Moral issues

It is a busy week with lots of meetings and lots of graduate school papers due.

A few things I've been thinking about lately:

I have a problem with the religious Christian right claiming a monopoly on moral values. Apparently, moral issues are what supposedly put George W. over the top in this election. But exactly what moral issues are we talking about here? People who voted for Bush for moral issues voted for him because they opposed gay marriage ( so does Kerry), they are anti-abortion and anti-stem cell research and pretty much those were the three issues. I don't have a problem with someone having an opinion about those things, but what I do have a problem with is presenting those asthe only moral issues, moreover, the most important issues of the election.

What about the moral issue of going to war on false premises? What about the moral issue of unequitable taxation and cursing our children and grandchildren with insurmountable debt? What about the moral issue of detaining people indefinitely without giving any reason or access to legal counsel?

To me, these moral issues seem more important to me than the ones the Christian religious right promotes as if they were the ONLY moral values. Whether I am for or against gay marriage, what two people do with themselves is not nearly as big a concern to me as something that directly harms millions upon millions of people.

Why aren't people talking about the war as a moral issue? Since when are war and taxes in an arena separate from morality - as if they had their own standards separated from God's standards?

And what about the virtues of kindness and tolerance? It seems to me the religious right overlooks any verse in the Bible in which Jesus (as) displayed tolerance for a sinner - even those with moral sins. People who are filled with hate and self-righteousness don't have preeminent moral character in my book - even if they say they do so much that they actually believe themselves and deceive some others along with them. In the religious right, the saying often attributed to Jesus (as) of "hate the sin but love the sinner" is completely forgotten. They are more interested in dividing so they can consider themselves a morally elite class than they are in forgiving and inviting to virtue.

It is time that others stood up and took back morality in this country from the religious right. They don't own it, and they don't have a right to define it, but we're letting them.

Well, that's my soapbox for the day. P.S. Laura - I don't think I can walk Wed. - I need to go to the school board meeting.