All religion is politics

Understand that I make a fundamental, line in the sand distinction between faith and religion. "Faith," which is personal, and I usually admire it when it does not trample either reason or reasonability.

Sigh. And then there is religion, wherein discourse inevitably boils down to "My god's dick can beat up your god's dick so neenerneenerneener." (The fact that folks are quite often arguing over the same god makes it just that much more puerile.)

Two cases in point:

1.) Arkansas barring unmarried couples from adopting children...even when they're their own friggin' relatives, and

2.) Israel, period, and most recently this.

When is making other people suffer for your dogma a testament to "faith"? Faith, last I checked, was about keeping one's convictions in the face of opposition. Not forcing the world to conform to your notions to, ultimately, eliminate the need for faith.

True, the God of the Old Testament doesn't have Problem One with killing children by the truckload to spite their parents/tribes. But we're not child-minded superstitious Bronze Age goat herders, are we? Thus we have every d--ned right expect better of these so-called leaders and the voters who enable them. When religion informs politics to the point of reductio ad absurdam, where innocents (particularly children) suffer, that's not faith. It's politics.

It's time for the so-called "values voters" to stop pretending that the blood is not on their hands. Or that it can be washed away by whatever they've deluded themselves into thinking were their pure intentions.