Written by Wilma Howe-Bennett   

I belong to a very interesting group on Linked In, and there’s been a discussion about religion, spirituality and christian belief systems on there that I have found to be absolutely fascinating.

I don't consider myself a religious person but rather a spiritual one. There have been more truly horrific things done in the name of "religion" than can be ennumerated here. The slave trade, for one, was justified by biblical quotations, and the same thing is going on today in the GLBT community.

I often have wondered how it is that people can justify hand-picking, often out of context, what they want FROM the Bible to justify whatever they want to bolster their own prejudices. It clearly states IN THE BIBLE: "There is no God". Of course, put it into context and use the entire quote, and it's entirely different: "The fool has said, there is no God."

The mainstream religions got into the business of religiousity and out of the art of spirituality a long time ago. Making religion a business brings both money and power which is of course the object of the exercise. Look, for example, at the R/C Church. I am not longer permitted to practice as a Roman Catholic because I'm a lesbian. According to Leviticus, I and my wife - to whom I am legally married IN THE STATE OF TEXAS - are fornicators, adulterers and abominations. Once again, hand-picking the scriptures/strictures that conform to the people in power's prejudices to justify oppression and exclusion. Old covenant vs New covenant - and which one do most mainstream religions follow? The one that brings them in the most money and power, of course. Check out Jim Jones and The Peoples' Temple.

This country was NOT founded on religious principles since most of the founding fathers were very careful public christians while their preferred POV was that of deists. This country was founded as a secular nation without a state religion, which is one reason the founding fathers set things up the way that they did. Otherwise, we wouldn't have the doctrine of separation.

This is something that I feel very strongly about. I (along with approximately 4 million OTHER Roman Catholics) was excommunicated from the church - for the "sin" of being GLBT. The word "sin" means an offense against god, which was the basis for their justification but if you have the premise that god is all-powerful and all-knowing, then his creations are neither sinful nor imperfect. We are as he made us. So, how is this a sin?

I have often been confronted with religious fundamentalists whose sole rationale is the Levitican stricures, and I have always asked them if they follow all of the strictures, and not just a few. For example, a person is supposed to walk a mile outside the city limits to dig a toilet pit. How many people do that these days? And just how long would it take somebody in, say, Houston, to get to the city limits, on foot? I can't think of any. Neither can I think of people that stone their children to death for said children being disrespectful.

Read the whole of Leviticus some time. It will give you nightmares. It does that to me.