Inauguration Day Memories 1/20/09 - Part 1

1/20/09 Inauguration Day

The alarm on my cellphone went off at 3:25 a.m. Luckily for this techno-peasant, there was a 12 year old at the house I was staying at in Silver Spring, MD who was able to set the alarm for me, otherwise I’d have had to stay up all night to make sure I got to the Glenmont Metro by 4:15 to assure myself of parking. Glenmont is the last stop on the Red Line and that was good news since it meant I’d probably get a parking spot and a seat. At 4 in the morning if you can’t have a warm bed and a roaring fire, a parking spot and a seat on the train are a close second. Why 4 in the morning? The media said that all Metro parking lots would be filled by 5:30, the latest. I wasn’t taking any chances. I’d driven the almost 500 miles up from Asheville, NC the day before and I wasn’t about to be driving around a strange city in the pre-dawn looking for parking. So 3:25 it was. Had a few sips of water, 3 mini-donuts left from the trip up and a handful of pumpkin seeds. Went to the bathroom any number of times. Felt like a child – nothing was happening. But I wasn’t leaving until something did. I was going to be standing at the National Mall with more than a million others. In the cold. The freezing cold. It was 11 degrees at 3:25 a.m. Not much different at 4. There might’ve been 6 thousand portable toilets on the Mall but there was no way I was going to be using any of them. I’ve seen Trainspotting. The Worst Toilet in Scotland. I figured any Andy Gump in DC on Tuesday had to be that bad. Or worse. So, yeah, I was going to be cold. I was going to be hungry. And it was going to be great.

The Problem with Heaven - Rick Warren at the Inauguration

Rick Warren, who based on his weight could be the Queen of Tonga if he
wasn’t the homophobic pastor of the evangelical Saddleback Church in Lake
Forest, California, has made lots of folks angry lately. It wasn’t enough that he
publicly supported California Proposition 8 which amended the state constitution
to ban same-sex marriages. No, there’s footage of him telling a Jewish woman
that of course she’s going to Hell if she doesn’t embrace Jesus. And it doesn’t take a beautiful mind to extrapolate that to mean that all those who don’t embrace Jesus are going to Hell. Which means that Heaven is reserved for Christians. And people are pissed.

My question is WHY?
Rick Warren says I’m going to Hell because I don’t believe in Jesus.
My response is – I don’t even believe in your Hell. I don’t believe in your Heaven.
I don’t believe in your God. Or his Son.

And I would add that all the other Jews and Muslims and Hindus and animists and atheists and agnostics and believers and non-believers of all kinds on the planet
would agree.

Because religion is about believing YOUR FAIRY TALE. Not the other guy’s.

Tolerance of other religions or belief systems is a phony proposition.

Each religion is the One True Way. Each religion is the Path to Salvation.
Each religion is The Truth.

Which means that all others are FALSE. I’ll make it even more clear. All the others are a pack of phony-baloney lies. Let’s not beat around the Burning Bush here.

Believe what you want to believe. Knock yourself out. Religious tolerance always comes with a shrug and rolled eyes and a bit of a snort. So sing your songs of praise and learn about your miracles and your saints and your pillars of wisdom and your keys to a faithful life. I repeat, knock yourself out.

Those are yours. For your belief systems. For your religions.
They have nothing to do with me.
Not while I’m alive and certainly not after I’m dead.

The Mormons, who oddly enough also made a big deal about supporting California Proposition 8, are going around and baptizing the dead of other religions. In their thinking this makes them Mormons in the next life and then forever. They’re doing this to Jewish Holocaust victims and making lots of Jews and others nervous. But again, the question is WHY?

Mormon Heaven, Mormon Hell, Mormon baptizing practices have no meaning to me and they certainly have no meaning to dead Jewish Holocaust victims. Because to me and to them – Mormon Heaven doesn’t exist, Mormon Hell doesn’t exist, and knock yourself out in your baptismal pools but getting folks wet in other people’s names and adding your mumbo-jumbo doesn’t make it real. It may be real to you in Salt Lake City just as Rick Warren’s Heaven and Hell may be real in Lake Forest.

So for all the millions of human beings slaughtered and enslaved in the name of religion through the years I offer this –

Rick Warren, you can go to your Heaven. And you can certainly go to your Hell.

Mormons, same with you. Go to your Heaven, go to your Hell.

But you can’t make me go and you can’t take me with.

And when I’m in D.C. for Obama’s inauguration and Rick Warren is giving the invocation I promise not to boo or hiss or make a scene. Now that’s tolerance.