MOST CHRISTIANS AREN'T

THE BULLY PULPIT

The going-nowhere GOP 's 2% popular Rick Santorum excoriated President Kennedy for promising not to obey the Vatican but, rather, serve the American people. He insists presidents should obey their religious leaders. He echoed the demands of the Alliance Defense Fund which promoted the late September preach-in which called on preachers to defy the concept of church-state separation. That was one of the groups backing California's anti-gay marriage Prop 8. The idea is simple: state laws should implement Bible edicts and to hell (literally) with non-Christians.

The problem, however, is that most Christians aren't. If they were they would honor the words of Jesus, not those Titus called “old Jewish myths” (Titus 1:14.) The concept of a proper separation of the church from the state is expressed succinctly in Mathew 22:21 where he admonishes the followers of Christ to “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.” That is what our founders agreed to do when they promised our government would not embrace one faith or deny to those of other faiths, or none, equal rights.

When Mormons were denied the right to marry more than one woman, the Constitution was violated as surely as it would have been had San Francisco passed the proposed law to make circumcision illegal. And as it was when Californians passed Proposition 8 and when congress adopted the falsely named Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA imposes Biblical rules on non-Christians and non-believers and makes a mockery of “equal justice.”

When Teddy Roosevelt spoke of the presidency as affording him a “bully pulpit” he did not mean that he got to preach religious dogma from the White House, only that it was one hell of a platform. Would somebody please urge Santorum and the other zealots to read the Bible – and the U.S. Constitution.