You're right, #. I've been trying to take a day off in between times when I post a message or three. I do wonder why I bother posting to a thread like this. I guess it's because many folkies seem to take it for granted that atheism is the Universal Religion of Folkdom. In most situations, I think that folkies are very tolerant, but not in the area of religion. After a while, it starts to bother me that there are people here who speak without opposition as they deride and attack those with religious beliefs. I come from a time when religious people and religious leaders were at the forefront of the peace and civil rights movements, and they were treated with respect but with no feeling that anybody had to join one religion or another.

Then came the advent of born-again, bigoted Christianity, and the takeover of broadcasting and inroads into politics by the religious right. All of a sudden, all religious people got painted with the same brush - and people began to tie me to the mindlessness of the religious right. When people put me into that sort of pigeonhole and begin telling me what I think and how wrong I am to think it, I think I have a right to react viscerally.

It's too bad that such bigotry has taken such a strong foothold in Folkdom. I thought folk music people were better than that. I want to work on equal footing with others on the list I gave before - working to end racism, warfare, capital punishment, poverty, homelessness, capital punishment, and mass incarceration. I shouldn't have to put up with having my personal beliefs attacked constantly by people I thought should be working on the same causes I work for.

But instead, they're working to insult, attack, and silence what I hold to be sacred. It's enough to cause a person to become disillusioned.

-Joe-