Your Opinion: Vigorously oppose theocratic bullies

Dear Editor:

Certain attitudes and beliefs must be vigorously, intolerantly opposed by reasonable people. One is intolerance itself. Another is the assertion that Jesus commanded believers to commit some of the greatest atrocities in history and sanctioned the ongoing cultural genocide that is the sine qua non of their 21st century world missions program.

Liberal Christians' "tolerance" of the pathology of Christian fundamentalism has reaped the whirlwind in this country, socially and politically.

When fundamentalists take their beliefs into the world to assert their theologically justified intolerance, they must be willing to submit to scrutiny. You can literally believe the earth was created in six days and women came from a lowly Adamic rib all you want. When your ideas compete with far more sophisticated and elegant creation myths or are in flagrant conflict with the evidence of geology, history and evolution (insisting even that these bizarre beliefs be taught in public school science classes) you may legitimately expect some disrespectful comments.

Fundamentalists are basically bullies: they seem to love terrorizing children (see the documentary, "Jesus Camp"), women, the weak and the vulnerable with intolerance, guilt, fear, hatred and damnation. Ample evidence of this can be found in un-Christ-like slander in many LTTE directed against Ellen Degeneres (and LGBT people), liberals, doctors, women, atheists, anyone whose ideas do not pass fundamentalist Christian muster.

If someone steps up and challenges them they start screaming about how disrespectfully they are being treated and tearfully crying for tolerance. If they fail to receive enough tolerance of their ideas (bereft of any intellectual or theological credibility) fundamentalists resort to lies, personal attacks, bullying and violence.

Thomas Jefferson and our founders were not against Christianity they were against government sanctioned religion and the theocratic bullies they had seen in the old world. He and other founders railed at exactly the same clergy and politicians who today claim divine right and that ours is a "Christian nation."

I am not against many of the teachings of Christianity. Jefferson loved and I love Jesus. We loved the man who would not tolerate those who would scare the little ones. (Jesus would cast today's fundamentalists, Mafia-style, into the sea.) We loved the violent, intolerant person who drove the one percenters from the Temple. That said, Jefferson and I would never follow the Jesus who promised he would send to Hell those who refused to believe in his divinity.