Indiana just enacted the beginning of Sharia law in the name of Jesus.

I spent the afternoon in an on-line debate with a “minister’ who was defending Indiana’s right to allow state-sponsored discrimination in a commercial setting.  At one point I asked him a philosophical questions and his only reply was if I knew Jesus Christ as my personal savoir and did I know where my soul was going to spend eternity. I explained to him that he, like most in his profession, sidestepped the issue we were talking about. And it struck me, that that is always the case.  You back these folks into a philosophical corner and they come back and say it is all about Jesus. Do you know Jesus as well as I do?  Are you going to heaven or hell when you die?

I have decided that if the folks like him (and he seemed nice enough to be concerned about my soul, whatever that is) and the good folk in Indiana who profess their Christian virtue by applauding their state’s action are all going to heaven, I might as well go to hell.  I don’t want to spend eternity with these nitwits.

The argument in Indiana is not about whether or not a person can have a faith in a given religion or not. Never has been.  It is about those who believe a certain way can now run roughshod over those who do not hold to their beliefs. In other countries this is called Sharia Law. The Taliban practices this extensively in Afghanistan.  ISIS proclaims it wherever they invade.  And now it is practiced in its most Christian form in Indiana.

Your religious beliefs do not get to trump my civil liberties. Not here. Not in Indiana and not while we still have the U.S. Constitution covering us. Equality is for all.  If you run a public business, you do not get to decide what minority you will or will not serve.  Today it is the LGBT. Yesterday it was the blacks. Tomorrow it will be another diverse group — perhaps Muslims or even, for God’s sake, Methodists.

This law is a very slippery slope. When you can claim religious persecution if you don’t get to persecute a minority you hate with vile and vigor. It is a strange logic. It was started by the United State Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case.  The precedent was set for religion to trump law. Forgive the pun…but God help us.