Unbelievable!

Today, in my feed, I find this article about a new bill being introduced in Congress by conservative Republicans:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/first-amendment-defense-act_55a7ffe6e4b04740a3df4ca1.  I find this kind of thing just almost incomprehensible.

I get that there are people who hold religious views that specify all sorts of prohibitions and proscriptions about what is and is not acceptable for them and their relationship with their "god."  I am fine with that.  I really am.  Whatever you want to believe, for you, is really just fine with me.  What I do not understand, even a little bit, is how anyone can be so utterly convinced that whatever they believe should impinge on my life and my belief.  What is that?  Where does that come from?  How can you ask for, demand even, that I respect your right to worship and believe whatever you choose, and then deny that same right to me and everyone else?

Balls!  Pure unmitigated arrogance and bad manners to boot!  These people, these fundamentalist, so called "christians," because let's face it -- they are the huge majority of the ones who are convinced that their religious liberty requires the subjugation of everyone else's view to theirs, have gone over the edge altogether:

• Same gender people have the constitutionally guaranteed right to marry AND that means that they may, in the course of conducting their business in the public sector, "participate" in some fashion in that constitutional right.  Horrors!
• Women may choose to conceive, or not to conceive, AND that means that they cannot impose their will on them in the workplace.  Abominable!
• People may choose to manage their intimate lives in any of a variety of consensual configurations, AND no one will be stoned in the public square or dragged in front of a firing squad.  There will be no scarlet letters adorning the breasts of all and sundry who do not toe the one man and one woman line.  How can it be?!?!?
• No one will be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy.  No one will be forced into some back-alley abortionist's hands, AND no matter how much marching and screaming on the sidewalks, women will not be treated as property.  Inconceivable!

I am so tired of it all.  Believe what you will believe.  Live your life by your very best lights.  Honor every bit of whatever wisdom and guidance that you think you have been given.  And then...  Leave the rest of us alone!  Your soul is your business.  Mine is not your business.  If you choose to come into public, then you are in public.  "In public" is not "in church."  If you want to live your life inside of some sort of spiritual cocoon, tucked safely away from those of us who are, in your view," confirmed sinners, then remove yourself and go off to live communally with those who are of like mind with you.  Do not seek to stick your values and beliefs into the public square, and then scream discrimination when the rest of us say, "No!"

And that is as polite as I can be about it.