I have just heard CBC about a woman related to the head of Church of Scientology who ran away with great difficulty and wrote about her experience.
It got me thinking about the Office of Religious Freedom. There are many extremely repressive Churches out there. Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bountiful, Shariah Moslem, Catholic, in fact what Church is not cult like….except perhaps Unitarian, Bahai, and Reform Judaism? Among the cult type there are practices like removal of children from parents, banning of contraception and right to die by choice, polygamy and suppression of women, strict rules about how others must dress, rules about eating, not eating, when to eat, when to eat what, what you are free to read, when to pray, where to pray, what to believe, what stories to embrace and believe in as history, how to sit and stand and kneel when praying, what women can and cannot do as church functionaries, what other people can do to your body without your approval and on and on. These religions now have a publicly funded office paid for by you and me that is charged with the task of helping these cults impose their tyrannies on innocent children and their parents. Amazing, no? But we have no office to defend victims of Religions. Is this not a more pressing need. How can I refuse to pay taxes for such right wing madness? I can’t but Thoreau could when he was jailed for not paying taxes while slavery was approved by the State. This government must go!
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