

Enough with the rest of us losing all our fight the moment someone pulls out a God-shaped facsimile. The Vatican didn’t condemn the genocide of the Jews when it happened, and it took them damn decades to mumble an apology. Don’t tell me that’s not a shame on all Catholicism. Don’t tell me something is a religion when its leaders would rather protect their priests than condemn sex crimes against children. We’re told that Islam doesn’t actually have anything against women, that all the anti-women sentiment in Islamic countries is cultural. Fine. Then condemn the people who use the religion to justify their “honor” killings and all their hate crimes. Make women judges and imams (and, for the Catholics, priests). Until then, don’t make excuses for hatred.

God is no excuse for spewing hate speech, not even in a sermon. Especially not in a sermon. God is no excuse for spewing lies. If the facts don’t agree with your particular god-story, then tough. God is no excuse to shout down the facts. Especially since God is supposed to have made them.

The irony is that hiding bigotry under a flag full of God is idolatry, in the real meaning of the word. That would be funny, if it didn’t cause oceans of suffering.

People talk of culture wars and clashes of civilizations. Damn right there’s a clash. It’s between people of good faith, with or without a religion, and theocrats dictating how others should live.

It’s time we stopped letting them get away with it. Stop dignifying the theocrats’ excuses with the name of religion. They may be weird cultural practices, or cults, or delusions, or power grabs. People who advocate hurting other people don’t worship God, and we have to stop letting them pretend they do. God is no excuse for the things they do.

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