2 August 2012 File Dumbo

File Gumbo is a sstew of sorts based upon a carefully crafted roux and finally thickened with file powder.  Its admirers are many, its origins regional.  As many regional foods, it is either an instant favorite or one never becomes enamored of it.  

Also regional, Chix fil A, chicken fast food spreading out of the red states.  Unfortunately, the owner has decided that every meal gets served with a side order of teavangelism.  The GOP now has a chicken shack  to go along with pizza palace, Domino’s.
When the Chicken magnate decided to use broadcast media in the form of a Christian media outlet to voice his disapproval of marriage equality, he stirred up a mess of hot button madness that is still evolving.  
Gay  activists were angry at his efforts to deny them the same privileges all other Americans enjoy and called for an economic attack, boycott.  Teavangelists nationwide swarmed defensively.  Some of them voiced their opposition to what they felt to be limitations of their 1st amendment rights.  If anyone had attempted to silence the owner, that would compromise his right to free speech.  But the crux matter in this gumbo is not the right to speak freely, nor the right to practice the particular Christian cult the owner prefers.  what is at stake is his, and his supporters’ belief that they have the right to demand others buy into and practice their religion.  They, the teavangelists, seek to deny 10% of our populace the freedom to engage in civil unions with the full rights of other citizens under our laws.   The cultists are being joined in their misapplied cries of religious persecution by several prominent former GOP” candidates who are only too happy to insert their selves into ther fray in exchange for media coverage.  
My position is that I will happily and quietly take part in the boycott.  I have no wish to provide any media exposure to unemployed cultists who seek to change our government into a theocracy.  I find a large fault in the collective Christian demands that their cult becomes the state religion.  The practices currently followed by Christians as they try to spread their cult are amazingly similar to those practiced by the expanding hordes of Islam during the  8th and 9th centuries.  Even today I see little difference in the nature of Islam and fundamentalist Christianity.  Neither belongs in a modern society.
I’m tired of the continual cries about a “war on Christianity.”  There is no such war in this nation.  However, if the Christian fundamentalists and teavanglists persist, I know where my concerns lie and which camp I will inhabit.  Dogs and Irish are welcome here.  Check your religion at the border.