Here is the problem that I see with a lot of the evangelical right. They seem to think that their rules are all of sudden my rules. Here’s a hint, they aren’t. A great example is this ad for a rentor.
The ad includes such wonderful rules as the main lights in the apartment are controlled by a timer turning on at 5:30 am and off at 11:30 pm, heat and a/c controlled, oh yeah and even a camera in your suite. Let’s not even discuss the no alcohol, no illegal drugs, no tobacco, no lighters or matches, the 2 hour, visitation period on Sunday and Saturday. You are even required to wear an id bracelet. Let’s not even get into the idea if you say have a sexual relationship pre-marriage.
This isn’t an apartment, it’s a dorm room and worse.
The worse thing is that the person who put up the said and I quote: “I am a born again Christian. Why is this a problem for people????! I have a house that’s MINE and I PAID FOR IT. I also have a basement apartment for rent. It’s a great space for I’m charing very little for it, $480 monthly, for the right tenant. I know it’s ILLEGAL to require a Christian in the apartment, against the human rights. That’s why I NEVER put this in my ad. Why then does it keep getting taken down?” The problem isn’t that you are a born-again Christian, the problem is that you are applying rules that you may live with and feel are good and normal, but for the majority of society they don’t and won’t live with those sort of rules.
How many people don’t drink alcohol, how many people desire to have their landlord control when they can sleep and wake up, or and watch them on a security camera, how many people desire to have 4 hours a week to have visitors over. I think even my family comes over to visit I want them to come over for more than 2 hours or at a different times than just 2 – 4 pm on Saturday and Sunday. The silly rules just keep adding more and more restrictions to a person. Is cheap rent worth the agony that a person would go through to have that apartment?
Let’s apply this from the micro to the macro world. America was built on the idea of freedom, the idea that people have the freedom to choose what they want to do, and what to think. The world that the evangelical right wants to create is a world where people have the freedom to not smoke, not drink alcohol, not have visitors, not choose when they want to sleep and when to sleep. That’s the problem I have with the evangelical right and a lot of other movements who want their beliefs to be enforced on other people. What people should be doing is allowing people to have the freedom to chose what they do and don’t want to do. Not everyone believes the same as they do. Even the majority of Christians don’t believe in the same rules that the evangelical right do.
America is freedom, that apartment and the evengical right is the exact opposite of freedom.
Flickr photo curtosey of: Clemente
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