How The Religious Right Stole Christmas

[and-justice-for-all]

December 2009 Featured

By Sandhya Bathija
Sectarian Grinches And Persnickety Pundits Have Turned The Season Of Peace Into A Festival Of Carping

Last holiday season, Bill O’Reilly was fuming a little bit more than usual.

The bombastic Fox News host declared that Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire had “insulted Christians all over the world” when she “allowed” a Winter Solstice display to stand next to a Christmas tree and a Nativity scene in the state’s capitol building.

But what O’Reilly failed to acknowledge in his op-ed for The Washington Times was that Gregoire was just doing her job. She was enforcing a court order that stemmed from a case between the state and O’Reilly’s friends at the Alliance Defense Fund.

The ADF, a Religious Right group, had represented a local man who wanted to erect a Nativity scene in the state capitol rotunda, forcing the state in 2007 to broaden its policy on displays.

That meant that when the next holiday season rolled around, the capitol rotunda had to be open to an atheist sign that stated, “At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Even if he was aware of those facts, O’Reilly’s rant came as little surprise.

More: http://www.au.org/media/church-and-state/archives/2009/12/how-the-religious-right-stole.html